Week 13 Prompt

I think that the picture in this week’s prompt is a great example of what we as librarians need to be doing to serve patrons that may want to read YA lit and expose others to it. I agree with the sign, that there can be a certain stigma against reading YA literature or graphic novels as an adult. I for one am just as likely to be reading an adult fiction book as a YA fiction book. I’ve even gone back and reread some of my favorite novels as a youngster and reveled in the elements that made me remember so long afterwards. I think that a few things need to happen to help de-stigmatize and bring awareness for adults to YA literature. The first is to bring the books and displays out of “kid” areas. I know my local library has all young adult books in a designated area with the YA computer and some kid furniture. While this isn’t the worst setup for those in the conventional YA reading range, it can easily prevent others from venturing into the area. Keeping the YA area of the library slightly removed from ALL access to YA books would help adults to feel like they could browse the stacks just as they do for adult fiction.

Another way to do this is through displays and information on YA books. Being open about other adults enjoying YA literature can help patrons to feel more at east browsing YA literature and allow others to start looking at YA books if they hadn’t before. Bringing displays into the adult fiction section like the picture in the prompt show a good example of this. Other ideas for displays could include showing an adult fiction book and shelving it on a display with a YA book with similar theme, plot, character, etc with a brief description. A display could also have authors books displayed that write both adult fiction and YA fiction. These types of displays I feel would target adults who maybe have never considered YA fiction as potential reading material but might be drawn to the display seeing and adult fiction book or author that they have enjoyed in the past.

I think that Graphic Novels may be a littler harder for adults to breach if they never had exposure to them at the conventional age. A display with graphic novels in the adult fiction section with a visual aid of how to read graphic novels along with some popular novels and suggestion could help. There are graphic novels that have been converted to recently popular movies and tv shows, these novels might be a good attention grabber and draw to patrons that are new to them.