The Shaming of Adults who are YA Readers/Fans

[Bick]

The great fault in the linked article, with which I do agree with everyone, is that folk "should" feel embarrassed to read YA. Heck, people should read whatever they darn well like and damn the looks on the bus. I'm sure there must be plenty of enjoyable YA novels out there, and good luck to all who wish enjoy them.

However...

I do have some sympathy with the article from the standpoint that I just don't get why adults would read this stuff. YA books are aimed at teenagers. I am an adult. I've never felt the least wish to look at a book aimed at kids since I was one. There are sooooooo many good books written for adults which are neither "overrated literary stuff or badly written potboilers" that if I lived to be 200 I'd never get through 10% of my mental adult tbr pile. I know readers of YA books will say I shouldn't write them off and so-and-so book is wonderful, etc, but from a personal standpoint I'm just not interested and I'm mystified why other readers are.

 

[Hex]

That's fair enough. There's lots of stuff I'm not too keen on either.

When I was a teenager, though, there wasn't any YA fiction -- you went (just like the lady in the article recalls) pretty much straight from Narnia to The End of the Affair, possibly via Richard Adams' Maya, if you were unlucky.

However, as you say, I think you shouldn't write them off (well, actually, I'm quite happy with you writing them off if you want to, but I think it would be a shame if everyone did). Now, the best YA happens to have teenaged protagonists but addresses a much wider range of ideas than the article suggests. Yes, there's romance, but there are also books like Codename Verity, which is more grown up than a lot of supposedly adult fiction, with harder themes. There's The Knife of Never Letting Go, where the writing is not remotely lightweight (neither are many of the themes addressed).

I'm not sure what makes the Melina Marchetta books YA rather than adult, but I am deeply thankful that I do read YA because otherwise I would never have read them and they are the best books I have read in a very long time.

Often, authors are not actually writing for teenagers, they're writing stories that the marketing people decide are appropriate for marketing as for teenagers. Some of them don't reach beyond that target range, but others reach much farther and have something to say to people, not just children.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

And Hex said everything I thought beautifully. I'd hate to have cut my reading down because of a genre arbitarily decided on age and focus of protagonist rather than quality of the storyteller. I'm not a massive YA fan - I wrote a YA book because the protagonist was seventeen, not because the issues were especially young adult - but some of them are amazingly moving. I read She Is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgewick recently and it was a wonderful tale encompassing what it is to be blind.

Nowadays I have no doubt Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird, if they landed with an agent, would be classed as Young adult - to ignore the genre leaves a reader at risk of missing out on such things.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

The thing is, books that are "meant" for adult readers are full of things, full of people doing things that will never be vaguely relevant to me. That is no reason not to read them, and so I do read them.

But I was a teenager. And that is something to which I can relate. So I will read those things, too. One thing I have realized is that teenagers are people facing some of the great experiences and dilemmas of the human condition for the first time. This makes them particularly relevant to teen readers and that is why they come up very often in books written for YA readers.

Notice the emphasis I put on the first time. Because these same experiences may -- probably will -- come up again in a single lifetime. For some people, through no fault of their own (no immaturity, I mean) they may come up two or three times after they pass into adulhood.. The search for identity and the need to define oneself? A big theme in YA fiction. Is it relevant to adults? Loose a job, start a new career -- it poses many of the same dilemmas. Divorce -- can be very much the same thing. Even, or maybe especially, a midlife crisis. There is probably nothing closer to a midlife crisis than adolescence. And yet how rarely in science fiction and fantasy do we find characters going through those experiences, characters we can identify with as we go through those experiences ourselves. In literary fiction, yes, but very rarely in SFF.

And this is only one theme, which I have given as an example. And so, as these themes, these situations, have relevance to me and to the people I know, I read good books that address this same kind of experience. I can identify with that experience.

Here is another reason why I read YA books: there is more variety in the SFF that is published. I know a lot of adults think of all YA as similar to Twilight and the other books that are the most popular and get the most attention. But it is far wider than that. And so far as I have noticed, YA publishers are, as a whole, more daring with their settings and concepts. They can afford to be, of course, because at the heart of their stories they have those universal themes to draw their readers in. Yes, one could point to dozens of books and series where they are as mired in a particular territory as adult fantasy (but it is, at least, a different territory than the books marketed for adults) but those, I suspect, are the books that pay the bills and keep the publisher afloat so that they can publish the more interesting books. That rather reminds me of the way SFF was about twenty years ago.

 

[The Bluestocking]

The thing is, books that are "meant" for adult readers are full of things, full of people doing things that will never be vaguely relevant to me. That is no reason not to read them, and so I do read them.

But I was a teenager. And that is something to which I can relate. So I will read those things, too. One thing I have realized is that teenagers are people facing some of the great experiences and dilemmas of the human condition for the first time. This makes them particularly relevant to teen readers and that is why they come up very often in books written for YA readers.

Notice the emphasis I put on the first time. Because these same experiences may -- probably will -- come up again in a single lifetime. For some people, through no fault of their own (no immaturity, I mean) they may come up two or three times after they pass into adulhood.. The search for identity and the need to define oneself? A big theme in YA fiction. Is it relevant to adults? Loose a job, start a new career -- it poses many of the same dilemmas. Divorce -- can be very much the same thing. Even, or maybe especially, a midlife crisis. There is probably nothing closer to a midlife crisis than adolescence. And yet how rarely in science fiction and fantasy do we find characters going through those experiences, characters we can identify with as we go through those experiences ourselves. In literary fiction, yes, but very rarely in SFF.

And this is only one theme, which I have given as an example. And so, as these themes, these situations, have relevance to me and to the people I know, I read good books that address this same kind of experience. I can identify with that experience.

Here is another reason why I read YA books: there is more variety in the SFF that is published. I know a lot of adults think of all YA as similar to Twilight and the other books that are the most popular and get the most attention. But it is far wider than that. And so far as I have noticed, YA publishers are, as a whole, more daring with their settings and concepts. They can afford to be, of course, because at the heart of their stories they have those universal themes to draw their readers in. Yes, one could point to dozens of books and series where they are as mired in a particular territory as adult fantasy (but it is, at least, a different territory than the books marketed for adults) but those, I suspect, are the books that pay the bills and keep the publisher afloat so that they can publish the more interesting books. That rather reminds me of the way SFF was about twenty years ago.

Couldn't have put it better myself. At the risk of sounding like I have regressed to my teen years: Teresa - you ROCK!

 

[The Bluestocking]

Likewise sex with gutsy rodents.

GAH! I cannot un-see this in my mind's eye. And it's only 7.52am over on this side of the world...

A lot of YA is kind of benign and hopeful. I like that about it.

That's what I love about it too. A lot of the YA I read makes me smile, and sometimes laugh out loud. Nothing wrong with wanting to read stuff that is ultimately hopeful (better than reading stuff that makes you feel like a miserable git).

 

[Brian G Turner]

I know readers of YA books will say I shouldn't write them off and so-and-so book is wonderful, etc, but from a personal standpoint I'm just not interested and I'm mystified why other readers are.

YA is often nothing more than a classification for marketing purposes - if the protagonist is young, and there's no graphic sex, then it's a YA book

For this reason, a lot of genre fiction is now being classified as YA, or at least, marketed specifically at children - whereas before they were considered as books for adults.

A simple example - if Frank Herbert's Dune were released today, IMO it would be classified as YA because Paul Atriedes is a young man trying to find his place in the world, grappling with the responsibilities and demands of adulthood.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

I write a column on fiction for younger readers for the student edition of an Indian newspaper so I have to read one book for various age groups from middle school to YA nearly every week! I think YA is a meaningful if not watertight category (what literary category is ever watertight?). And there is enough good fiction being produced under the rubric of YA (but more so in fiction written for the middle school segment - check out Frances Hardinge, for one) that anyone who shames me for reading these books is only showing their own ignorance.

I actually thought this thread would be about the shaming of adults _in_ YA fiction, which would be a fertile discussion in itself!

 

[Hex]

Frances Hardinge's books are amazing. Her stories are full of the weirdest, most fabulous and unsettling ideas I have encountered in ages. Especially the one about the girl growing up in the tunnels, with the cheese.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

A Face Like Glass! Yes, it's a wonderful book and the world, the characters and the language are all so vivid and fascinating.

 

[Fried Egg]

It's funny, when I was a teen reader I was never even aware that there was such a thing as "teen fiction" or a "young adult" category. It might well have existed but I was simply unaware of its existence. I just read books that looked interesting to me.

It leads me to ask is such a categorisation even useful?

 

[farntfar]

Do you remember how when Harry Potter came out, they brought out a second hardback format.?
The standard copy had the picture and everything, and the "adult" version had a plain black jacket (I think) so that people could read it on the tube without their fellow passengers sniggering at them.

(I may have the exact details wrong. )

At the time the London underground was packed with people reading unmarked black books, and twitching if anyone looked over their shoulder.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

It was my mother who got me into Harry Potter, at a time when even I was twice as old as a YA, and she was certainly not ashamed of it. She would have laughed at the idea of hiding the cover, too.

 

[Hex]

I have the last Harry Potter in the 'adult' cover because someone had two copies and gave me one. I'm more embarrassed by that one than by all the other kiddy covers...

@Fried Egg -- I think they're "useful" in the sense that they're marketing categories, and categories for libraries and book shops so they know where to shelve things. I like to be able to pick up the books that look interesting to me, and I don't see why I should let the marketing bods tell me what to do any more than they do already.

 

[clovis-man]

It's funny, when I was a teen reader I was never even aware that there was such a thing as "teen fiction" or a "young adult" category. It might well have existed but I was simply unaware of its existence. I just read books that looked interesting to me.

It leads me to ask is such a categorisation even useful?

Things have changed over the decades. Since I'm as old as dirt, I remember reading many of the Winston Science Fiction series of novels in my youth. I loved them.

Winston Science Fiction Series from Thunderchild Publishing

They were not ground-breaking efforts concept-wise, but quite entertaining and oozing with basic values of human decency. By comparison, current faves such as The Hunger Games or The Golden Compass test some different boundaries and not always successfully, IMO. Yeah, I read them.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Actually, thinking about it - isn't the article's posturing of "I'm an adult, I won't read children's books" the same sneering attitude we face as genre readers?

Hasn't fantasy especially - until, at least, recently - been regarded in a similar manner?

 

[Null_Zone]

Actually, thinking about it - isn't the article's posturing of "I'm an adult, I won't read children's books" the same sneering attitude we face as genre readers?

Hasn't fantasy especially - until, at least, recently - been regarded in a similar manner?

Most of the sneering I've seen for being a genre reader has come from other genre fans for reading the wrong books.

But then I think charlie Higgins the enemy series is some of the best horror out there, it is certainly 90% grislier than other post apocalypse/zombie/plague stuff out there. Yet they are definitely YA.

 

[The Bluestocking]

It's funny, when I was a teen reader I was never even aware that there was such a thing as "teen fiction" or a "young adult" category. It might well have existed but I was simply unaware of its existence. I just read books that looked interesting to me.

It leads me to ask is such a categorisation even useful?

I think the category of YA is useful in the same way movie ratings are useful - it simply gives teachers and parents a general guideline about whether a book is age-appropriate.

Otherwise, the stories in this category span so many different genres.

 

[JonH]

I think the category of YA is useful in the same way movie ratings are useful - it simply gives teachers and parents a general guideline about whether a book is age-appropriate.

I could understand that for Middle Grade books, but surely YA readers mostly choose their own books, don't they?

I admit I still buy books as Xmas time presents for my nephew and nieces, who are now adults in their early twenties (it's become dotty uncle tradition, I suppose). I have since they were small and I still don't know how to tell if a book is "YA" or not, short of reading it. Is it written somewhere on the cover?

I just checked my copy of Northern Lights, and it's labelled Scholastic Children's Books in fine print (opposite a quote from Milton). But surely that's not the way you are supposed to tell, is it? If this is all about letting teachers and parents know, shouldn't it be more clearly labelled?

How do librarians and bookshops tell?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Bookshops tell by how it's classified on their ordering systems (for chains) and also in-trade info: reps, bookselling catalogues etc.

I genuinely think it's a tool that's useful for bookshops because they know where to stock things, but limiting for readers, especially those who walk straight past the YA section.

But I was happily reading adult books when I was a teen and my own daughter, who's 14, has read Jacqueline Wilson, Roddy Doyle (The Commitments) and now SE Hinton's classic YA The Outsiders. She's chosen them all (though I recommended one) and didn't refer to the YA shelves to do so. She also loves a bit of misery fiction. I think it is simpler when they're younger - my 9 yo is devouring Roald Dahl at the minute so quickly we need to clone him - and still selects from the junior section of the library.