Watching Your Child Develop Their Own Fandom

Her first foray into a fandom that was not spurred by her father or I is the book series: Keeper of the Lost Cities. This is an ongoing book series written by Shannon Messenger following Sophie Foster as she discovers she’s not a human but an elf that was hidden in the human realm. And thus chaos ensues. There are eleven books published, most with well over 400 pages, and a graphic novel, which our youngest is reading. I can almost guarantee that if you have an avid reader who is between 9-14 they have read this series. They have gawked over this series. They have created a playlist on YouTube based on fanwork of this series. Ok, maybe that last one your child hasn’t done. 

It has been fascinating to watch our eldest see this world that none of the adults in her life even knew about. And I mean none. I work at a public library, and none of the libraries even had these books in their system just two years ago, even though the first book had been published in 2012. And my library, like many around the country, was a part of a consortium, and none of them owned these books. Yet, all of my eldest classmates have read the books, and those who owned these books let others in class read them. By the end of the school year last year every single child in my daughter’s class had read all the published books.

And not just read them.

These tweens have teams, theories, and arguments over this series. At my daughter’s birthday party with her classmates one of the boys put in her card “Just for your birthday, Keefe is better than Fitz-but I won’t admit to this tomorrow!”

What does that even mean? Who are Keefe and Fitz? Is this a Jacob/Edward thing all over again? Is this Peeta/Gale? Is this the current generation of tweens love triangle that they’ll fight and obsess over for years to come? But watching her grow in this world doesn’t stop there. 

If any of you out there have daughters you probably know they really enjoy making jewelry. And now many of the pieces she makes have to do with this fandom. On one of her bracelets there was the word ‘Moonlark’ and the color brown was prominent. She was shocked, SHOCKED, when I didn’t understand it was because Sophie is the only elf with brown eyes and the Black Swan’s codename for her is ‘Moonlark.’ How dare I, her mother, not know every single little thing about the novels? And how dare you, reader, not know what the Black Swan is? 

There’s more of course. I get to watch my child read these books. I see her sit in the living room squirming and wriggling about. She yells random things at random people, and giggles about things that honestly make her look a bit…um….unhinged. And yet, I love it. Here her generation has something that they love and they get to share with others, and they, too, get to be severely disappointed by a screen adaptation. Their time will come for that disappointment, as it has come for all of us.  

Solely because of the popularity of these books my library, and others in our consortium, have since purchased this entire series. Who knew the tweens could make that happen? And they circulate a lot. The entire series is never on the shelf all at once. This is a series the kids have made happen, and many adults didn’t even know about. 

My eldest was so obsessed with KotLC (as the cool kids refer to it) that when it was my turn to pick a book for my book club, I picked the first one in this series. I just needed to have a baseline of what my kid was talking about all the time. Shocker, we all really enjoyed it and have continued reading the series separately outside of the book club. How cool is that? My daughter found a series that I, even working at a public library, knew nothing about, and she brought it to me and my friends and now we get to enjoy the series she put in front of us! 

Something unexpected, yet amazing, about watching your children develop their own fandom- they now get to share something with you! Something new, something different, something you haven’t discovered. And I, for one, am here for the journey. 

But don’t take it just from me. Start your own journey, watch your children as they start to grow in their tastes apart from you. Heck, join them in their fandoms, even if they make no sense. Maybe even especially if they make no sense. Their early years were completely determined by us; what they watched, what we read to them, even the music they listened to. Now it’s our turn for them to take us on their adventures.