“Boys don’t read.” The mantra that thousands of adults have been heard repeating for a long time. And that seems to be demolished by a fact of the last National Survey of Cultural Consumption 2013/2023: within the range that goes from 13 to 29 years, is the age group that reads the most; with reading rates of 77% among those between the ages of 13 and 17 and 58% among those between the ages of 18 and 29. The so-called “Children’s and Youth Literature” (LIT) It is a field that has more and more readers and writers. According to Manuela Frers, Head of Communication and Marketing at Penguin Random House, the portion of sales of children’s and youth literature (LIT) “is very high, and has been growing a lot for the last five years.” “We should banish this idea that boys don’t read,” he says, and tells that in the total sales ranking of Penguin Random House authors, Lyna Vallejos, a young writer and youtuber, author of the hit “The Mystery of the sorceress”; and JK Rowling, author of the “Harry Potter” saga. “They have been in our top 10 for a long time,” Frers points out.
The appearance of the LIJ category is recent and, for a long time, it was considered a type of minor reading. This began to change in 1997 after the publication of the first “Harry Potter”, which was followed by other successes such as “Twilight” – the love story between a girl and a vampire-, dystopian novels such as “The Hunger Games” or “Maze Runner”, love dramas like the “After” saga and even LGBT fiction like “Heartstopper”. It is a great industry: all these titles that have won (and continue to win) millions of readers have their series, movies, t-shirts, hats and all kinds of merchandising.
Causes of the phenomenon
Although the growth of the LIJ has been taking place for years, the pandemic acted as an accelerator of the phenomenon. In full confinement, many boys turned to the networks and there they found the universe of booktubers, booktokers or bookstagramers: influencers who use their social networks to recommend and review the books they are passionate about. Today young readers are the ones who create a community, especially online, to talk about the books they like and those that become experts. The authoritative voice is no longer a critic or academic, but a peer.
But these passionate readers don’t just use technology to recommend and comment on stories. They also use it to create them. Wattpad, an online reading and writing platform where you can post and read to each other for free, is where many of the world’s most widely read writers got their start. That is the case of the American writer Anna Todd, author of “After”, a saga of 5 books of between 600 to 800 pages each (boys are not afraid of very long books).
Once the writer is detected, the publishers establish an agreement with him and publish the book. In fact, the seal Wattpad by Montena is devoted entirely to editing the stars of this platform. “There are cases of writers who had millions of readings on Wattpad and once their books were published on paper they sold outrageously. Which speaks a little of the passion that exists for the ‘object-book’”, details Frers.
Many of these fictions deal with delicate topics, such as anorexia, suicide or discrimination, and are read at such a special age as adolescence, by readers who are new to literature but who also seek to see their anxieties reflected. “In many cases some of these young writers put into the text what they are experiencing or what they would like to experience. The publisher acts as a mediator between that offer and that demand. Reading is often a place of salvation, of company. You find written things that happen to you or that you didn’t know were happening to you or you couldn’t put words to them,” explains Majo Ferrari, manager of Grupo Planeta’s children’s and youth books area.
main hits
Some of the most celebrated LIJ titles in recent years are the trilogy “Months by your side” from the Spanish Joana Marcus (Montena), (the quota to witness an event at the Book Fair where she participated sold out in a minute); the sagas “Boulevard” and “The universe also rains” by the Mexican Flor Salvador (Montena) or “All our nights”, by Maximiliano Pizzicotti (VR), a young man from Entre Ríos who started out as a blookfluencer and last year was one of the stars of the Fair. The list of authors is vast: Ariana Godoy, Jazmín Riera, Tiffany Caligaris, Pamela Stupia, a thousand more. But beyond this new generation of reader-writers who generate a community in networks, there are also the usual sagas that continue to add followers: “Percy Jackson”, the saga of the American Rick Riordan, or the fantastic novels of Brandon Sanderson.
Fundamentally, the most consumed genre is the fantastic, and even the “romantacy”, a mixture of romance and fantasy, a very popular genre among adolescents, which usually includes quotas of eroticism. But there are also options for more kids, from 8 to 12 years old, like the Los Compas saga, by Mikecrack, El Trollino and Timba Vk, three youtubers and gamers who went from having fun with games to writing books about adventures with friends. Also the little witch Ana Kadabra, the creation of David Sierra Listón and Mañas Romero Pedro.
On the other hand, interest in comics and manga (Japanese comics) is growing, a consumption that was previously much more niche. According to Ferrari, in this case the line between youth and adulthood begins to blur. “The adult reader is beginning to consume books that are for any age, even though they are classified as for young people”, he points out.
The publishing phenomenon arouses support but also criticism from those who consider that it is a literature riddled with clichés, stereotyped characters, predictable plots and commonplaces.
“Today the book does not compete against another book, but against Instagram, Tik Tok, Netflix and the smartphone. This competition causes people to have less patience or attention span for reading. Or they have choppy readings. Thus, short chapters and shocks of surprise or emotion become necessary: we are bombarded with content that works that way. There are 11-year-old boys who have already seen series like ‘Stranger Things’ or ‘Thirteen Reasons Why’, how do you get them to read a saga or another type of literature that requires much more reflection?”, explains Ferrari.
Total defender of the LIT, the editor is optimistic. “There is a moment in childhood and adolescence when the best thing that can happen to boys is to read. Hardly anyone acquires the habit of reading very old. You have to let them read what they want to read. Then they will do the reading path that they have to do ”.
What will the Children’s and Youth Fair be like?
From July 10 to 30, at the Kirchner Cultural Center, the 31st edition of the traditional Children’s and Youth Book Fair is held. Admission will be free and will include more than three hundred activities. Among them, illustration and science workshops, Comics Festival, meeting with bookfluencers and cosplay parade. There will also be Conferences for Teachers and Reading Mediators, the Pregonero Awards for the best LIJ of the year and an Illustration Exhibition on 40 years of democracy. On the terrace of the Whale, all the youth activity will be concentrated, in addition to presentations and signatures in the almost 100 stands of the Fair.
Image gallery
