Via James Preller’s blog, I found this blog post on why YA author Andrew Smith hates YA. One of the reasons Smith gives really hits home for me. He writes
I don’t write for an age group… The only target in my mind is a story, NOT a demographic.
When you’re supposed to be writing for a certain age group, you fall into this trap of what’s allowed, what’s expected. When Meg Rosoff was starting out as a writer, she was worried about what was off limits for YA. Once she accepted the idea that she could write about anything she wanted, she wrote the utterly beautiful How I Live Now (about an anorexic teen who falls in love with her telepathic cousin during a terrorist invasion of England!).
Smith also points out in his post
“YA” didn’t exist when Twain wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or even when Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird.
And while it’s true that those two classics are often required reading in high school, you won’t find adults looking down their noses at these books or feeling guilty for reading them. It’s not only okay for adults to read these “teen” books, it’s really expected that they’ve read them at some point in their lives. The same is often NOT true for books that are today labeled “YA.”
Of course, there are a lot of reasons to love YA, including the fact that it’s pretty lucrative at the moment and the fact that popular YA books have given reading a boost. In fact, Smith posts about why he loves YA here and here.
Read Smith’s blog post and then tell me: What aspects of the “YA” label frustrate you? What about the label do you think is a plus?
Parker Peevyhouse
Chris Eboch
Greg R. Fishbone
Nick
lindajoysingleton
Parker Peevyhouse
Joni Sensel
I agree with most of what he says, but I think his Venn diagram is wrong. We say “young adult” to be politically correct and not offend/alienate the teens we want to speak/sell something to. But virtually everyone, in and outside the biz, really thinks of them as “old kids.” They’re not a subset of adults. They’re a subset of kids, if a transitional one. (They can’t vote, among other things.) Which is why adults have opinions on the content of what they read, and why YA authors get less respect than adult-book authors. (I think the children and adults circles overlap, too, with lots of mature kids and juvenile “adults,” but that’s a different issue.)
There are also still (mostly literary) novels being published “for” adults but “about” kids. Frx, The Lovely Bones, Dog in the Nighttime, The Highest Tide. They may cross, but they’re first for adults. I do think YA is more marketing than anything, in part because marketing is by definition creation of a narrowed target, a specific need or demographic. “Novels” are harder to sell than “mystery novel,” thus YA novel is a handy categorizer. And while our particular slot is profitable, I guess that’s okay. But I do feel his pain.
I think what frustrates me most about writing YA is the expectation you’re under to dumb down the dialogue.
I’ve noticed this more and more during the revision process with my agent. He’ll send something back to me highlighted, “This isn’t how a teen would speak.”
But I have trouble believing that all teens sit around grunting, “Uh-huh” and “Yaknow”.
Just IMHO.
Going along with what Joni said, even though it’s called “young adult,” people often still view it as being for children (i.e. watered-down). That means that there’s still a concern over the content of the books. I often hear people recommend adult books to YA readers by saying, “Well, there’s nothing too racy in there.” If they only knew how racy YA can be, they wouldn’t think of it as being watered-down literature!
I, for one, would love to see fewer labels on books. But marketing-wise, I think books will probably become even more categorized (e.g. “New Adult”) and not less.
Some of my favorite novels are about young people, but the YA label seems to compel the author to dumb things down.
I have three young adult age people living in my house between the ages of 16 and 20. They can be surprisingly astute, insightful and eloquent. They do, in fact, have opinions and ideas about more than their school grades, love lives and wardrobe. They discuss science, politics, psychology and phlosophy. They have opinions about business, ethics, environment and education.
When asked for reading suggestions for people over 14, I often recommend passing over YA and going straight to adult fiction. It doesn’t really have anything to do with “racy” or violence, but whether or not they’re intellectually capable of following several plots and subplots at once and emotionally capable of handling moral ambiguity.
Personally, I think as adults, it’s our duty to help children mature, not keep them helpless and dependent forever. This means exposing them to some of the curve balls life tends to throw. The safest way to do this is through fiction. This means encouraging them to read books that have several plot lines, several well developed and conflicted characters as well as an honest perspective about how life really works.
I think most YA doesn’t do this. I also think the problem with YA is that a lot of authors are pulling their punches when writing stories about young people because they know YA is lucrative and they want to get published.
Would Catcher in the Rye be what it is if Sallinger sat down expressly to write a “YA” novel?
Would Catcher in the Rye be what it is if Sallinger sat down expressly to write a “YA” novel?
That’s exactly my point–that YA authors shouldn’t necessarily strive to write to that label. Catcher in the Rye is the kind of book I would recommend to every 17-yr-old, and I could see it being marketed as YA except that I think Salinger gets pretty angry about his books being labeled anything at all (at one point didn’t he demand that Catcher only be sold with a plain white cover?). The label sometimes goes on after the book is written, not before.
I’ve read plenty of YA literature that is complex and morally ambiguous. As in any category, you’ll find both light and heavy material on the YA shelves.
Cole, that’s why I love the movie Ten Things I Hate About You. The teens talk in a way no teen ever would–snarky AND unfailingly articulate. But the spirit of their dialogue rings true (plus, the movie is based on a Shakespeare play, so there’s a reason for the intricate dialogue). So maybe the key is figuring out how to make the dialogue feel authentic without dumbing it down–giving it more of that teen angst or playfulness. Just a thought.
A few things:
Andrew Smith is a smart, insightful, provocative writer — and his blog is often interesting. He’s got a number of posts on the topic of YA lately, and it’s worth poking around. He has a knack for pushing buttons in a children’s literature world that is too often “nurturing” and bland.
Which doesn’t I agree with everything he says.
I’m with Joni on the Venn diagram, which to me is a classic example of a false dichotomy. It’s not an either/or case, where the two are mutually exclusive. But not to quibble.
I live with a 16-year-old son and don’t consider him an adult, though I can see him lurching in that direction. What’s interesting about YA is what happens when you think of it as ART, in relation to other art forms: movies, video games, music, etc.
This week Nick played “Call of Duty” on his Xbox, a war game; he recently watched, at my urging, “Apocalypse Now,” Francis Ford Coppola’s brilliant film; and I’ve pressed two books in his hands, “World War Z” by Max Brooks (fabulous!) and another favorite, “Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut. Musically, he listens to a variety of things, including unfettered rap.
My point is that culturally, we don’t make these YA distinctions in anything of than books, unless somebody out there believes we should institute a ratings system for books as we have with movies and music (um, no thanks).
I don’t have much experience with YA, other than I’m trying to write about 16-year-olds in my current novel. I began similarly confused about the do’s and don’ts of the genre. But I’ve come to the place where I think I’ve got to simply tell the story and let the chips fall where they may.
Thanks, Parker, for reading my blog; I appreciate it.
JP
I love your blog. And I love Slaughter House Five.
I see what you and Joni are saying about Young ADULT being a misnomer. Teens aren’t really a subset of adult, but they’re not exactly a subset of children either.
Okay, look. Now I am going to let Drew respond. If you get caught up in the rightness or wrongness of the rather tongue-in-cheek Venn diagram on the blog, then you are illustrating the very point I was trying to make. And, yes, old kids CAN vote. There’s nothing magical that metamorphoses anyone into adulthood at age 18; and, from where I sit on the highway toward petrification, I consider “kidhood” to be a state you live in until about 30.
But the minute you begin making assignations toward subsets, like, for example, this notion that YA does exist within the realm of kidlit, and YAs are not adults — the confusion that you perpetuate by labeling the group (for whatever PC considerations), throws (as my friend Sara Zarr reasoned) a bunch of straw men out there that people willingly grasp. Because you simply can’t do certain things in the presence of “children,” but if you’re going to use the word “adult,” it means ADULT.
Now, on to the YI H8 YA title. Many people who’ve commented about these posts have expressed some shock… How can he possibly HATE YA??? That’s like saying you hate chocolate cake, Disneyland, and Yankees games. Those blog posts were nothing more than close-up inspections of some pretty ugly trees within an otherwise okay forest.
I don’t see anyone, though, here, on my blog, or in the dozens of emails and other comments I’ve received “looking down their noses” at YA — unless they read nothing more than the title of the bits.
And I didn’t even let Drew say the thing about YA that he hates the most… but now I’m thinking about doing it. After all, I’m currently on the road, and a drive-by firebombing at el Rancho de Drew is going to miss me by a good thousand miles.
Well, I’m curious. What does Drew hate the most?
I love YA, and an amazed when people look down their noses at it. It just seems so ignorant (because I think most of the time these people haven’t really read any YA to make this judgment call).
Isn’t it primarily a marketing strategy, P.J.? Again, just thinking about trolling through a video store as an example. There’s children’s section, there’s family, then there’s movies grouped by genre, buyer beware. You go to buy music, same thing: YA isn’t a category.
Not that marketing is a bad word, I should point out. Often it’s an attempt to reach the appropriate customer, make the decision-making process a little easier. And it is, as we know, damned hard to tell a book by its cover. But each time a book gets relegated to the YA section, there’s always the problem of ghetto-ization. Increased crossover has been good in that respect; some books resist those shackles.
One of the commentators on Andrew’s site pointed out that instead of YA, we should just have a VAMPIRE section and be done with it.
To me, age 48, I see YA as this relatively new category, one that didn’t exist in my childhood — we just grabbed Bradbury and Vonnegut and Steinbeck and Brautigan instead — and now it’s riding some sort of explosion, ever-morphing almost from season to season. Where will it end up? Will it even exist in 20 years? I don’t know.
Thanks, btw, for the conversation. I love this site. You guys do a great job.
JP
The only thing that bugs me about the label “YA” is that I’m in my thirties. I buy or borrow a book that’s clearly promoted as a young adult novel, and I feel like some perv at a playground wearing a beige trenchcoat. A good story is a good story, dag nabbit!
I didn’t write any of that stuff on my blog. Some guy named Drew who works for me does it. I don’t have time to blog. I write, like, four novels per year.
And thanks very much for reading it.
Wow… look at all those famous people up there ^
Drew.
I would argue that a great story is a great story … period. But the narrative voice is incredibly distinct in “YA” compared to adult/crossover novels (eg The Lovely Bones and The Kite Runner) because it’s right there-in-your-face teen thinking.
The idea of “dumbing down” or “watering down” YA novels and vocabulary is a total misnomer as John Green, MT Anderson, Ellen Hopkins and more have shown. (I look up loads of words when I read their work.)
Though I know it’s a marketing tool (and incredibly effective at that), I think it’s exciting to see so many novels out there for “young adults” now. When I was a teen there were: Salinger, Vonnegut, Bradbury, Stephen King for more of a thrill and then the source dried up.
The YA label, I think, has opened the flood gates for authors to explore the world of young adults. Both adults and adolescents eat it up!
So … after rambling on, here’s my hate/like:
1. HATE: I live in Colombia, South America where nobody really KNOWS that it’s a “real genre” … if it is (since it’s kind of up for debate here). And so when I tell people what I write, they look at me like I’m an alien and that I’m making up my job.
2. LIKE: In Colombia they jump from kids’ books to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Love GGM, but I hardly think it’s appropriate for the world of pre-teens and teens. What I love about YA (not the label but the books) is that it’s made books more accessible to teens AND adults. It gets them reading! I just wish there was more down here.
It’s a marketing strategy. It’s just publishers and booksellers trying to help books find the audience they think will be most open to buying it.
The downside is, I think it often affects a writer’s idea of what they can or cannot write, and therefore warps the integrity of their work. I write “YA” but only because that’s what naturally come out of me, not because it’s hot on the market. In some ways I feel this does not bode well for me and my hopes, but it is what it is.
There are all kinds of people and varying tastes in literature; the labels are just a way to help buyers find what they think might appeal to them. That’s all “YA” means to me.
But a great book is a great book, and it will be read by people of all ages no matter the label. YA and Middle-grade hold some of my favorite books, and I will read Dr. Suess or Kevin Henkes without my kids any day.
And Andrew Smith: I would like to read your opinion on St. Martin’s Press’ endeavor to break out “New Adult.”
Liesl, Everything St. Martin’s does is brilliant!!! (ha ha… and this comes from a guy who made a New Year’s resolution to never use exclamation points again).
But it’s not just marketing.
The reason that the YA label didn’t exist when James and I were YAs was that adults — parents, teachers, and such — had more time on their hands, or maybe more of an inclination, to help kids navigate the seas of literacy and literature.
On my blog, I refer to this as a “hunting partner” role — because books don’t jump off the shelf and hit you in the face. But, in the absence of a responsible coach, partner, or guide, it’s in the interests of booksellers to build the “hey, kid, come here” section in order to catch the cash.
So it’s not simply marketing. It’s something worse than that: It’s that our “Adults” (grown-up ones) have given up on kids. They drop them off and say, “Text me when you want me to pick you up,” and kids are left on their own.
That’s a big reason why YA exists. And it’s another thing to not like about it.
I’m in the same generation, and my folks did not guide my reading as you suggest. I was able to read anything I wanted — and I did. Adult books almost exclusively after about 10 years old, checked out of the public library, not the school library. But marketing wasn’t nearly as sophisticated back then. AND, rather than abandoning them, most experts believe that parents hover over their kids WAY more than they used to, and are WAY more involved in doing things for them (college applications, job applications, even asking bosses for raises – literally) than they used to be. So it still looks to me like “only marketing.”
I’m just trying to find the part where anyone is looking down their noses at YA. Nope, can’t find it, maybe it’s not there?
I do like a lively discussion. Glad I dropped by.
Not here or in the blog posts, Yvonne. Not in bookstores, generally (though I’ve encountered some there.) But I don’t know a single published YA writer who has not been asked, “So when are you going to write a ‘real’ book?” That’s pretty disdainful.
I wasn’t referring Smith’s article when I said that some people look down on YA. For that sentiment, you can check out this article in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/books/review/Rabb-t.html
Great post. I especially like this bit: “I don’t write for an age group… The only target in my mind is a story, NOT a demographic.”
We are told that what’s most important is the story itself. Yet an 80k word novel (which is okay for YA) that happens to feature middle school age kids is technically unpublishable because Middle School=Middle Grade=20-40k words. I often wonder if Jo Rowling would be able to get Harry Potter published if she weren’t known today.
I have two MG novels that are about 90K each. Who says 80 is unpublishable? (Admittedly, mine is fantasy, which can go longer, it seems.)
Mine is fantasy as well, and it’s kind of borderline MG/YA – funny age, I hear there’s another category for it. I’ve had quite a few respectable literary agents lay the “word count” metric down. And in several panels, I’ve also heard agents and editors say that they can and will quickly dismiss a query if the word count is off the mark. I watched it happen a few pitch slams too! I suppose if the rest of the query knocks their socks off, they might have a peek, though.
Jay, I think that’s referred to as “crossover.” And I think Joni’s right about fantasy be allowed to have a higher word court, but you still can’t get too crazy with it, I guess. Besides worrying about what young readers can handle, agents/editors are probably also concerned that a high word count from a new writer indicates a lack of self-editing skills.
There’s a terrific blog post from R. L. LaFevers about this very topic. Very interesting. It’s about the fact the middle grade fantasy tends to trend to older MG, often because of the richness and complexity. http://rllafevers.blogspot.com/2009/09/older-middle-grade.html -
Oh well, I myself am very greatful for the YA section because I have no “hunting partner” to steer me toward books I might like in the grown-up science fiction/fantasy section.
Whereas in YA, once I dismiss everything with a vampire on the cover, I have lots of lovely choices that I can be pretty sure will have the YA-ish themes that I like so much–the quest for identity, the quest to understand the world and find a place in it, the romance, and the expectation of a nicely resolved ending.
But then again, I really like reading middle grade fantasy too.
My ex-wife, Maria, a librarian, told me yesterday that she knows many kids, beginning around age 11, love the fact that they no longer have to go into the CHILDREN’S section. They happily and proudly go over to the YA section, with the graphic novels and cool posters. She says she hears this comment frequently. FWIW.
Honestly, I don’t see why anyone would hate YA unless they’re complete literary snobs. When I was little, there was no YA which frustrated me because my reading level was that of a teenager, but I was stuck in the children’s section of the library because the librarian thought I was too young for the adult section. YA deals with issues that teens and even adults in their twenties feel are important. Since teens are also transitioning into adulthood, I don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t be allowed to transition from children’s to adult books as well.
Sorry for the rant, but as a YA reviewer, I feel that YA is incredibly important.