'Traveling Pants' Author Tries Traveling In Time
Book packagers "work as a team to generate ideas for series that they think will be really appealing to teenagers," says librarian and children's literature lover Margaret Willison. She says today's book packagers are broadly similar to — for example — the syndicate that produced the Nancy Drew books, but their reach is much broader.
"The idea that these are going to be media franchises, they're gonna be books, they're gonna be television shows, they're gonna be movies, they're gonna be spinoffs is much more baked in, right from the outset than you've seen with earlier iterations of this model."
17th Street eventually became Alloy Entertainment, a packaging behemoth that's responsible for — among other things — the first few Sisterhood books, along with series like Gossip Girl, the Vampire Diaries and Pretty Little Liars that tend to get the side-eye from literary critics.
But Willison says it doesn't matter whether you're reading about magic pants or teenaged vampires. "What's important about that kind of reading is it's habit-forming."
When a kid picks up a YA novel and reads for fun, that's the beginning of a life-long habit of reading. And YA, in particular, can speak to kids in their own language. "It's about that time in life, through the eyes of people who are in that part of their life," Brashares says.
And what a fascinating time it is. "You're probably independent for the first time, you're making decisions, you're making mistakes, you're falling in love, there's such intensity there. And you're laying the blueprint for your life."
The modern American teenager, it seems, can be a powerful muse.
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