Genre

What's a genre? Merriam-Webster defines the word as "a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content". Genre is similar to the words kind and sort, and is pronounced 'zhän-r&' (that '&' is the sound the 'e' makes in the word kitten).

Genre Categories

Action: Think Adventure! Stories of survival, police or military action, Westerns, sports, mountain climbing...Get the picture?

Classics/Literature: These books may fall into other categories as well, but are so well-known that we lump them into this catch-all category. Many (but not all) are older books. This category also includes poetry and plays.

Comedy/Humor: These are books meant to make you laugh: stories about funny situations, or stories told in a humorous way.

Contemporary fiction: This is a general category in which the stories take place in recent times, are about generally normal situations and characters.

Fantasy: Stories set in imaginary, magical worlds, with fantastic creatures, talking animals, make-believe places, magical spirits. Dragons and wizards and fairies live here, among many others.

Graphic Novel/Comic Books: Use this category for illustrated novels, manga, comic books, graphic novels. There are also non-fiction graphic works, like Art Spiegelman's MAUS which detail his father's experiences in a WWII concentration camp.

Historical fiction: Stories set in a particular historical period. While the events may have happened, the characters and stories surrounding them are fictionalized in this genre.

Non-fiction/Biography: These are true events and real lives: things and people that really happened. Includes books about current events, true crime, health, cooking, celebreties, writers, and wherever else your interest takes you!

Horror: The authors in this genre know how to get into your head. All about those things that go bump in the night, from the gorey to the mentally scary.

Mystery/Suspense: These books keep the reader guessing to the very end when you finally learn "whodunnit?" with help from private I's, police detectives, and other curious people.

Romance: All about love, these books focus in on relationships, mainly those between women and men.

Science-Fiction: Stories that take place in space, in the future, or in some other alternate reality involving space ships, aliens, and advanced technology.