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Is it just me, or are there scads more fantasy books out there now than when I was a kid?
I went to the book store the other day and was stunned by the sheer volume of young adult fantasy novels. Winged people, clockwork magics, fairies, dragons, and more cavorted across the covers of many overpriced hardbacks.
I wish that there was such a wide selection of neat things back when I was ocularly eating a book a day. Oh sure, there were some fantasy novels, but not in this volume, surely!
Did Harry Potter start this?
Possibly. I was just looking at that today while Christmas shopping. I was wondering if I should get one for Justin, but I think he is too young. There were dragon books everywhere and I must say, I was admiring alot of the cover art.
I believe it is definitely HP that caused this – not that kids didn’t always like those type books, it’s just that publishers went “Oh, wow, we can make lots of money off young kids.” I read Tamora Pierce and she credits JK with being able to write much longer books. Tamora has several quadrologies out but said after HP the publishers suddenly realized kids/young adults would read 500-600 page books. And I remember the days when I read and re-read Anne McCaffrey and Robert Heinlein because that was all there was (oh and Robin McKinley – LOVE Beauty!) Wasn’t into Ursala LeGuin.
And they start at younger ages now too. When I was young I read and re-read the Narnia books, the Myth series, A Wrinkle in Time, one called Dogstar that is about all I could find. Now I read all kinds of kids books, HP, Eragon and Eldest, the Spiderwick Chronicles, oh just so many.
I think the trend was beginning before Harry Potter, but it was Harry Potter that really accellerated it.
Let us not forget Piers Anthony’s contributions to this trend- Xanth novels?! That’s what I was hooked on as a kid.
Read the Xanth novels for a while but lost interest after a few…actually I was hooked on the Tarzan and Warlord of Mars series by Edgar Rice Burroughs as a kid. Also read Roger Zelanzy (spelling?) as a kid. And Wrinkle of Time – great book.
Are there really more or are you just noticing them more? I know I’ve been reading fantasy since I was a teenager and that was a while ago. Although I guess I might have been spoiled since I got my books from a bookstore that specialized in fantasy and science-fiction… Shelves and walls full of nothing but fantasy and science-fiction! I could spend all day in there!
There are definately more fantasy books for young readers. I worked at Barnes and Noble back in 2001 and then again in 2005, and the difference was exponential! I used to wrack my brains to reccomend fantasy sci-fi books for young readers, and would often have to turn to the adult fantasy section for Piers Anthony, Terry Brooks, and so on….Now there are more than a dozen authors that I could pick out in about 30 seconds just in the young readers section, not to mention the teen section.
PS, my favorite fantasy books when I was young were “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” by Mercer Mayer, “The Faraway Mountain” unknown auth, “Bunnicula” by Howe, and “Cat Wings” unknown author.
Ahhh yes how could one forget bunnicula, and now they have them in a picture type book for even younger readers. And I started reading Xanth when I was a teenager, and the Apprentace Adept, and the Incantations of Immortality. Infact I just recently bought the Xanth and Apprentace ones off of ebay.
Piers Anthony is actualy rather twisted….He really stretches the bounds of sexualism in books, some to down right pornographic. I don’t know if anyone has ever read, or even heard of, the Havoc series he did, but they are VERY sexual in nature, in fact almost the whole basis of their economy is sex. The Incarnation series has snippets of that streak from him, and the Adept series definately crosses some literary boundaries. I remember a particular rape scene from the Adept series (in one of the later books) that seemed particularly graphic, even to an 18 year old.
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