Teen Blogs!
Shannon Hale's Squeetus
Right now Hale's is running a chapter-by-chapter book club for one of her earlier books, The Goose Girl. Each day Hale goes through the chapter and gives extra details about the characters, the setting, different plot points, and generally lays open her thoughts about as much of the book as possible. This is great value-added material for fans, with the kind of details that get readers excited about the book and about the blog. Hale's tone is not geared towards a younger audience--when she has opinions about sensitive or complex subjects she doesn't hesitate to mention them. This is probably because she doesn't just write for teens, but also for adults. (Btw, a lot of her adult fic stuff is great crossover teen reading.) But neither does she use a lot of foul language or slang that might make certain people feel uncomfortable or unwelcome. From at least the posts this past week, and from the clear consistent voice that comes through in her prose, Hale must be running (or at least writing) this website herself. Who else would know so much about The Goose Girl?
Forever Young Adult
Now this is a website geared towards a New Adult audience. In their About Us section, they describe themselves as "A site for YA readers who are a little less Y and a bit more A." Slang and informal language abound; they even have a page (Lexicon) just for the site-specific acronyms and terminology. It seems that it is more for women than men (notice the pretty pink backsplash). This is not bad, don't get me wrong. This is actually awesome. Just awesome in a different way from Hale's Squeetus. They cover books mostly, but also movies and tv shows (most of which came from books). Plenty there to look at, and it seems really funny.
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