“A pathbreaking contribution that will reach and be relevant to a wide audience, Tween Pop is the first book to treat the tween pop explosion of the 2000s as a cohesive phenomenon. I have no doubt that it will reach a wide audience while repositioning music as central to childhood studies and demanding for children's music a central place in the study of popular music as a whole.”
~Diane Pecknold, author of, The Selling Sound: The Rise of the Country Music Industry
“Tyler Bickford masterfully describes a ‘tween moment’ in American public culture, examining those young music consumers who teeter between childhood and adolescence, and the attention of the popular music industry in reconceptualizing music for them in this critical growth stage. This highly original and ambitious book is a substantial contribution to ethnomusicology, sociology, media studies, education, and child studies, and convincingly clarifies the struggle of the culture industries to convert childhood into a cultural identity all its own.”
~Patricia Shehan Campbell, University of Washington
“Tween Pop offers valuable new directions in many areas across multiple disciplines. The scholarship here should remain beneficial for quite some time. . . . I urge readers to pick up this book now and make the most of it.”
~Christopher A. Medjesky, Journal of Popular Culture
“Tween Pop is well-researched, expertly written, and thorough, and it includes supporting images. It is an essential text for those wanting to understand the important tween audience and its continuing impact on popular music.”
~Kathy Merlock Jackson, Journal of American Culture
"Tween Pop is a joy to read. Not only is Bickford an engaging writer, but the examples in the book are accessible while also deeply excavated for an analysis that goes well beyond simple representation to consider how cultural industries reimagine and position cultural identities."
