One of my favorite responsibilities as a youth
services librarian is choosing new young adult books to purchase for the
library’s expanding collection. Young
adult books (or YA as we say in the library world) is one of the most
well-known and fastest growing literary genres in this decade. Most people learn about young adult books
through the popular trend of adapting their plots for the silver screen. Recent
films like Ready Player One, The Hunger Games trilogy, and The Fault in Our Stars have turned public
interest to the books these movies are based and sparked adult interest in
books intended for adolescents.
“Young adult literature” is a rather amorphous
term that is challenging to define and seems to change every few years.
Originally, “YA” came into its own as a bonafide literary subgenre sometime in
the 1950s and 1960s, when novels intended for adults had realistic settings and
focused on the issues adolescents were facing at the time. J.D. Salinger probably didn’t intend for Catcher in the Rye to be a massive hit
with teens when he published it in 1951 but it’s almost exclusively read as a
part of high school curriculums and categorized as YA in many library
collections today.
By the 1960s, authors were beginning to write
specifically with a teen audience in mind. S.E. Hinton wrote her famous YA
benchmark, The Outsiders, about teens
in rural Oklahoma in 1965 when she was still in high school herself. Hinton
cited her dissatisfaction with the state of literature that was considered
appropriate for teens at the time as her main inspiration for writing her own
YA novel.
Young adult literature really came into its
own in the 70s and 80s. Many of the classics of that era are still influential
for YA authors and readers today. Books
like Forever by Judy Blume and The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier,
took an unflinching look at the intense social drama and sex lives of high
schoolers. More YA authors began to experiment with the thriller genre for
teens, producing hits like The Face on
the Side of the Milk Carton by Caroline B. Cooney and the Remember Me trilogy by Christopher Pike.
In the past 20 years, young adult fantasy and
science fiction novels have been a staple for readers, libraries, and
bookstores. The popularity of series like Twilight
and The Hunger Games brought
young adult literature to the center stage and movie adaptations have drawn
more public interest and more publishing dollars to the genre. YA literature
has become so popular that adults are taking notice once again. Many libraries
host young adult books clubs for adults
and we see as many adult patrons checking out YA books as we do teens.
I must confess I’m an adult reader of young
adult literature. Part of it is professionally driven as I purchase all the YA
books for the library’s collection and run the young adult book club, Books ‘n’
Bites, but it’s also rooted in personal enjoyment with a dash of escapism. Because of the age of the protagonists, YA
offers us a way to go back and remember that feeling of endless possibility
before the permanence of adult choice and responsibility settles in.
One of the great joys of being the facilitator of the Books ‘n’ Bites YA book
club is listening to teens explore and critique
the tropes of young adult novels. Many of them love the emphasis on
strong female characters and delight in the idea that young people’s actions
can change and even save the world. However, they are equally critical of the
romantic entanglements that seems to pop up in nearly every YA title. For
example, we recently read Eliza and Her
Monsters, a modern story of a creative high schooler who publishes her own
enormously successful webcomic. The titular character not only has to deal with
the pressures of continuing to create under the spotlight of success, she also
has to cope with living two separate lives: one online, on in the real
world. Book club members thoroughly
enjoyed those themes but were extremely critical of Eliza’s unhealthy and
disturbing relationship with a new boy at her school who derails her success.
There are signs that YA publishing juggernaut
is slowing down. A recent conversation with a coworker, a mother of two teens,
reminded me of a cardinal truth of adolescents:
as soon as adults catch on to something teens love, teens immediately
reject it and move on to something else! My coworkers’ daughters were already
expressing their desire to read adult literature simply because they were sick
of how formulaic and predictable YA books have become. In the last two years,
books aimed at 18-24 year olds have been gaining popularity. This new subgenre
is called New Adult. Will New Adult experience the same explosion as YA has in
the past 20 years? Maybe. Or maybe we’ll all remember that the only thing that
marks a particular titles for a particular audience is marketing.
