Reflection Week 2: Popular Literature

Reflection Week 2!

The second week of our 20% projects have passed and that means its time for the week's reflection. This week I focused on which books I wanted to be my main focus for research, which led me to the question- What are the most popular book series for teen currently?

I did some research into this. Overwhelmingly, the Harry Potter series was in the number one spot on nearly every list. The second place spot was usually filled by the Hunger Games series. The Twilight saga came in third on some lists (like good reads list that can be found at- http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/43.Best_Young_Adult_Books), while on others it came in as far down as number twenty-seven (like on npr books poll- http://www.npr.org/2012/08/07/157795366/your-favorites-100-best-ever-teen-novels).

So while Harry Potter and the Hunger Games were praised as amazing teen series (such as in these articles: http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-08-08/news/33104746_1_harry-potter-ya-books-hunger-games and http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/08/08/all-hail-king-harry-potter-series-named-best-young-adult-novels/ ), Twilight- which I had originally counted on as my third series- had inconsistent rankings.

My research also brought up another point I didn't consider in my original plan. What about books that aren't part of a series? Popular books such as Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher, and The Fault in our Stars, by John Green, beat Twilight in rankings. Should my project just focus on book series, or should popular books that stand alone be considered as well.

This week brought more questions then I expected and I welcome any input on the situation. I am planning to defiantly use Harry Potter and the Hunger Games in my research and project. I will also probably use Twilight in more of a minor book role. My new question is if I should include non-series books as well in my analysis. 

(Picture credit: http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&biw=1777&bih=840&tbm=isch&tbnid=wX-lx7x3WHqBtM:&imgrefurl=http://myospace.org/&docid=p3kiZYudd8t4SM&imgurl=http://myospace.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Harry-PotterHunger-Games-460x348.jpg&w=460&h=348&ei=I3h7UJrTB7Ot0AGu2YDADw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=487&vpy=300&dur=595&hovh=195&hovw=257&tx=174&ty=97&sig=107054092131403344421&page=1&tbnh=137&tbnw=188&start=0&ndsp=39&ved=1t:429,r:10,s:0,i:99)