That’s me in the photo, on the far right, in the yellow, circa 1979. I have no idea where this photo was taken, or whose car that is (the other people are members of my family and close friends).
So why did I pull out this old photo? Because I feel about 14 again. At least, that’s how old I feel when it comes to my reading choices.
I have fallen fully head-over-heels in love with Young Adult novels lately. I’m currently reading Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and it’s stunning. I know I’m late to the party — the book won the National Book Award and many other literary awards. I picked up the book after hearing Sherman Alexie speak on a panel at Book Expo America, and I was intrigued by his comments and sense of humor. I do believe that I’ve become a fan.
The novel is the story of 14-year old Arnold Spirit (a.k.a. “Junior”), who lives on a Spokane Indian reservation and doesn’t fit in. He’s a bookworm, and an aspiring cartoonist, and wants to break the cycle of poverty that he feels is his destiny. Finding the courage to transfer from the reservation school to a school in a white town 22 miles away is Junior’s first step, and his decision does not go over well with many on the reservation.
The novel is enhanced by wonderful cartoons from artist Ellen Forney. The pairing of Alexie and Forney make for an enchanting combination. I’m not quite finished with the book yet, but I just had to tell you about it. I’ve been waiting to get back to it all day.
Several months ago, we did a podcast episode called You Don’t Have to Be a Kid to Love These Books, (episode #14) and I now realize that that’s likely true of many, many young adult novels. They are as interesting and well-created as the best novels written for adults. Could it be that “young adult” novels are better now than when I was a kid? Whatever the reason, there’s a wealth of great literature in your bookstore’s YA section, and I hope to share some of it with you here on the blog.
But I’m wondering: as an adult, do you find yourself drawn to young adult books as well? Or have you tried them as an adult and dismissed them as not for you? If you enjoy them, why do you like them? I’m eager to hear from you.
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I picked up several YA novels at BEA, and have been pleasantly surprised… I just finish Witch & Wizard (James Patterson), and found it to be much edgier than anything I remember reading when I was a teen.
Currently reading Food, Girls and Other Things I Can’t Have (Allen Zadoff), and I’m struck by how authentic the voice feels — it doesn’t sanitize the teen experience, which I’m sure the teen readers appreciate.
This is the first YA fiction I’ve read in a long time (not counting the Harry Potter and Twilight series, which I consider more cross-over phenomenons…) and I’ll definitely be picking up more.
i have been reading way more YA lately (i am 25) and wishing some of these authors when I was in high school. There is some really really amazing work out there aimed at high schoolers.
I LOVE young adult fiction! I’ve thought a lot about why that is. The best I can figure is that YA authors are more willing or able to take risks. I think adult authors are expected to follow certain unwritten rules about how a novel will be put together. Once you’re an adult, you’re a mystery reader, or a fantasy fanatic, or you’re drawn to chick lit, and the books have to fit the bill to attract readers. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it’s nice, sometimes, to know at least generally what you’re getting into. And granted, you get some of that in YA lit as well, but I think to a lesser degree. YA authors, maybe because kids are more accepting, seem better able and more willing to break the mold.
My top three YA books would be the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins, the Graceling series by Kristin Cashore, and The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. I can’t think of the last adult book that pulled me in and affected me the way those three books did!
I am absolutely addicted to YA books as an adult(more so now than I was 15-21 years ago when I was a teenager). It’s easier for me to *list* my recent and/or perpetual favorites – If I Stay by Gayle Forman, the new Darkest Powers books by Kelley Armstrong, Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah – than it is to explain *why* I’m so taken with them. A quick guess might be that I identify very strongly with characters who are caught between two worlds or at least navigating life while being pulled between competing influences… and that pretty much defines teen novels, or the experience of being a young adult. Although I’m not currently struggling with the Big Life Questions (i.e. who am I? what am I going to do with my life?) in my own day-to-day world, I still find (being a liberal from a conservative family, a girl from a working-poor background who got an upper-class education and now lives a modest middle-class life, a Christian who often has more in common with agnostics than other Christians) that life as an adult still requires negotiations between who I am now, who I was raised to be, and what is expected of me from society. Reading YA novels, in addition to being excellent entertainment when it’s written well, helps me put things in perspective and reminds me of the choices I have made and the ones that are still open to me. Reading YA novels also reminds me to keep an open mind so that I don’t turn into someone stody & hyper-critical. Finally, YA novels are wonderful because even though I am happily married, I will not turn down the opportunity to vicariously experience the joys of having a sparkly vampire boyfriend.
Wow, what great comments! Thank you!
Erin, I think you may be right about teens being willing to break out of the category mold. That also made me think about how the publishers of YA must approach things differently than many publishers of “adult” books. Perhaps it has to do with sales — realistically, I don’t think that YA in hardcover is expected to sell nearly as many copies as adult books, and so maybe the YA publishers can take more risks. The all important market is libraries and teachers, not bookstores, so maybe that has something to do with it as well.
Whatever the cause, I’m thrilled. I feel like a new world has been opened up — a whole new section of the bookstore to shop from, which is about as good as a brand new bookstore opening.
And Heather — I think you nailed it, too. Some of our “teen” issues never really go away, they just take on a different form. Thanks for sharing your story — it illustrated your point very well and I can see exactly how that would apply to my life as well.
Thanks again, everyone. I look forward to reading more of your thoughts on this topic as you have them!
Flight, by Sherman Alexie,is another entertaining read with one of the great lines of YA fiction, “I’m a time-traveling mass murderer and my name is Zits.” The novel is about a Native American teenager who discovers facets of himself and his identity through a paranormal experience…
As for YA fiction in general, for those who like/love it, it taps into that corner of your heart that is reserved for a time and place, that for all it’s possibilities, must be lived intensely. Everything is life and death and immediate, concepts of the future are vague and uncertain and, anything is truly possible.
“Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (TV series) did it for me, as well as “Twilight” (first book of the saga, and the first half of the second book in the saga, “New Moon.”) Going back a bit in time “Rumblefish” and “The Outsiders” (both by S.E. Hinton) strike the chord, as well as the Non-Fiction classic, “The Diary of Ann Frank.”
Some of my favorite YA books have already been mentioned–The Hunger Games, Graceling, If I Stay–but I also love everything by Sarah Dessen, everything by John Green, and most of Tamora Pierce’s stuff. If I could read all YA, all the time, I absolutely would. Young characters can still experience wonder and elation in a way that’s completely free of irony, and I love that. Nothing is impossible when you’re a kid, so there are a lot fewer constraints in YA writing–plus, YA authors don’t have to write for a specific genre. (And, I hate to say it, but they’re a lot less pretentious.)
I can’t really speak for adults (not quite there yet), but I think the distinction of “young adult” as a genre is something of a mistake. More so, that is, than other strange genres and generalizations. What qualifies as young adult? What makes it unappealing to certain adult readers but perfectly normal for others? It’s an undefined genre that faces difficulties because of it. And then questions like these, which for some odd reason bother me because it shows how strange the existence of “young adult literature” is. Would you ask these questions for anything else? I can only say as someone who fits the official bill that it’s a vast field with so much there. And I hope you continue enjoying the good books among them.
A couple of years ago a took a course called Native American Literature. It was a wonderful experience. We read one of Alexie’s books titled The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven. It was a great book; I have thought more than once about reading Part-Time Indian more than once, but I have yet to get around to it. We did read some other great books about Native Americans, if anyone is interested.
I love young adult/children’s literature. There are some wonderful books out there for young readers. I also love to look at picture books for kids.
A few that are great: The Tale of Despereaux, Harry Potter series, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Those are just a few that I love!
I love that Sherman Alexie has written a young-adult novel. I have a sense that writing a young adult novel is not in any way “easier” than writing an adult novel, in the same way that writing a short story can be much more difficult than writing a novel. (Ann–is it true that Sherman Alexie made some rather harsh comments about the Kindle?).
As a reader of mostly adult literary fiction, I do wonder, though… and I don’t want to sound snobbish about this… but I have found that some adults get so taken in by YA fiction that it starts to become regressive. When adults read ONLY Harry Potter or Twilight, it worries me in terms of what we consider to be literature, complex thinking, nuanced emotion, difficult ideas. I taught a college-level fiction class (upperclassmen) where the students were obsessed with Twilight–and it seemed to me that the net effect was negative. That the “escape” into this genre somehow anchored them (rather stubbornly) in stories and ideas that were decidedly un-nuanced and made them intellectually resistant to ambiguity, complex realism, deeper layers, etc. They seemed (intellectually) stuck in high school. Stephanie Meyer became a kind of nemesis to me as a teacher!
But perhaps this is not a YA vs adult distinction; perhaps this is about something else, i.e. specific writers’ visions of the world. I recently re-read “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” and found it utterly absorbing — complex characters, emotionally engaging, etc.
Hi Ann! After hearing Sherman Alexie speak at BEA, I also thought I should check out some of his work. Maybe Part Time Indian would be a good place to start!
I love to mix YA fiction in with my adult fiction–I just read my ARC of The Hunger Games’ sequel, Catching Fire, and it was fantastic.
Like Lauren, I also enjoy books for an even younger audience; picture books can be great literature. The way that the authors and illustrators can distill a piece of wisdom into a simple and beautiful form for young children (books like Zen Shorts or Flotsam) is something all writers should study. I also love the humorous books (Skippyjon Jones, Tack the Penguin, etc.) that remind us not to take ourselves too seriously.
Hi, Ann! I’ve always loved young adult books — Madeleine L’Engle is my all-time favorite author and my shelves still hold A Wrinkle in Time and others I loved as a kid alongside her more adult-oriented books. In recent years I will cop to having read (ok, devoured) the series by Ann Brashares about the group of girls who shared the same pair of jeans. And I also rabidly read, as did many other adults, the Harry Potter series.
I got back into YA lit after taking a children’s lit class a couple of years ago. It covered everything from picture books up to YA. I really like the Rick Riordan Percy Jackson series, Michael Buckley’s Sister Grimm series, Harry Potter and some of Garth Nix’s books.
I wonder if the reason we are more aware of all these books is because bookstores have a separate “Teen” area now. Did they have “Teen” areas years ago?
I love love love that book! I read it last year and could not stop talking about it.
I am so impressed with the YA fiction that is out there. I loved to read as a child – I read anything and everything. Now, I teach first grade so I know a LOT about books for young kids. It wasn’t until I took a multicultural children’s lit class last year that I read some newer YA and I am now hooked on YA fiction! (The Alexie book was for that class). Happy reading!
Ann…You once said that we were practically soul-mates with our book choices and rating!
Well girlfriend, guess what???
My F2F book club is readinf Sherman Alexie’s book as this month’s selection!
And I’m really enjoying it too?
How could we go from THE ROAD to this?
Sonya,
I understand what you are saying about some of the YA books, and certainly reading *only* anything is not good. I suspect that what you are seeing is based on those two series with rabid fans. I’ve not read a lot of YA fiction, but much of what I have read has been as emotional and nuanced as the best adult fiction. THE BOOK THIEF, for instance, stands up to the best adult literature out there (see earlier post about The Book Thief for more on that). Like anything, I think it comes down to choice. I haven’t chosen to read any of the popular YA girls’ series like Cliques; rather my YA reading is currently guided by booksellers and book bloggers that I trust.
Now as far as Sherman Alexie’s comments go re: Kindle. I suppose they were harsh, but not nearly as terrible as they came across in print. I was in the audience, and he delivered everything he said with wit and humor, even though there was an undertone of real concern. And that is what made me want to explore his work — the combination of seriousness and humor, even self-deprecating at times, made me want to read more. (He has since agreed to take a meeting with Amazon to discuss making his work available in e-book form.)
I have three kids aged 14, 13 and 11, so I try to include YA fiction in my reading so I can make good recommendations.
The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas was a big success for us as well as The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time.
I don’t know if you could count Holes as YA fiction, but it was one of my favourite reading experiences of all time.
Of course back in the day, YA fiction meant Jane Eyre, Great Expectations and Emma and I’d like to think that these books can still be enjoyed by young adults today. I think they are certainly accessible enough to have an impact.
I just finished Sherman Alexie’s book and loved it. The ending came way too soon. Thanks for the recommendation.
Graceling
Hunger Games
Little Brother
Those were 3 of the best books I read last year, and I handsold them all like crazy through the holidays. I expect I’ll handsell Catching Fire and Fire throughout this holiday season, and continue to sell the first books to those who missed them last year.
Adults who turn up their noses at teen books have no idea what they’re missing!
I took a young adult literature class two summers ago and I discovered Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. That book alone, reintroduced me to YA fiction.
Others:
Stargirl
Anything by Sherman Alexie (I think there is going to be a sequel to Absolute…Part-Time Indian!)