After reading my post the other day my friend Michelle sent me a link to a more balanced article about YA Fiction (Teen Fiction Explores Wide Range of Issues). The article still has a couple of cringe worthy quotations, but overall does a good job pointing out that "racy" YA Literature isn't anything new. While I thought it was interesting that one person interviewed for the article noted that parents "often hold books to a higher standard than television or movies," (I'm so having a discussion about that with my genre group) I was more interested (okay perturbed) by a comment made by Pam Spencer Holley (who I believe is the current president of YALSA -- correct me if I'm wrong):

"Unless you read stuff that's perhaps not the most literary, you'll never understand what good works are," says Holley. "But when you get them hooked on reading, then you can lead them so many other places, as far as books go."

Good, right? They interviewed a librarian and got a nice response that focused on the power of getting kids hooked into reading. I was ready to say nice job Pam until I read what came next:

Besides, she says, what's the worst thing that can happen? "Nobody complains about the adult women who read Harlequin romances."

Wow. Is this the road we really want to go down? Promoting one genre while bashing another? While I would expect a crack like this from the person who wrote the article, I am pretty shocked to see these words coming out of the mouth of a librarian. I don't think (or at least I certainly hope) that she didn't mean to imply that reading Harlequin romances is the worst thing that can happen, but it kind of comes off that way. Saying things like this is just inexcusable for librarians, regardless of whether they work with adults or children. Belittling the reading tastes of anyone (no matter the age or genre) has no place in the library world. It's hard enough to get people interested in reading without librarians (people are suppose to encourage reading) stigmatizing their reading tastes.

And because I had a discussion about this yesterday when we discovered an almost pristine copy of Jennifer Crusie's Manhunting from when it was originally released as a Harlequin Temptation in 1993 (it even has a yellow seal on it that says new author!), let's not forget the number of other kick ass authors who got their start writing Harlequin romances:

Sandra Brown
Jude Deveraux
Janet Evanovich
Tess Gerritsen
Tami Hoag
Alison Kent
Jayne Ann Krentz
Johanna Lindsey
Judith McNaught
Nora Roberts

And that's just to name a few. Because it would be remiss of me not to mention it, Wendy Crutcher (Super Librarian) had a great post a couple of days ago on Romancing the Blog that talked about the disrespect category romance gets. If you haven't already read it, you should definitely check it out.

A final thought for all the librarians out there (just let me have my Jerry Springer moment, it will be over soon): show respect for your patrons. Don't talk smack about genre fiction. No good will come of it. All you will manage to do is alienate potential readers and piss me off. And who really wants that?

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