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Posted by Laura L. Johnson Jun 16, 2008 |
A few days ago I was asked what my favorite book of all time was - what an impossible question! I sat back and thought about it, and immediately my mind said "okay, you have to break this down into categories. So I started thinking about my favorite books I read as a child. My mind went to Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree or Where the Sidewalk Ends, E.B. White's Charlotte's Web, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, or Carolyn Keene's Nancy Drew series. But then I stopped - what is the classification of those last two? I read them as a kid, but certainly teens could read them and be entertained. So I moved on to teen fiction. Growing up I loved the tragedy of Lurlene McDaniel's fiction, but I also spent most of my young adult years reading "classic literature." In junior high I read Pride and Prejudice and Mark Twain. And what about Anne of Green Gables? I enjoy them as much now as I did when I was 8!
This thought process got me thinking - can we even draw genre lines across fiction? As a high school English teacher, I read a great deal of what my student's read - Haddix, Westerfeld, Meyers, etc. - and I enjoy it! I also enjoyed reading Mary Higgins Clark and Tom Clancy throughout my high school years, and certainly those are always classified as adult fiction.
Though I clearly see the necessity of cateogirzing a library in such divisions, as it makes it easier for patrons to find books, I wonder if we end up missing out on great fiction and great adventures, simply because we never think to look in another section of the library.