Word: teens
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Judge rules switched-at-birth teen may shun birth parents...
Network shows could get blander, while teen books get gorier...
Books like The Babysitter III or Monster -- and there are suddenly a remarkable number of books very much like them -- do not reach such underage readers by subterfuge or stealth. Adolescents now constitute a booming niche market for the peddling of published gore and violence. "Teens' interests go in cycles," says Patricia MacDonald, editorial director of Archway Paperbacks, an imprint of Pocket Books and a major player in the teen-horror field. "In the '70s it was problem novels, the disease of the week. Then it was romance novels, soap operas like Sweet Valley High and Sweet Dreams...
Like all genre fiction -- gothics, romances, police procedurals -- teen tinglers follow a fairly consistent set of formulas. The heroes or heroines are invariably adolescents whose lives fall mysteriously into jeopardy; adults are either the source of the menace or remote, almost inanimate objects. The dialogue comes laced with teenspeak -- gnarly, totally awesome -- and the plot steamrolls over lesser details like setting and characterization. Chapters are short and end in suspense, luring readers with short attention spans to forge onward. The level of violence ranges from the implied to the horrific, and the bloodier bits are sometimes mitigated by context...
Still, these hair-raising books are being tailored for and energetically hawked to children. Is that frightening? The two most successful writers of teen thrillers, understandably, think not. Says Christopher Pike, 37, who stumbled into his calling in 1985 and now has 8 million copies of his books in print: "They want to be scared or they would not pick up the book and read it. The kids have fair warning and know it's all good...