Life after ‘Harry Potter’?

With the last book in J. K. Rowling’s popular “Harry Potter” series coming out this summer, children — and their parents — are probably wondering what will be the next big thing for young readers. Will another fantasy adventure book capture their imaginations in quite the same way as Hogwarts, Lord Voldemort, and the rest of the “Harry Potter” characters? In the third edition of “Best Books for Young Adults,” edited by Holly Koelling, the Young Adult Library Services Association says, yes. Here's an article adapted, in part, from a chapter in the book:

If you know any book-reading teens, you know they’ve probably circled July 21 on their calendars. That’s the release date for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh — and final — chapter in J.K. Rowling’s popular saga. But without Harry Potter, will teens keep reading? The answer is an emphatic yes.

Books for teens are in a period of unprecedented growth, with its success beginning with the boy wizard himself. But the teen market’s ascension can’t be attributed solely to Harry Potter’s magical touch.

“If our population started reading Harry Potter at age seven or eight, they’ve gotten older, and now they’re reading new stuff,” said Pam Spencer Holley, past president of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). “Teens are going to want their books to kick it up a notch — fantasy is here to stay, but teen readers want romance and a more supernatural element.”

Holley cites the rising popularity among older teens of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, a love story between a vampire and a teen girl, and the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld, a futuristic fantasy in which everyone is turned into a beautiful, vapid person at age 16. Middle school-aged readers will likely turn to such as Angie Sage’s Septimus Heap series or Garth Nix’s Keys to the Kingdom series, which Holley says are more adventure-oriented and a little less bleak.

All the same, fantasy can be pretty dark. And that’s one reason why Holley thinks it’s become so popular. “There’s a comfort in reading fantasy,” she said. “It makes your own world look a little less awful.”

While Harry Potter has allowed fantasy to flourish, other genres and teen-focused books in general have benefited from the series’ popularity. Publishers now clearly recognize teens as a potent and influential force in the American marketplace. According to Albert Greco, Fordham University marketing professor and industry analyst, book sales targeted to those ages 12 to 18 in the United States have risen 23 percent between 1999 and 2005.

Meanwhile, children’s and adult book sales, respectively, experienced moderate and slight declines, according to a 2005 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article. In 2005, Caroline Horn reported in The Bookseller that the sales threshold for high-selling teen authors has doubled in the last five years, rising from an average of 50,000 copies to 100,000 copies.

Another factor contributing to bigger teen book sales is simple demographics. Today’s teens are right in the middle of the generation known as the Millennials, and demographers forecast its size to peak well beyond the Baby Boomers’ 78 million — and they’re predicted to have the greatest disposable income and marketplace influence in history.

Major publishers, egged on by strong numbers and projections for even greater future spending from teen consumers, now provide teen readers with an almost dizzying selection of books in all established genres — and those same publishers are now proactively identifying and even creating new literary trends that will continue to attract teen attention. Verse fiction, stories told through poems or verse, and epistolary fiction, stories told through letters and diaries, are just two examples of changing literary technique, according to Holly Koelling, editor of the forthcoming third edition of Best Books for Young Adults, published by YALSA and due out in August.

“They’ve become very popular ways of storytelling in teen fiction,” Koelling said. “I think they give a little more insight into how teens are thinking, and that’s why their approach, which is fragmented and internalized, appeals to teen readers.”

For a good example of verse fiction, she cites Sonya Sones, whose Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy unfolds through the poems of its 13-year-old protagonist as she grapples with her sister’s mental illness. The long-form diary has risen to prominence with Meg Cabot’s enormously popular Princess Diaries series and books like Louise Rennison’s Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging: Confessions of Georgia Nicolson, which features the diary of a sarcastic young Brit as she navigates a typical teen existence. These forms also lend easily to sequels and companion books — another hallmark of the changing landscape of teen literature.

MORE FROM AL'S BOOK CLUB

Al's Book Club Section Front

Al’s Book Club for kids: ‘Mountain Meets the Moon’ Al’s Book Club pick: ‘Septimus Heap: Magyk’ Club pick: ‘The Black Circle’ Club pick: ‘Savvy’ Al’s Book Club pick: ‘Wolf Brother’ Al’s pick: ‘Mysterious Benedict Society’ Tell us about children's literacy groups! Al’s Book Club pick: ‘Change Has Come’ A week in the life of a ‘Wimpy Kid’ Club pick: ‘Tale of Despereaux’ Al's Book Club Section Front   Add Al's Book Club headlines to your news reader: