BEA 2013: Young Bloggers Provide a Fresh Perspective

By Matia Burnett | PW - June 13, 2013

If you're a young bibliophile, it takes special dedication to brave the crowds at the BookExpo America convention. PW caught up with four such book lovers – all under age 21 – who attended this year’s show, to talk about the world of YA book blogging, their favorite forthcoming books, and standout moments of BEA.

Austin (left) and Kit, of Reading Teen.

In town from Ashburn, Va., Kit, a graduating high school senior, and Austin, who returns to high school in the fall, attended BEA for two days, perusing the booths, meeting authors, and picking up galleys. The two are BEA veterans, seasoned book reviewers, and bloggers on the site Reading Teen. Their involvement in the book blogging world is truly a family affair. Kit, who “always loved reading,” described how when her tastes began to diverge from middle-grade books like A Series of Unfortunate Events (HarperCollins) into sometimes edgier fiction, her mother became a tiny bit nosy: “What’s in that book that you’re reading?” she asked of Kit (it was a book from Lisi Harrison’s The Clique series).

What could have been a “stay out of my business, Mom!” moment instead evolved into mother and daughter reading, sharing, and discussing books. The ReadingTeenBlog started out as a partnership between Kit’s mother, Andye, and her friend Amy – Austin’s mother. At first, it was intended to be a place for “parental book reviews.” But Kit and her sister, Reagan, wanted in on the action. And when Austin – also a voracious reader – divulged to Kit one day that he had read (ahem) Twilight, he became involved with the blog as well. The focus shifted away from exclusively parental reviews to a more youth-driven community of readers.

Both bloggers have a broad-ranging taste in books, from Michael Grant’s Gone series to a perennial favorite like Harry Potter. Austin likes to challenge himself by reading books that might typically fall outside his interest: “Either I’m surprised by how much I liked [a book] or I hate it,” he said, noting that he often finds it easier to write critically about books that he doesn’t absolutely love. One of Austin’s BEA goals was to talk to James Dashner. He’d never met the author face-to-face, but received a personal message from him a couple of years ago. Austin hadn’t gotten around to reading The Maze Runner (Delacorte), so when his mother met Dashner at a public event, she asked him to play a little joke on Austin. On her phone, she recorded Dasher saying: “Austin, dude. Why are you not reading The Maze Runner? Read it or I’m going to come smack you.” Spoiler alert: he did, and loved it – news that he was able to share with Dashner (who remembered him) at BEA. Kit and Austin are both looking forward to Dashner’s The Eye of Minds (Delacorte, Oct.).

The bloggers named some of the other books that they were excited to grab at BEA. Kit was eager to get her hands on Neal Shusterman’s UnWholly (S&S, Aug.). She also discovered some books that she’d not previously known about, including Katie Cotugno’s debut, How to Love (Balzer + Bray, Oct.). After spending the day selecting galleys to take home, both Austin and Kit admitted that they are “unabashed cover judgers.” Austin elaborated, saying that he sometimes has a knee-jerk negative reaction to cover art, particularly if the cover is a photographic depiction of a character: “If there is a real person on the cover, I do not want to read it,” he said. Similarly, one of Kit’s pet peeves is when characters on book jackets don’t look anything like the way they are described in the books. Both agreed that it’s important for readers to be able to “idealize” the characters and imagine what they look like for themselves.

They also spoke to PW about some of the trends they had noticed at the show. Austin believes that vampires and werewolves are officially over, but that zombies still have some staying power. He also observed that there seem to be more time travel-themed YA books coming out, which is just fine with him. His personal theory? It’s because of the growing popularity of Dr. Who in the U.S. He noted that he would also like to see more space-themed YA books.

Like many others attending this year’s convention, Kit and Austin noticed – and approved of – the presence of more realistic fiction and standalone novels. Kit said that when she read Lauren Oliver’s Delirium, it felt so complete to her that she initially thought it was a standalone book. From her perspective, individual books in a series are best when they resonate just as powerfully on their own.

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