The Display
Young Adult Novels
The young adult fiction books were in a stacked pile in front of the door of our bookstore, Barely Bruised Books. At first, the books were hard to see as the store had piles of books all around, but there was a small label underneath indicating that it was young adult fiction. The books were stacked randomly and contained a variety of different themes and genres within the YA category.
The image below shows our display and is interactive! Hover your mouse over the outlined books to see the titles, and click on the book to get more information. The green books are discussed in the "pitch" sections of the menu - visit these pages to learn more.
How we chose our books
When choosing our books, we decided to pick the ones that we felt were the most eye-catching or appealing to us. Each of our group members chose one book that we knew of to begin so that researching would be slightly easier, but then continued to choose at random. We felt that if we chose based on diversity or chose a specific genre, we would not get an accurate representation of what the bookstore had to offer.
Goal of our project
With this project, we wanted to discover what diversity and representation was offered in our local community. Because this was an independent bookstore, and was not curated by a bigger company, we were able to get a read on what the community was promoting. This bookstore claimed to be diverse and inclusive on their website, and we found that this was true. The owner of the bookstore had many areas with Indigneous texts as they promote Indigenous culture throughout the store and on social media platforms. Coincidentally, many of the books we chose included themes of diversity (sexuality, gender, ethnicity, etc.) in them. When originally picking our books, we did not expect to find much diversity, especially becuase the display was so small, but we were pleaseantly surprised. It is important to keep in mind though that the author curates the texts in the store to be diverse, especially in terms of Indigenous culture.
We also found that there was a mix of different subgenres within the YA display. From the books we did choose, and the ones we did not, there were romance novels, science fiction, fantasy, horror, drama, and more. These themes, along with diverse books, are important to young adult fiction as it gives many young readers an opportunity to find something they are truly interested in, offering windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors.