Week 9 - Getting The Laughs

The Young Adult Library Service Association (YALSA) states that humor is actually a genre for fictional literature. In Janet Kleinberg and Lynn Cockett's article Why Angels Fly: Humor in YA Fiction, the authors explores humor in young adult literature. They state "Humor allows one to distance oneself from problems, to objectify rather than personalize them, so that they become temporarily part of the non-self... objects to be toyed with" (Kleinberg, Cockett: 425).

However, humor is a slippery and diverse subject (Kleinberg, Cockett: 428). What one individual finds funny may not necessarily be funny to another person. For example, in Kleinbeg and Cockett's case study, their participant Christina, was appalled with the book The Obnoxious Jerks by Stephen Manes. She stated, "The book was stupid and the boys in the book acted like jerks... I was offended by they way they treated girls...It wasn't funny at all. The author tried to make it too funny...it wound up being stupid and sexist" (Kleinberg, Cockett: 431). With this being said, when authors use sexist, racist, slurs or put down jokes, they may not appeal to all audiences and actually offend some readers.

Using humor in teen books can also have a positive appeal as they may become entertained and find humor to events they can relate to. I am also happy that books with heavy topics, such as David LaRochelle's Absolutely Positively Not, (which is a coming out story for a gay, male, teen), are beginning to use humor in hopes of lightening up heavy subjects. This I think would be a great read for any teen; gay, straight, or questioning.

This week's topic on humor made me think of a great public library program for teens and it is related to humor. The program would involve promoting the teen library collection that contains humor and then it could also incorporate having a comedian putting on a stand up comedy routine. Warning for librarians here: watch the comedians routine first to see if it is age appropriate humor, doesn't contain profanities, and that it is not vulgar or offensive. You could recommend the comedian to shed some light on situations that teens are going through. I think this would be an appealing and funnny library program for teens to participate in.