Trend Spotter

I'm like a children's literature Dmitri Martin or something! That's a Daily Show reference, by the way.

So I pick up my latest issue of School Library Journal and I come to an article entitled Script Novels: Are they a flash in the literary pan or an emerging genre. I love emerging genres. So I read the article and find that a "script novel" is a book that, "incorcoprates techniques of playwriting, screenwriting, or some kind of performance art such as poetry or monologue". Apparently this is the hot new thing. I read Replay when it came out and enjoyed Day of Tears (insofar as a person can enjoy Day of Tears). Trends don't really make themselves apparent until you get frantic parents grabbing you by the lapels demanding the books in question, though. And I had one such parent just the other day. She was doing plays with her children and though she was vaguely interested in the periodical Plays what she really wanted was fiction. I managed to remember the aforementioned Replay, completely blanked on Day of Tears, and thought about recommending Return to Gill Park until I rememberd that author Amy Gordon was apparently NOT in on this new trend. So she has a book where kids are in a play, but you never get to read any of the script. Whatta waste.

So here tis. The newest trend on the market today. Scriptastic.