Читать книгу Writing Children's Books For Dummies - Peter Economy - Страница 63

Gender-oriented series books are designed to appeal specifically to either boys or girls, but not both. From board books to picture books, licensed titles to novelty books, publishers develop these series to cater to gender-specific themes or characters. And although you can find many books in this genre up to and through middle-grade series — such as Mean Ghouls: A Rotten Apple Book, by Stacia Deutsch (Scholastic), shown in Figure 3-9 — when we approach the YA audience, gender specificity tends to fall away.

Reprinted courtesy of Stacia Deutsch. © 2012 Stacia Deutsch.

FIGURE 3-9: Mean Ghouls: A Rotten Apple Book, a example gender-oriented title.

Some of the most well-known girl-oriented titles include The Baby-Sitters Club series, by Ann M. Martin (Scholastic), which later morphed into a graphic novel series; the Nancy Drew series, by Carolyn Keene (Grosset & Dunlap), which spun off into the Nancy Drew Diaries series; and The Little House on the Prairie books, by Laura Ingalls Wilder (HarperCollins). Dozens and dozens of other series have sprouted up since Nancy Drew in the 1930s, focusing on what popular culture still considers traditional girly fare, such as pets, ponies, fairies, and the like, seeking to capture some of the avid book reading (and collecting!) middle-grade audience.

Successful entries that have a lot of girl appeal include these series by Jim Benton: the Dear Dumb Diary series (Scholastic), Franny K. Stein, Mad Scientist (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers), and It’s Happy Bunny series (Scholastic Paperbacks).

Some stellar offerings in the nonfiction category that specifically and unabashedly target girls include nearly every title produced in the American Girl series (Pleasant Company Publications), which also includes historical fiction series that have multicultural girl protagonists across the ages. A classic to check out for girls is Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (Signet Classics).

Boy-centric series include The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, by Jeff Kinney (Harry N. Abrams), the Big Nate series, by Lincoln Peirce (HarperCollins), and The Zack Files series, by Dan Greenburg and Jack E. Davis (Grosset & Dunlap). (Publishers and authors first aimed these titles at boys, but girls read them like crazy, too.)