Some local teachers and I recently polled middle school students in a private and public school setting to see what kinds of young adult literature they choose to read on their own (as in, not for school or in school). Our findings will be published in the 2010 summer issue of SIGNAL Journal http://www.kennesaw.edu/english/education/signal/Home.htm, but we thought we'd tell you a little about them here, too.
Across the board, middle school students are choosing to read series YA novels--novels like The Seeing Stone Trilogy, The Spiderwick Chronicles, P.C. Casts' House of Night series, the Vampire Academy series, the Redwall series. Books like that. Books I'm not that familiar with. Books I haven't been reading or paying much attention to. Until now. These series fall predominantly in the genres of fantasy/supernatural (think King Arthur, Tolkien, and vampire romance), and we do have research that tells us these are teens' preferred genres.
But what is it about the series novel that draws teen readers? (or adult readers for that matter? I just finished Stieg Larsson's "Girl" trilogy and can attest to the pull of the series novel. I think, for me, the draw is knowing the story continues and I don't have to say goodbye to a character I have come to know and love [and invested in] when the first book's over. There's something luxurious about the longitudinal reading experience, the longer stretch of time that a series allows. There's depth there, too--a chance to wade in, let the water hit high before heading back to shore. Of course, maybe this is also about my own hoarding tendencies?).
I love what Victor Watson writes in Reading Series Fiction: Watson likens series reading to "going into a room full of friends." This might help explain why reluctant or less confident readers might like series--it's scary to go into a room full of people (a book) you don't know. So much to learn, so much to pay attention to. So much nicer to recognize the friendly face, get the nod, and pick up where you last left off. Watson says series reading is the most important continuous reading young people can do on their own. He says it's central to young readers discovering that "fiction can provide a complex variety of profoundly private pleasures, and that these pleasures are repeatable and entirely within the reader's control." Ah. Repeatable Pleasure. Reader Control. We already know that other "C" word so important to teen reading: "Choice." Maybe we need to pay more attention to this idea of control, too. I imagine teens don't feel like much, if any, of the school reading they do is in their control. Like Teri Lesesne says in her new book Reading Ladders, a lot of school reading is vertical reading, where we "move ever upward" from stuff we like to read straight to difficult classics, with teens having very little say in the matter.
These ideas about reading pleasure and control are interesting to me because there's a (small) part of my English teacher identity (or non-conformist identity? or anti-consumerist identity?) that wants to pooh-pooh the series novel. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I've never read the Harry Potter series, probably because it's a series and everyone else was doing it. Or Twilight for that matter. Yes, I did read the first one, and saw the first movie, but after that I just couldn't stick with it. I think part of the problem for me is all the marketing and consumerism tied up with the books (and maybe lack of more visible critique outside academia?). The gobs of money changing hands. And can we please turn on the TV or open a newspaper without seeing Kristen Stewart or Robert Pattinson? (I want the Lifetime movie Kristen Stewart back!) :) And I resisted the Stieg Larsson trilogy for as long as I could, but then read a NYTimes reviewer whom I trust, who said he was sad to see the trilogy end. I thought, well, maybe I should give this a try. And I'm glad I did. But I swear, if I see a Lisbeth Salander action-figure (oh wait. that could be kinda cool). :) I digress.
Henry Jenkins talks about "commodity culture," where marketers promote a sense of fan affiliation with fictional worlds and then exploit this affiliation through the marketing of consumable goods. Jenkins says such gooods offer empty promises of deeper levels of involvement with the story's content and other media users. Where's the control there? the pleasure? Who controls the pleasure? (who pleasures the controller? stop me!!). I think it's this "empty promise" stuff that worries/bothers me...maybe it shouldn't. I did have my fan crushes as a teen, and I knew no matter how many posters I put on my walls or how many objects I bought, it was all a fantasy of sorts. It was fun, it was silly. It was cliche--all my other girl friends were doing the same things, buying the same crap. Hmmm. Is that control? Consumer control? I need to think more about this and how it all relates to reading.
I do think we as English and reading teachers (and we are all reading teachers) need to start paying more attention to the series novel. Reading researcher Anne McGill-Franzen explains it’s the formulaic patterns of series books that can benefit a wide range of readers. McGill-Franzen explains that because series novels are “highly patterned,” readers notice reading conventions they might ordinarily miss or not understand in other kinds of texts (e.g., titles of chapters, dialogue or dialect, italics signifying change in point of view, etc.). Noticing such reading conventions can motivate readers to try on more complex literature. McGill-Franzen reports that as readers mature in both interest and reading skill, they will move from series books to more complex works. But Watson says we never outgrow the series novel; instead, we "grow into them." Hmmmm. I think he means we add the series genre to our textual repertoires?? It becomes one way of reading we recognize, appreciate, seek out at times, reject at others??
And Watson again: "Series-reading is always conscious and deliberate. You cannot read a series of twelve novels by chance. Deciding to read the next book in a series implies a commitment...[and] involves a special relationship between reader and writer which the reader has made a conscious decision to sustain."
Commitment, friendship, and textual conventions? Sounds like there's a lot to take seriously about the series novel.
What YA series novel are you currently reading? Tell us about it, and feel free to weigh in on why you think the series novel appeals to teen readers!
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