They are not future readers
A few days ago, we readers from the Islands received what will surely be one of the cultural news items of the year: Lleonard Muntaner, Editor, led by Maria Muntaner and with Xisca Mas as editorial director, will launch a new imprint next November dedicated to children's and young adult literature, and it will have a name that could be no other than La Lleonera. To this, we must add the recent recovery of Cort Edicions by Rata Cultura, which will now mainly publish titles aimed at early readers, and the not insignificant activity of publishers like Saïm (what illustrated books!) or Melicotó (what illustrated books, times two!). For some time, since the closing of the first stage of Editorial Moll, island children and young people had been relatively orphaned in terms of publications that spoke to them in close terms about both the most everyday and the universal world, and it seems the publishing sector is starting to remedy that.
And this is, without a doubt, a good occasion to pose a Mallorcan pair of questions, since if we do it, we must do it well: what does it mean to make books for children and young people? And what implications does it have to publish them from Mallorca, but often with the vocation of traveling the world?
First of all, it is important to point out that, contrary to what some think (I have even heard it said by people who write, publish, disseminate, and recommend books), children and young people are not the readers of the future: they are, simply, readers. The readers of now. And they can actually become the most demanding of all. An adult reader may decide to finish a book even if they are not exactly enthusiastic about it, but a child between three and eleven years old will hardly finish a story that does not interest them. Nor will they tolerate unjustified inconsistencies, arbitrary decisions, or forced turns that some adults, in favor of theory or perspective or goodness knows what, might even swallow up happily.
Another myth that should be left behind is that children are the ones who read the most (what can we do, a captive audience) while teenagers are the ones who lower reading statistics. Fortunately, the data collected by the Ministry of Culture in recent years reveal that 76.9% of people between 14 and 24 years old are readers, and that they are, in reality, the sector of the population that reads the most in the entire State. Those who cause the decline, in fact, are those over 65, a profile that often coincides with these unfounded judgments.
Children's and young adult literature is one of the most strategic and sensitive genres that can be written in Catalan, and even more so from Mallorca. It is the beginning of a journey, it is the creation of role models. It is, also, the construction of an industry that, if it were to grow as it should, could bring much joy to both publishers and creators. Will we be up to the task? The island's publishing scene, both the one mentioned and the one that has been slowly moving forward for years, publishing our CYAL, is starting to do its homework. Now, it is up to us, the readers and the prescribers.
