Blog post: "What do Young Adults want to read?"

Thanks for posting! That was awesome, and very helpful.

This was especially interesting:

The books that get checked out most frequently, in school libraries nationwide, are the ones where the kid has no parent on the scene.

Click to expand...

My natural tendency as a writer is to remove parents from the scene as much as possible, or have the MC hide her problems from her parents, because my parents were not a big part of my teen years. Yet I keep hearing that YA books should have more positive depictions of parents, reflecting today's reality of protective parents who are their kids' best friends. I don't know who is right here, but I much prefer to write MCs who are forced to stand on their own because of absent, bad, or just unable-to-get-it parents. That could be my Gen X upbringing talking.

One of my favorite YA books when I was young was The Runaway's Diary, about a girl who's totally on her own, hitching around the country. A lot of '70s YA had themes like that. I didn't realize at the time just how SCARY such a situation is from a parent's POV!

Nothing wrong about having parents involved in their kids lives, but even the best of them can only provide love and a home. Realistically they can only do so much and must be absent for much of a kid's time. And sometimes the best thing a parent can do is be a good example: kind, thoughtful, strong, there to back up a kid when needed but willing to let the kid solve their own problems.

Good share! I certainly used to love the genre when I was younger. It's all about relatability- as Jane points out in her first point- "making it real" is the key so that YA fiction can be an outlet or an escape for some people.

Marissa, thanks for sharing. It is excellent and I bookmarked it. Totally agree with her points.

Agree with her on all points. I always raise an eyebrow about all those people who are all "OMG! Is YA fiction too dark?" Misery has never been known to respect a "You Must Be This Tall to Go Through This" line; plenty of kids find themselves dealing with some horrible shit before they're old enough to drive. Childhood was only an idyllic time to someone who was never a child.

But I've long suspected that much of the YA hate stems from the general contempt culture has for teenagers, especially teenage girls. Culture is happy to spend plenty of money marketing to teenagers, but cannot be bothered to listen to a teenager when they talk, in fact, expressing nothing but contempt for them. They want teenagers as mindless consumers, not as thinking, suffering human beings with thoughts and opinions. Outside of marketing, Culture as a whole, abandons teenagers and leaves them to their own devices, basically forcing them to raise themselves.

Laurie Halse Anderson had a good quote about how teenagers are treated in our culture and why she writes YA lit:

I grew up as a teenager with parents who were disconnected from me for their own reasons, so I remember so clearly that confusion and that sorrow. I could go on for days about our disrespect and disregard for adolescence in American culture. Americans are all about loving kids when they’re small and portable, but for some reason … boy, do we abandon our teens. We abandon them in families, we abandon them as a culture, we don’t do a great job in most high schools of educating them properly. We disrespect them, and at the time when they are in most need of good, fun, loving, trustworthy relationships with good adults, we step away. And that’s really stupid and awful. So I try to write stories that tell the truth about hard things because kids need to know it; the world is hard and it will kick your ass if you’re not careful.

Click to expand...

That is sad *tear*

Emermouse said:

Culture is happy to spend plenty of money marketing to teenagers, but cannot be bothered to listen to a teenager when they talk....

Click to expand...

Or people want to think of kids living a totally happy and Moral life. Heaven forbid they think of sex, much less do it.

This is a really insightful blog post and I have to agree with all of the above. When I was a teen, I looked for books that reflected my growing independence, my autonomy, but most of all? I looked for books with hope. Hope that tomorrow would be better. Hope that my life wouldn't stay the same forever. I'll have to rethink my own post about YA books now XD

Wow, what an amazing post. Those kids were very lucky to have her, as well as the other way around.

I just read the post, and I actually identified with it a lot! I'm a teen, and good YA is so much fun for me to read because it feels real to me. That's why I meshed with the first point the most. I don't want to read stories about protagonists who always succeed or who don't cuss, because that's not being a teenager. Cuss words is actually a really interesting point - cussing, as a kid for me, was never allowed in my house, and it still isn't. That's why it feels like a form of freedom for me, to be able to say whatever I want, and that's why I have my teen protagonist cuss as much as she does, that and other reasons (backstory...it's complicated lol).

Then of course there's the fourth point, the point about giving hope. This is really important to me, because it's so vital in the world today. As hard as it is to read the news for adults, it's hard for teens too, I know that from what the kids at my school talk about. We need hope, and reading is the way some of us get it. It lets us know that things are going to get better!

I loved this post!! It's great to see that adults know what us teens like to see.