but genre fiction has sucked ever since it was invented.

It's like it skipped our generation. When I pick up any of the pop culture books aimed at my parent's age group, they seem sort of the same- focused on where people are being seen and what they are wearing. I haven't read any teen books lately, but I'm tempted to hit the library during break :)

It would be great to see girls reading something Sallingeresque, but what is the point in taking apart the adult world when the adults are no longer the stifling guardians of the status quo, but long to be adolescents themselves?

Hit the nail on the head, Svutlana.

It's just another marketing channel. There's some big money being paid for all those placements.

this seems like the sort of substitute you might expect.

that writers use to show they're in the in-crowd. And let's face it, it's a lot easier to say Prada handbag than to describe the thing and make sure your readership knows that what you've described is the epitome of cool, since in the end, most handbags look alike. Ditto jeans.

PS, Babar spent a lot of time buying and trying on clothes and admiring the result in the mirror. I guess the audience of 3-6 years olds was assumed not to recognize Parisian haute couture, so there were no brand names attached.

That's why buys those things, that's who's on the cover. Cool chicks read better stuff. I see it at my job all the time.

As a 24 year old english major and lover of YA fiction, I have to say Gossip Girl is actually pretty damn good, regardless of the name-dropping. Also, as well as clothes, it tends to name-drop some good books too. I read the series before it became a TV show and basically it's a ridiculous fantasy, none of the girls i'd check them out to at the library seemed anything like Blair and co. Sex and the City for teens etc, but better.

Ok, can't resist,

you know you love it, xo gg

Have you ever read a teen girl novel? They are ALL ABOUT sex and relationships with boys, geez! Give up yr tired agenda already.

this would seem to imply that either they are not doing it, or at the very least they are doing it with a diminished sense of its importance.

Maybe you should look just a few Broadsheet posts down where Kate Harding says "Ridiculous youthful materialism is hardly a recent invention."

I've read Gossip Girl, and it's actually not half bad. As another poster said, a lot of books are mentioned too. The characters are supposed to be well-connected, well-educated young ladies and gentlemen, and if you read the books I think you'd be surprised at how often the names of slightly obscure authors, directors, artists, musicians, etc are dropped.

As for comparing it to books of our youth, I think that a lot has changed. While many girls in the 70's learned everything they knew about puberty from "Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret," todays generation of upper-middle-class, educated girls (the market for these books) learned the difference between their vulva and their vagina while still in diapers, because all the child psychologists agree that open, frank discussion about sex and sexuality is best (and god forbid upper-middle-class, educated parents make a move without consulting a child-rearing book).

I was never into horror, so correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't R.L. Stine for slightly younger kids than these books? When we were growing up, this teen genre didn't even really exist, except for a few really melodramatic teen romances, that usually revolved around abuse, parental neglect, or teen pregnancy. There weren't light, fun books for teenagers and as a result, many teenage girls stop reading for fun.

I feel a little guilty supporting these books, because I am a little appalled at how many there are, and how I'm not exactly sure that any of them teach the values or morals that I'd want my daughter to have. But I do kind of think that you're overstating the case.

"Naomi Johnson...surveyed three hugely popular young adult series...for her doctoral thesis."

How many lawsuits has she filed because male long-distance truck drivers make more than female Doctors of Young-Ho-Lit?

When I was a teen, I was sneaking my mom's Danielle Steele novels.

Plenty of bad writing (including junior high-level French phrases), torturous soft-core porn, and lots of shopping. In Carmel! For Italian heels (whatever those are)! and Dior gowns!

It took me a while to figure out these novels were formulas, like 300-page mad-libs games. But once I did, of amount of "doe-eyed, fawn-legged" nymphs having oral sex in Italian heels could hold my interest.

Sweet Valley High also dropped plenty of consumerist clues: the Fiat Spider, the gold lavaliers, the white princess phones, etc. While fewer brands were mentioned by name, readers knew how to shop la Sweet Valley.

Informed consent? Delayed entry to sex? A reasoned maturity?

Come on, didn't anybody read those? Jackie Collins for the junior high set. Jet setting, ballet, conspicuous consumption, incest, oh, man.... and those lurid silver and red foil covers!

Big deal.

When I was in school, you knew the brands that were in and the brands that weren't. So what if books aimed at these girls are reflected. Plus I don't know about the other books, but Gossip Girl is about wealthy private school kids. Of course they wear Prada, they're rich!

Plus I do recall plenty of sex in my teen novels, read some Christopher Pike, not RL Stine! Plenty of teens were slurping up VC Andrews till we realized all that incest and rape was creepy.

As a librarian who often works with teens and their books, I just can't get worked up about this. I'm about 100 pages from being done with the whole Gossip Girls series, and I'm loving it. The books are smarter, funnier, and better written than they get credit for. And the bad behavior isn't all that bad. I've actually heard that Alloy, who produces these books, has tried to get brands to pay for placement but didn't find any takers. The brands mentioned are high-end and often obscure brands who know that teen girls are not their target audience.

YA literature as a whole has come a long way, both at its most literary and most pop-addictive.