Exploding the Myths: The Truth about Teenagers and Reading

Aronson, Marc

ISBN 10: 0810839040 / ISBN 13: 9780810839045

Published by Scarecrow Press, 2001

About this Item

Seller Inventory # I-9780810839045

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Exploding the Myths: The Truth about Teenagers and Reading
• Publisher: Scarecrow Press
• Publication Date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0810839040
• ISBN 13: 9780810839045
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

We are in the midst of the largest teenage population boom since the nineteen sixties, and all of the media are scrambling to reach this alert, savvy, wealthy, and self-conscious generation. But for authors, editors, parents, teachers, and librarians this large group of readers poses a series of special problems: what is too old, or too young for teenage eyes? Should there even be a literature for teenagers, or wouldn't they be better off skipping ahead to adult books? Do boys read at all? Can books offer moral instruction, role models, or guidance on the path to adulthood? Where do books fit into the ever-growing set of multimedia options that are this generation's birthright?

Marc Aronson, Ph.D. has won the LMP, the industry award for editing, and the Boston Globe Horn Book award for writing books for teenagers. Here, in a series of probing, innovative essays he marshals a decade of insights earned in practice as well as his knowledge as a scholar of publishing history, to pose and answer key questions about the true potential of young adult literature. As he revels in the passion of its readers he exposes the real problem with teenagers and reading: adult myths, projections, and blind prejudices. Exploding the Myths is a provocative book that will be necessary reading for everyone who deals with this burgeoning generation of readers.

About the Author

Marc Aronson has been an innovative editor and author of books for young readers for over thirty years. The winner of the first Robert Sibert medal, and editor of the tenth winner (Tanya Lee Stone’s Almost Astronauts), Aronson is a passionate advocate of nonfiction. As an editor he created EDGE―the first international and multicultural YA imprint―where he published such artists as Jacqueline Woodson, Nikki Giovanni, and the first YA graphic novel memoir, Judd Winnick’s Pedro and Me. The Skull in the Rock, which he wrote with Dr. Berger about the discovery of sediba, won the Subaru award for best middle grade science book. Aronson holds a PhD from NYU in American cultural history and is an Associate Professor of Public Professional Practice at Rutgers University, where he trains future youth librarians.