Comments on: Beneath a Meth Moon

By: Mark Flowers

Mark Flowers — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 22:31:05 +0000

@ Jen J – if you’re going to do a word count graph, I’d love to see it also include page numbers, so we could see words per page. Over on Heavy Medal, we were talking about how the design of a book affects the way we read, and I know I personally am much more partial to books with a lower word count per page (regardless of the number of pages). I think it’d be an interesting experiment.

By: Jen J.

Jen J. — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 21:02:42 +0000

Elizabeth, I’d be up for a word count graph! When I was looking stuff up, I was just using our library catalog and I kept coming up with more inadequacies in the information – What if I was grabbing paperback numbers for some and hardcovers for others? How to account for the formatting? So I can see how word count would be much more useful.

I do think the page count plays into things somewhat – no matter how hard we try, the look of a book influences how we regard it and what we expect from it. Rereading and the criteria help you get beyond that, but we’re never going to be able to get rid of those things from our minds completely.

I also think, despite having no data to back me up, the longer page count is part of an overall publishing trend. HP and the Goblet of Fire came out in 2000 and ever since then page counts seem to just go up (whether word counts do or not!). Which makes Karyn’s lament stand out even more to me – most often I’m hearing people complain about books being unneccessarily long – it’s rare to hear someone asking for more pages!

By: TeenReader

TeenReader — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 22:42:31 +0000

I had a similar reaction: beautiful writing, so-so in plot and character. (I should also mention that I am a huge Woodson fan.) However, I think while more length would have helped, the reason this development wasn’t there was because of the narrative style. The book is very fragmented and dreamlike, which resulted in beautiful prose, but it seemed that the foggy memories were too vague to provide actual development. I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing a sticker on this one, but I agree that the beauty over development was problematic.

By: Elizabeth Fama

Elizabeth Fama — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 20:47:38 +0000

I think word count would be more helpful here than number of pages, because of differences in font size, margin size, etc. I like to use the Renaissance Learning website to find word counts. If there's a call for a word count graph, I'll do it!

By: Jen J.

Jen J. — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 20:24:40 +0000

So we have 13 winners right now and here’s the page length breakdown (usual caveat about errors, quick and dirty numbers, etc.)

100-150 pages: 1
151-200 pages: 2
200-299 pages: 5
300-399 pages: 3
400+ pages: 2

There are 49 honors – here’s their breakdown:

Less than 100 pages: 2 (these are both works of poetry that are not novels)
100-150: 3
151-200: 7
201-299: 17
300-399: 12
400-499: 4
500+: 4

So clearly the 200 page range is the sweet spot, although I suspect that’s true when you look at all of YA publishing – I do not have numbers for the larger book market unfortunately so I’m no help for stats when it comes to that.

The biggest thing I see when looking at the numbers is that we’ve been trending upward on page count. There hasn’t been a winner under 200 pages since the 2005 awards (the year how i live now won). That was also the first year a 500+ page book honored (Airborn). The only under 200 page winner or honor since then was A Wreath for Emmett Till in 2006 – our shortest winner/honor ever at 38 pages. From 2007-2012 there has been at least one 400+page winner or honor every year except 2011 when everything was in the 200/300 page ranges.

So – short summation – used to be you could win (or more likely honor) with a shorter book, but not so much now.

By: Blythe

Blythe — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 19:36:23 +0000

Brevity is my questing beast. It may not be my friend.