I was trolling through the “Juvie” books the other day, looking for something new for my 9yo son (Thing01).  I do this reasonably regularly, and I will freely admit, about half the juvie books I bring home get read by me first, or sometimes me only, since I occasionally pick out something that sounds really interesting to me, but for whatever reason, Thing01 doesn’t take a shine to it.  Really, its a win-win because otherwise I’d never get the chance to read books at all.

I ran across “Enders Game” by Orson Scott Card and I stopped.  My first throught was that someone had left it on the shelf when they changed their mind (which probably happens a lot) but on closer examination I found that it was, in fact, classified as juvenile fiction.

Excuse my French, but WTF?

This was one of my favorite books when I was a tween, but back then it was categorized simply as “science fiction”.  The breakdown of books at my local B.Dalton was much more straightforward, you had books with pictures, you have a small group of “half and half” juvie books (like The Three Investigators or Encyclopedia Brown) and anything “good” without pictures was found by genre.  You didn’t go for the “Fiction” shelves because there you would invariably run into Wuthering Heights and books about relationships.

But now, when I wander through the “juvenile section” I keep seeing these classics from my childhood recategorized, taken out of the “science fiction and fantasy” shelves and plugged in amongst the Hardy Boys and Artemis Fowl.  It feels like a lost opportunity there.  I keep hearing about how people want more “good” science fiction on the shelves, but I have to wonder if it’s just slipped sidways from the genre.  I never would have found Handmaid’s Tale by looking in the genre section, or even the Hunger Games. 

Since I hate presenting a problem without at least looking for a solution, I have to admit, I’m stumped.  Shelf space is a valuable commodity, so having a book placed in multiple categories simply isn’t going to happen.  How then do we cross-promote titles to where fans of different genres can find what they are looking for, regardless of age or labeling?