THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 25, 1994 TAG: 9410250072
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DIANE TENNANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
TEN GUESSES on what that lurid looking paperback is sticking out of your child's bookbag.
Nine of those guesses had better be R.L. Stine.
Without question, the New York writer of children's supernatural/thriller books is THE most popular author for the middle school/young adult set.
``I don't think he's going to win an award for writing, but the kids really like it,'' said Teresa Wanser, children's librarian at the Kirn Library in Norfolk. ``I think they're all getting more into the horror genre. They just love R.L. Stine. He's sort of like the Stephen King of junior high kids.''
Wanser just ordered about 90 copies of Stine's ``Goosebumps'' and ``Fear Street'' series. She also keeps Christopher Pike's ``Final Friends'' books and the ``Horror High'' novels of Nicholas Adams.
Horror is a hot topic with kids these days, said Elizabeth Devereaux, who edits children's book reviews for Publisher's Weekly. ``I'm looking at an August list of children's best sellers,'' she said. ``There are 10 books on the list and nine of them are R.L. Stine. The 10th one is Ann Martin's Baby-sitters Club.''
The Baby-sitters Club series, which has branched out into the Baby-sitters Little Sister series, also remains a top seller.
Girls, in particular, latch onto serial books such as Baby-sitter and the other top favorite, Sweet Valley High, which chronicles the lives of twin sisters Jessica and Elizabeth.
Boys tend to prefer nonfiction or adventure novels, but Stine has managed to capture the imagination of both girls and boys.
``Another series that is sort of picking up in popularity is `18 Pine Street,' '' Wanser said. ``That's like a multicultural group of teenagers.''
It is difficult to gauge what kids are reading, Devereaux said, because best-seller lists may reflect what parents are buying for their kids, and library check-out lists are usually heavy on hardcover books. But paperback best-seller lists reflect what kids are buying with their own money, she said.
``Kids can't necessarily afford to buy the newest Newberry honor-winning book,'' she said. ``However, they can afford to buy a $2.99, a $3.29 paperback.''
Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, updated for the '90s, are less popular than they were a few decades ago, but they still have faithful readers.
Fantasy is also popular among kids, with Brian Jacques' Redwall Abbey series one of the top in demand.
``In terms of book sales these days, the primary sales through the bookstores are largely the serial books: the romances, the adventure stories, the Baby-sitters Club,'' said Arthea J.S. Reed, chairman of the Education Department at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. ``But when you look at what kids are checking out of libraries, you find a much broader range of things.''
Reed, author of ``Comics to Classics, A Guide to Books for Teens and Preteens,'' likes to recommend socially conscious books such as Bette Green's ``The Drowning of Stephan Jones, which deals with homophobia.
``Kids will frequently find an author they like and that author becomes their friend and that's why the serial books are so popular,'' Reed said. ``They haven't learned how to go to a bookstore and pick up on new authors and new genres. It's the responsibility of their teachers and their school librarians to teach them that.'' by CNB