What Do Girls Really Want?
Cindi Di Marzo -- 6/22/98
Publishers are beginning to capitalize on the "Girl Power" trend
Suddenly, it seems, "girl power" is everywhere. Magazines, TV and retailers are all trying to attract the attention of teen and preteen girls, and book publishers are no exception. A number of books that aim to encourage girls and inform them about what to expect as they grow into adulthood have appeared over the past few seasons. PW talked to publishers, authors and booksellers and discovered that many think there has always been a market for these books, one that has been underserved until recently.
The distinguishing feature of these books is their focus on helping girls become independent, make knowledgeable decisions and establish healthy lifestyles. Many of these books either include or consist entirely of contributions from girls. Since it is often hard for adolescents to take advice, reading about how their peers handle things is a critical factor in a book's success.
In Real Girls/Real World: Tools for Finding Your True Self, for instance, which is due in August from Seal Press, authors Heather Gray and Samantha Phillips try to foster a sense of independent decision making. They interviewed girls, in Phillips's words, "on the street, in front of Bloomingdale's, wherever we could," in order to give them a chance to speak as individuals.
Both Gray and Phillips have extensive experience working with adolescents, which, they said, made them aware of a need for books that accurately reflect young women's concerns. As a graduate student, Gray worked on a five-year study of girls with eating disorders. Phillips, a teacher, has also worked as a researcher in educational psychology. Despite their experience, however, Gray said, they found themselves "surprised by how perceptive the girls were and how much they had been through."
According to Michelle R hm, children's director of Hillsboro, Ore.-based Beyond Words, it was Mary Pipher's Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (Ballantine), originally published by Putnam &Grosset in 1994, that made many people aware of a startling amount of self-abuse and low self-esteem among adolescent girls. R hm acknowledged that at least part of the success of her company's recent title, Girls Know Best: Advice for Girls from Girls on Just About Everything, aimed at girls between the ages of seven and 13, is due to Pipher's book, which put a spotlight on girls' issues.
Nevertheless, the strong sales of Girls Know Best, published last September, came as a bit of a surprise, R hm said. Barnes &Noble and Girls' Life magazine sponsored a tour of the book's young contributors that covered chain and independent stores in 10 states. As a result of the enthusiastic response, Beyond Words plans to release Girls Know Best 2: Tips on Life and Fun Stuff to Do!, as well as a similar book for boys in this age group, Boys Know It All, this fall.
Taking a long-range view on the adolescent experience, author Carol Weston, whose book GirlTalk: All the Stuff Your Sister Never Told You was published by HarperCollins's adult division in 1985, said that while some specific concerns have changed over the years, young women have always needed concrete and reassuring information. Weston began writing for teens at the age of 19, and she now writes the "Help!" column for Girls' Life. GirlsTalk is now in its third edition, with over 100,000 copies in print, and there have been numerous foreign rights sales. Weston's latest book, For Girls Only: Wise Words, Good Advice, is a volume of affirmations for girls 8-12 -- brief quotations from such diverse sources as Oscar Wilde, Billie Holiday and Oprah Winfrey.
For Girls Only was actually the brainchild of Avon executive editor Elise Howard. Remembering how much quotations meant to her as a girl, Howard thought the collection would offer something that wasn't available in books published for this age group. "Everybody likes to have their thoughts and feelings confirmed for them, and affirmations do it eloquently," she said.
Biographies of inspiring figures are another way publishers are trying to fill the new niche. In May, for example, Beyond Words released Girls Who Rocked the World: Heroines from Sacagawea to Sheryl Swoopes by Amelie Welden. The book contains portraits of such women as Joan of Arc, Queen Victoria, Frida Kahlo and Martina Hingis. Sprinkled throughout the book's biographical information, drawings and sidebars on the subjects are photos and quotes from contemporary girls who offer their own ideas of what they will do to "rock the world."
Joyce Hansen, a three-time Coretta Scott King Honor winner, was asked by the Bread and Roses Cultural Project to contribute biographies of 13 African Americans for Women of Hope: African American Women Who Made a Difference, to be published by Scholastic this fall. Although Hansen didn't choose the subjects, she said that the lives of many of these women provided inspiration for her over the years and made her stronger.
The strength of the "girl power" movement has caught the attention of many publishers, and has even given rise to a house publishing solely for teen and preteen girls. Los Angeles-based Girl Press, headed by Pam Nelson, started operations last year and launched its first title this season. Edited by Nelson, Cool Women: The Thinking Girl's Guide to the Hippest Women in History, tells the stories of women who have been, according to Nelson, shortchanged in the literary world. One dollar from the sale of the book, which features subjects such as Josephine Baker and Mae West, will be donated to Girls Inc., a nationwide nonprofit organization.
The Difficulty In Reading Teens
Whatever the approach, writing for the teen and preteen market is a formidable challenge, according to Judy Galbraith, founder and president of Minneapolis-based Free Spirit Publishing, which has been publishing self-help books for teens and preteens since 1983. While Galbraith said that including kids' comments can add to a book's appeal, she added that young people need accurate information from caring, professional adults. "We do a disservice by assuming that the only people kids will listen to is their peers," she said.
Now that girls' concerns are being voiced and written about, however, authors are discovering that Reviving Ophelia was on target about the large number of young women who have negative images of themselves, and who have stopped taking an active role in their lives. Hansen, who taught for 22 years in New York City schools, agreed that, more than ever, these days girls are prone to peer pressure and harmful behavior. She said that as a teacher she saw teenage girls mesmerized by the pictures in magazines and very focused on boyfriends, "but mainly what I saw was low self-esteem."
Books that present positive alternatives, and make those alternatives seem cook, help girls resist peer pressure. Practical ways to steer clear of bad habits, for example, are included in a new book on the Free Spirit list, The Right Moves: A Girl's Guide to Getting Fit and Feeling Good (June). Authors Tina Schwager and Michele Schuerger describe how girls can integrate good habits into a busy life and offer suggestions on ways to say no to diets and develop a realistic fitness plan.
"Knowledge Is Power"
Not unexpectedly, Gray and Phillips predicted that many parents may not want their daughters to have so much information, either in books or from other sources, because they believe that knowing about sex, for example, could push their kids into physical relationships that they aren't ready for. The reality, according to the authors we spoke with, is that kids already know a lot about sex from movies and TV, and if they don't, they want to know, and are asking questions. "There will be parents who don't like our book because we talk about abortion and sexual experiences, but I think knowledge is power," Gray said.
Weston agreed, suggesting that more knowledge can actually help girls develop at their own pace. "GirlsTalk is a book to grow with," she said, "because girls can read the parts they are ready for, then pick up the book later for other things like boyfriends and sex."
Parental barriers to information are only one area that these books try to break down. They all, in various ways, present a different picture of adolescent girls than other media have presented. Beyond Words' R hm said that when they held their first Girls Know Best contest asking girls to submit entries for possible inclusion in the book, they expected to get bombarded with entries about fashion and boys. But out of 600 entries received, only one was about boys. And in the second contest, over 200 entries contained suggestions for coping with the loss of a best friend. The result of not knowing what deeper concerns girls have, R hm said, is that the media, publishers and retailers present teens with superficial information and products. "Many of the teen magazines aren't tackling the big issues," R hm said, but added that some newer ones, like New Moon, Blue Jean and Jump, are portraying girls more realistically.
Phillips noted that a key reason for the disparity between what girls are actually interested in and what consumer society offers them is pervasive traditional attitudes. "I went to an all-girl school that tried to empower girls intellectually, but there was still a lot of behavior that inhibited girls," she said. Even when girls rebel, she added, the reasons are misunderstood. "I think there is a stereotype that girls who are rebelling aren't thinking," Phillips said, but the rebellion happens because they are noticing and reacting against stereotypes.
The Shelving Dilemma
As with other books for this age range, shelving space in bookstores is a critical issue. Galbraith said that Free Spirit books usually end up in parenting, special needs or study skills sections. Kids don't usually browse through these sections, or even the special needs sections in children's areas, but adults do, and the hope is that a book will get put into a young person's hands. A better tactic, she said, is to shelve the books near other books that booksellers know kids are reading, such as science fiction and fantasy.
Word of mouth among kids can make individual titles bestsellers. When a book catches on with a group of teens, the tendency is for them to pass it around and recommend it to others. Such is the case with Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, a Health Communications title that has hit many bestseller lists. According to Pat Wroclawski, children's marketing manager at the Book Stall at Chestnut Court in Winnetka, Ill., teenage girls come into her store having heard about the book from friends, and it sells well. But while the store carries this and other nonfiction titles for adolescents, Wroclawski said, when she is asked for books for girls she prefers to handsell fiction titles that portray strong female protagonists, such as Pam Munoz Ryan's recent Riding Freedom (Scholastic) and Tracey Porter's Treasures in the Dust (HarperCollins/Cotler).
All of these books -- fiction and nonfiction -- do sell to adults, particularly in children's-only stores. Rhonda Branch, co-owner of the NeverEnding Story in Kenosha, Wis., said her store has done well with Planet Dexter's A Girl's Life: The Complete Instructions compiled by Denis Boyles (and its companion volume, A Boy's Life, as well), which came out last fall, and 33 Things Every Girl Should Know: Stories, Songs, P ms and Smart Talk by 33 Extraordinary Women, edited by Tonya Bolden, a spring title from Crown. These titles sell primarily to parents and teachers, she added.
At 57th Street Books in Chicago, children's book buyer Franny Billingsley said that 33 Things has sold very well, particularly when it was new and she had it on display, but now it is a handsell to adults. "We have a teen issues section with books like Weston's," she said, "but I shelved 33 Things in the YA section." The collection features work by successful women in many professions, and hip graphics and photos. Billingsley said it appeals to adults because "it is visually interesting, and it has a lot of different kinds of information."
That kind of variety mirrors what teen and preteen girls are finding in the wide range of books that fall into this category. Besides the more obvious titles, there are collections such as Milton Meltzer's Ten Queens, illustrated by Bethanne Andersen (Scholastic), which contains portraits of strong women rulers throughout history and which Billingsley mentioned as a favorite, and Hansen's Women of Hope -- both provide role models rather than advice.
And for middle-graders, there are next month's Anita! The Woman Behind the Body Shop by Jules Older, illustrated by Lisa Kopper (Charlesbridge), as well as next fall's Camy Baker's How to Be Popular in the Sixth Grade: 30 Cool Rules to Rule the School (Bantam/Skylark) and Mavis Jukes's Growing Up: It's a Girl Thing (Knopf), which covers topics explored by Jukes in It's a Girl Thing: Stay Healthy, Safe, and In Charge (1996), but for a younger age group.
Looking toward the future, a Girls Knows Best Website and television series is currently being developed by independent producer Chris Pfeifer and Oregon Public Broadcasting. So if becoming strong and taking life by the tail is what girls want, it's clear that they won't lack for ideas and inspiration to help them along the way.
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