Chapter 4: Genres & Formats

Chapter 4: Genres & Formats

This chapter covers genres and formats, specifically debunking some assumed genres and formats during the new trend of genrefying libraries. The two genres are fiction and nonfiction; everything else is consider a subgenre. Within Fiction, there are two major branches realism and fantasy. Realism encompasses the books that cover topics that we would see in our current everyday world or in history; it is rooted in reality. Fantasy, on the other hand, has traditional which covers everything from fairy tales, myths, to folktales. These traditional versions of Fantasy normally fall under 398.2 in the Dewey decimal classification and housed in the nonfiction section. Modern Fantasy is normally housed within the fiction section of the library as it covers fantasy and science fiction, another subgenre of fantasy. Underneath Modern Fantasy there are 4 catagories: Hard Science fiction, Soft Science fiction, High Fantasy, and Low fantasy. Hard science fiction is fantasy that is rooted in science and is the main factor of the story. Soft Science fiction is where science is involved, but the characters are more important than the science elements. High Fantasy is where new worlds and languages are created to achieve suspension of disbelief. Low fantasy stories are more closely related to realism- something readers might recognize but with a magical twist. Nonfiction is broken down as well. Informational is the next tier underneath Nonficition, but within that subgenre it covers biography (autobiography and memoir falling under that category), Narrative nonfiction, and expository Nonfiction. Narrative nonfiction is written more like a story rather than merely listing facts. While the opposite is expository nonfiction which is all about the facts. Formats are the way books are written not the subject matter. Some examples of formats are: Poetry, Drama, Novels, Chapter books, Short Stories, Picture books, graphic novels, etc.

Reflection:

This chapter is important factor in the discussion of genrefying a library. While it can make your library look more like a book store, it can often be limiting to the students to find the books that they want. How do these classifications impact evaluating young people’s literature? Well they help the reader better understand the qualities that make up each genre and specifically I think that format is very important to a book. I am not sure Kwame Alexander’s Crossover and Rebound would have been as successful if they did not have the format of poetry. The story is beautiful, but the accessibility of the books makes them even easier to read. Rebound even includes two formats: poetry and graphic novel. The format of a book can help lend itself to specific audiences just the same as genres do. They are very important for an evaluator to know as if you notice that in your collection the low fantasy is the most commonly checked out, then you probably should look for more low fantasy and maybe even find some interesting formats of that genre to draw in more readers. I recently reread Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson in graphic novel format and I felt that it was almost better than the original because the format did not take away or distract from the story but instead enhanced the narrative.

To the right are pictures of some of the formats in Rebound by Kwame Alexander.