“The Muscle-Flexing, Mind-Blowing Book Girls Will Inherit The Earth”

“The Muscle-Flexing, Mind-Blowing Book Girls Will Inherit The Earth” is an awesome article written for NPR about a group of people, who in mind have always existed (I was one a number of years ago), but who now are driving the YA book market.  As Linda Holmes, the author of the article states, “They are readers, and in this particular case, they are girls and women. In fact, one of the sadder things about observing the Book Girls in action is realizing that they – walking from author signing to author signing in happy gaggles, toting friends and sometimes parents – are having their voracious reading habits and their devotion to the importance of talking about your feelings socially reinforced in a way that one fears may be far less common for boys with similar impulses. (Learning that it’s okay to talk about your feelings is an important theme for many of the heroines in the books they love.) There are boys and men and older women who love many of the books that the Book Girls do, but it is the Book Girls who scream at authors the way people screamed at the Beatles on Ed Sullivan.”

Once I learned how to read, my parents couldn’t stop me.  I was (and still am) a voracious reader and after reading through much of the middle grade section of my small town library, it was hard to find great YA books that I could relate to.  There may have been great books, but the library I grew up in had a very small collection of older books that didn’t hold my attention.  So I jumped straight to adult fiction reading Michael Crichton, John Grisham and the like.  I’m happy to report my small-town library has since been renovated, the collection has become much more robust and up-to-date and in my opinion YA books are getting better and better.  And I read more YA books now, than I ever did as a young adult.

I know Book Girls at my current library well.  Many are those girls who I have seen for the past couple years reach 7th/8th grade and are unsure of what to read next.  And that’s when I get excited – I love showing them John Green, Sarah Dessen, Rainbow Rowell and the host of authors that not only write for their age group, but “get” them too.  They come up to my desk ready to discuss the books they love and are passionate about and I love sharing that passion with them.

This was such a great article amongst the sea of articles stating that kids don’t read anymore – I’m hear to say, yes they do.