Re: The Future of Young Adult Fiction?

Nicky wrote:

On Apr 9, 8:05 am, Irina Rempt <ir...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dan Goodman wrote:
2) People who are newly literate in a second (or third, fourth....)
language.

I have teenagers newly literate in three modern languages, and they
*detest* abridged and dumbed-down books; they'd rather make an effort
to read the real thing or, if that's still beyond their skill, start
with children's and YA books in the foreign language.

I wasn't talking about abridged books ( I can't speak for anyone else)
but original stories with adult ish ideas written simply. I see those
as a challenge for a writer.

Ah, I think I reacted to some of the earlier stuff, when people were
talking about adaptations of already existing stories. Most of the "X for
non-X speakers" stuff we can get here is that kind, probably on the
principle that Great Literature ought to be "made accessible" (generally
used as a euphemism for "dumbed down"). Also, it may be part of the
mindset for which everything should be maximally useful: if a book
doesn't do double duty (like improve your reading skills *and* give you a
bit of Established Culture) reading it is a waste of your time.

I got my hands on such an adaptation of Dorothy Sayers' _Gaudy Night_ (or
perhaps _Busman's Honeymoon_) recently, and was dumbfounded by the way
the adaptor had succeeded in making it completely flat and bland,
removing all idiosyncratic writing, all flavour, while keeping the story
intact. If *that* is the average student's introduction to Great
Literature, I'm not surprised that so few people think it's any fun. I
wish, for the sake of my daughters' classmates and everybody else in that
position, that we could get English and French and German "easy reading"
books for native speakers here; they'd probably be both easier to read
and more interesting.

The hope is that once someone has got pleasure
from a book they are likely to seek out others and as their reading
proficiency increases they will move on to more difficult stuff.

Absolutely. If only schools knew that too... It's probably because
textbook publishers also publish abridged and adapted fiction, carefully
purged of anything that goes beyond a set level (so students don't have
to, God forbid, stretch themselves) and annotated to death, and the
schools think (with or without reason) that that's the only choice they
have.

(My middle daughter is doing her Dutch-class presentation on illiteracy;
when she gets some adult easy readers from the library to illustrate,
I'll report back if it gives me have new ideas)

Irina

--
"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth
should that mean that it is not real?" --Albus Dumbledore
http://www.valdyas.org/foundobjects/index.cgi (temporarily out of order)
Purplish Cooking Pages http://www.valdyas.org/irina/purplishcookingpages/
.

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