Who Is YA Really For? Ally Watkins on Teen Reading

Nine out of ten main characters in a decade of New York Times young adult bestsellers are older than 15. So who is YA really being written for? Librarian and researcher Ally Watkins joins Lee to talk about her research and what it means for the middle schoolers discovering books they want to read.

Ally is an academic librarian and a former youth services librarian at a public library. She talks about why adult readers and publishers' marketing may be shaping a market meant for teens.

Lee and Ally also take on the big question: are kids really reading less? Ally says studies often miss what young people actually read, like Wattpad, WEBTOON, AO3 and fan fiction. She explains why "words are words," and why audiobooks and graphic novels count. They also talk about overscheduled kids, less time for reading aloud in class, and why letting kids choose their own books matters most.

Chapters:
[00:00:00] Introduction
[00:00:36] Book Notification
[00:01:22] Guest Introduction
[00:01:53] Ally's Research on YA Protagonist Ages
[00:03:16] Why Are YA Protagonists Getting Older?
[00:04:05] Kids as Discerning Readers
[00:06:52] Are Kids Reading Less?
[00:09:16] The Reading Drop-Off Age
[00:10:20] Does It All Count as Reading?
[00:12:04] The Value of Long-Form Storytelling
[00:13:40] Encouraging Reading Choice
[00:14:52] Building Lifelong Readers
[00:15:45] Book Recommendations & Awards
[00:17:18] Graphic Novels
[00:17:58] Adult Reading Trends
[00:19:10] Closing

Ally’s Research

This is is the DOI of Ally's research article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13614541.2025.2513193.

For those in your audience who don’t have access to academic articles, here is an interview that Ally’s university news service did with me
about the research: https://olemiss.edu/news/2025/07/young-adult-literature-is-not-as-young-as-it-used-to-be/index.html.

Other Books & resources mentioned:

• ALA Youth Media Awards, including the Michael L. Printz Award, the Morris Award, the Excellence in Nonfiction Award, the Sydney Taylor Book Award, the Coretta Scott King Book Awards, the Pura Belpré Award and the Stonewall Book Awards

• Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

• American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

• The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

• We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

Creators & Guests

• Lee Schneider - Host
• Ally Watkins - Guest

Veteran teacher and author Kelly Gallagher explains why kids have turned away from reading, and what parents and teachers can do to bring them back.

Kelly taught high school English for 35 years. He's the author of *Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading*. His work has earned him the National Council of Teachers of English's Kent Williamson Exemplary Leader Award (2024), the Adolescent Literacy Thought Leader Award (2018) and the California Association of Teachers of English Award for Classroom Excellence.

In this episode, Lee Schneider talks with Kelly about the forces pushing young people away from books. Some of those forces include: test-driven schooling, teaching techniques that make assigned reading a chore, social media that is built to be addictive, the temptation to take AI shortcuts instead of actually reading the book assigned.

Kelly shares that when he was in the classroom90% of his recent 12th graders admitted they had "fake read" their way through school, meaning that they hadn't read a novel in years and only had read excerpts.

Links: Kelly Gallagher website: https://www.kellygallagher.org/

Creators & Guests

• Lee Schneider - Host
• Kelly Gallagher - Guest

Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It (Stenhouse, 2009) | Kelly Gallagher | Bookshop · Amazon · Author site

Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World | Maryanne Wolf | Bookshop · Amazon · Author site · HarperCollins

Teens Choosing to Read: Fostering Social, Emotional, and Intellectual Growth Through Books (2023) | Gay Ivey & Peter Johnston | Bookshop · Amazon · Teachers College Press

The Year of Magical Thinking | Joan Didion

Sophie's Choice| William Styron

A Lesson Before Dying | Ernest J. Gaines

The House on Mango Street | Sandra Cisneros

Of Mice and Men | John Steinbeck

Fantasy author Richie Billing returns to the Future Lab Podcast to talk about The Breakaways, a dark fantasy comedy about a crew of spectacularly useless monster hunters. He and Lee Schneider discuss mixing grit with slapstick, writing a novel in weekly chapters on Patreon, and why selling books directly to readers lets authors keep up to 97% of each sale.

After writing the political novella Together We Rise, Richie Billing wanted something lighter. The result is The Breakaways, a "sitcom" set in a dangerous fantasy world. A crew of underqualified monster hunters take on a job they can barely handle, with funny and sometimes fatal results.

Chapters:

• (00:43) The Breakawaysand blending dark fantasy with comedy
• (04:05) Writing in chapters and getting to know the characters
• (07:06) Meet the crew: making incompetence relatable
• (10:28) Genre rules, slapstick and schadenfreude
• (14:08) Why go direct to readers through Patreon
• (18:35) Lee's serial stories, Hollywood Extinction Event
• (20:31) Building a audio player with AI
• (21:30) Mailing lists, traffic and the economics of selling direct
• (24:30) Marketing for introverts
• (27:53) Teaching, map-making and a book-promotion vlog
• (31:48) The "Fixing Bad Writing" exercise
• (34:55) Why people are reading less
• (39:19) Clear prose and shorter attention spans
• (42:54) The future of books
• (43:39) Where to find The Breakaways

Links:

• Richie's website: https://richiebilling.com
• The Breakaways in weekly chapters, plus the audiobook: Patreon https://www.patreon.com/cw/RichieBilling
• Also on Amazon and other major stores

Creators & Guests

• Lee Schneider - Host
• Richie Billing - Guest

Author DeAndra Davis (All the Noise at Once; The Lovers, the Liars, and Me) joins the show to talk how screen culture can help authors. She makes the case that screens can bring readers to books rather than pull them away, defends audiobooks without qualification, and explains why her drafts keep getting longer instead of shorter. She drops some hints about her upcoming books.

Davis points to adaptations — The Hunger Games, The Summer I Turned Pretty, We Were Liars — as proven on-ramps to reading, and argues for investing in book IP across a wider range of genres. The practical work, she says, is recommendation-making: connecting readers to books through the shows, films, and games they already care about. A fan of a show could easily become the fan of a book.

No agent, editor, or publisher has asked her to write shorter or more “scrollable” prose. In fact, All the Noise at Once went in the opposite direction, growing from 66,000 to roughly 92,000 words; The Lovers, the Liars, and Me from about 72,000 to around 100,000.

As an educator, Davis sees the drop in reading as a layered issue. Long (and heavy!) books can be intimidating. Schools teach test-oriented passages instead of whole books. Hardcover covers are rising. and rising hardcover prices Libraries, she notes, help tremendously, because they make so many different editions of a book available, from hardback to audiobook.

She talks about what she’s reading now, what her workspace is like, and how she fills notebooks with hand-written character profiles complete with astrological charts for them. She rounds out the interview with some hints about what she’ll be publishing next.

Chapters

00:18 Are people reading less?
00:38 Screens as an ally: adaptations, IP, and games
03:23 Has the media landscape changed how she writes?
04:00 Writing on contract and the shift toward romance
06:42 The All the Noise at Once audiobook
07:33 "Audiobooks don't count as reading" — a rebuttal
10:05 Requests to write shorter and snappier
11:04 Word counts, ballooning drafts, and editorial advice
13:08 Smaller books, or a bigger problem?
14:30 Teaching passages instead of whole books
17:00 Hardcover prices and the paperback catch-22
19:00 The case for libraries
20:24 What DeAndra is reading now
21:27 Workspace, notebooks, and a 49-inch monitor
23:11 Digital drafting vs. handwritten character profiles
25:29 What's books are coming next

Books Mentioned

All the Noise at Once · The Lovers, the Liars, and Me · André Santana (narrator) · The Hunger Games · The Summer I Turned Pretty · We Were Liars · The Kite Runner · Holly Black, The Cruel Prince series · Kamilah Cole, Wicked Endeavors and An Arcane Inheritance · Noelle Monét, Bound by Fury

Creators & Guests

• Lee Schneider - Host
• DeAndra | add ALL THE NOISE AT ONCE on GR! - Guest

Hi, it’s Lee Schneider, host of the future lab podcast.

In Season 3, The Future Lab goes after the big questions that readers, authors, parents, and educators are asking about reading and young audiences.

Why does reading drop off among nine-year-old kids, and even more when they reach thirteen? Why has screen-based entertainment grabbed so much attention?

Even adults are less likely to pick up a book these days.

In every episode, I’ll seek answers from guests like best-selling authors, librarians , publishers, YouTube and TikTok reviewers, and audiobook producers.

Join me for season three of the future lab. Look for the future lab with Lee Schneider on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or in your favorite podcast app. You can also find the show at thefuturelab.redcupagency.com

Join host Lee Schneider for an insightful discussion with poet, author, and library professional Sofía Aguilar as she she shares her journey through both indie and traditional publishing. She offers a candid look at the barriers in publishing and the importance of creating accessible literary communities. Whether you're interested in publishing pathways, library advocacy, or building inclusive literary spaces, this conversation offers valuable insights from someone working at the intersection of writing, community organizing, and information science.

Topics include: indie vs. traditional publishing, library resources, book challenges, literary festivals, the writing process, and the current state of publishing.

Creators & Guests

• Lee Schneider - Host
• Sofía Aguilar - Guest

In this conversation, host Lee Schneider explores the intersection of nature, storytelling, and climate change with Julie Carrick Dalton, author of The Last Beekeeper, and the upcoming novel The Forest Becomes Her.

Our discussion digs into how nature functions as a character in her work, the delicate balance between hope and realism when writing about catastrophic futures, and why she believes storytelling can inspire environmental action. Dalton shares her perspective on the importance of reconnecting with survival skills and food sources, while exploring how communities might adapt to a climate-changed world ten years after a major ecological collapse.

We also examine the role of government misinformation in environmental issues, the power of novels as "laboratories for climate futures," and how each person can find their sphere of influence in addressing climate challenges. Dalton also reflects on the current state of publishing today. Join Julie's mailing list on Substack.

Creators & Guests

• Lee Schneider - Host
• Julie Carrick Dalton - Guest

In this conversation with Lee Schneider, Pat Walker discusses the importance of bookstores as community hubs and places of cultural culture.

Drawing from his experiences as a bookseller in Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, CA, Pat believes that the genre of science fiction/fantasy is more popular than it has been in the past. He's also a big fan of the classics.

Patrick has been at Vroman's long enough to witness a remarkable transformation: teenagers who first wandered through the bookstore doors years ago now return as adults, bringing their own children with them. These customers have grown to trust him with their storytelling journeys and literary adventures-a responsibility that holds deep meaning for him.

Bookshops discussed in this episode include Vromans, Book Soup, Diesel, Skylight, and Iliad Books.

Creators & Guests

• Lee Schneider - Host
• Pat Walker - Guest