bestsellers

YA Twitter versus Handbook for Mortals: A Case Study in Bestseller List Manipulation, Controversy, and the Effects on Library Acquisition.

children's literature, Publications, research, YA Literature

The cover of The Lion and the Unicorn January 2019 including a purple heading and a black and white illustration of two women tossing a child between themTable of contents from the Lion and the Unicorn with YA Twitter vs Handbook for Mortals in the middle. I’m delighted to announce that my most recent article has been published in the Lion and the Unicorn‘s January 2019 issue. This article came out of a very public kerfuffle on Twitter that played out in real-time while I was teaching my course on Bestsellers, Best Of and Banned Books at Georgia Tech. I was blessed with 75 students who helped unpack the events as they happened in real time as well as two incredible co-authors, Karen Viars and Liz Holdsworth, who brought their expertise in fan culture and library acquisitions to the project. Come for the public spectacle, stay for the nuanced reading of best-seller lists, public interactions of YA professionals via Twitter, and a look at the impact of faking bestseller status on library acquisition policies.

 

Screenshot of the front page of article

Article Citation: Fitzsimmons, Rebekah, Karen Viars and Liz Holdsworth. “YA Twitter versus Handbook for Mortals: A Case Study in Bestseller List Manipulation, Controversy, and the Effects on Library Acquisition.” The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 43 no. 1, 2019, pp. 108-132. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/uni.2019.0006

CHLA 2018: The Handbook for Mortals and the Muddy Waters of YA Best Seller Status

Presentations, research, YA Literature

This year at CHLA in San Antonio, Texas I am making two presentations.

On Friday, June 29 at 11:00 am, I am participating in Panel 3B: The Syllabus Exchange. I will be presenting on Multimodal Assignments and talking about my most recent course, The History and Rhetoric of Science Writing for Children.

If you attended but were unable to take a copy of my handout home with you, please feel free to download a copy here:

CHLA 2018 Syllabus Swap Handout: Multimodal Assignments

On Saturday, June 30 at 3:30pm in the June Cummins room, I will be presenting a conference paper entitled “The Handbook for Mortals and the Muddy Waters of YA Best Seller Status.” If an attempt to make my presentation more accessible, please feel free to take a look at the complete PPT slide deck and the text version of my talk, available below.

Presentation Script (Text only version)

Handbook Muddy Waters PowerPoint Presentation

I hope to see you in San Antonio!