Reaching Teen Readers

In the last several years, bullying has been a real hot button issue in not only our collective social consciousness, but also in young adult literature. While bullying has always been a traditional young adult theme, a rash of recent suicides and the resulting media focus on bullying has brought us all to a crisis point and teen literature reflects that feeling of crisis when it comes to the treatment and mistreatment of our kids in a school setting and online. So books like Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, Dear Bully, a collection of stories by bestselling and award-winning teen authors, Butter by Erin Jade Lange, and Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina, just to name a few, have found a ready and abundant adult and teen market as we all struggle with how to deal with tough issues like bullying.

A couple weeks ago, another book on the subject of bullying grabbed my attention, not so much because of the subject matter, but because of a smart touring strategy employed by the author--one that put her in touch with the kids who, perhaps, needed to read her book the most. That book is Fat Angie by e. E. Charlton-Trujillo.

The books is described as follows on Amazon: 

Her sister was captured in Iraq, she’s the resident laughingstock at school, and her therapist tells her to count instead of eat. Can a daring new girl in her life really change anything?

Angie is broken — by her can’t-be-bothered mother, by her high-school tormenters, and by being the only one who thinks her varsity-athlete-turned-war-hero sister is still alive. Hiding under a mountain of junk food hasn’t kept the pain (or the shouts of "crazy mad cow!") away. Having failed to kill herself — in front of a gym full of kids — she’s back at high school just trying to make it through each day. That is, until the arrival of KC Romance, the kind of girl who doesn’t exist in Dryfalls, Ohio. A girl who is one hundred and ninety-nine percent wow! A girl who never sees her as Fat Angie, and who knows too well that the package doesn’t always match what’s inside. With an offbeat sensibility, mean girls to rival a horror classic, and characters both outrageous and touching, this darkly comic anti-romantic romance will appeal to anyone who likes entertaining and meaningful fiction.

Per the copy, Fat Angie deals with a number of issues, bullying being just one. With two starred reviews, one from PW and the other from SLJ, Fat Angie will definitely be on my list for holiday reading, but again, it is how the author reached readers that most captured my attention. As described in this interview on the MTV Act Blog, Charlton-Trujillo went on a different kind of a book tour, one coined an At-Risk Youth Tour, to reach "kids that others might have already given up on." So Charlton-Trujillo rented a car, drove 7500 miles all over the country and talked to hundreds of kids, giving them encouragement, a listening ear and an outlet to express themselves through her workshops. She's making a documentary about the experience, which will be out next year. She's also created an organization, Never Counted Out, that will match writing professionals with at-risk programs in their community to "bridge the gap between professional artists and at-risk youth."

It's a worthy and valuable endeavor and I imagine one that may pick up the slack in places where public school funding for the arts is being slashed and burned. But most importantly, it's an approach to books and the teen market that puts the focus back on the teen reader and affecting them, creating lifelong readers and reinforcing the idea that reading can save your life, literally and figuratively. Charlton-Trujillo didn't set out on her tour to sell books; she set out on this tour to reach kids. And this is certainly the reason any children's book professional is in the business--we want to reach kids. Unfortunately, this focus can be lost to the bottom line and the focus on the blockbuster or media ink given over to the old argument of teen lit being too dark. Here is a writer doing the work and taking it directly to her readers and making a difference in real time. In this way, Fat Angie and other books like it, become so much more than a book, they become a marker on a journey, much the way To Kill a Mockingbird or Flowers for Algernon or The Member of the Wedding were important markers on my journey. I never had the chance to meet Harper Lee or Daniel Keyes or Carson McCullers when I was a young reader, but man, if I could have, it would have meant the world to me. Here were writers, or rather people, who seemed to understand everything I was feeling as a kid, everything I was afraid of and wondering about and excited by. Somehow they were able to see inside the chaos of my brain and understand. Through their characters it felt like someone may have actually been listening to me, listening to the quiet ways in which I tried to reach out to the larger world.

I commend e.E. Charlton-Trujillo for reaching out and delivering this same message to her readers not only through her characters, but for delivering this message in person and in such a way that clearly says, "I am here for you". Not I am here on a book tour selling books, but specifically, "I am here for you." And it's that kind of involvement that we need to quell this apparent crisis with our youth. All of us need to get out there and deliver the message that "I am here for you." This is what children's books do. This is what the authors of children's books do. And it's quite amazing.