And there’s nothing wrong with that! Today, young adult fiction is a force to be reckoned with—books for children and young adults gained 22.4% in sales in 2014, and a whopping 55 percent of YA novels are now purchased by adults. Have you read a YA book recently that DIDN’T involve a “finding-love-and-landing-an-SO” storyline? EVERYONE WOULD BE SAD. will fix you” and “your first love will be your only love” and “acquiring a romantic partner is synonymous with the story’s conclusion.” Don’t even get me started on the “MEN AND WOMEN CAN’T EVEN BE FRIENDS, IT’S ALL ABOUT SEX ALL THE TIME” mythos. Let me just say, this is NOT because I think YA isn’t real literature. It’s the beginning of exploring your identity and your sexuality. I EVEN LIKE THEM TOGETHER, I PROMISE. EJ presents information on the teaching of writing and reading, literature, and language. What I don’t love is romance being presented as the be-all, end-all, which seems to happen a lot. Why would anyone want to read about the romantic failures, misfortunes, and disappointments of real life? Suddenly you’re collapsing to your knees in the YA section screaming things like “UGH” and “WHY” and “RELEASE ME FROM THIS HELL,” and you’re wishing there was a little bit more to choose from. Molly Templeton BuzzFeed Contributor Posted on June 24, 2019, at 1:50 p.m. Whoo, boy. to continue their professional growth throughout their careers, and a framework Big CEO: DO YOU LIKE SADNESS, CHAD? In YA novels, acquiring a boyfriend or girlfriend usually signals the end of the conflict stage and the culmination of all previous character development as we round the corner into the resolution. Relationships are just another facet of coming into your own, but they’re not the only facet and they’re certainly not a necessary one if that’s not what you’re into (hello, aromanticism and asexuality!). problem, as most teachers are fully aware, is that the classics are often too distant from our students’ experiences or the reading level is too difficult” (ix). In 2004, Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America showed that young adult readers was dropping at alarming rates, up to 20% between 1982 and 2002. A lot of these YA books seem to end with the characters getting together. Dystopia is entertaining, as is romance. The term was first used this way in the late 1960s with reference to contemporary works like The Outsiders, a coming-of-age novel by S. E. Hinton, first published in 1967.The adolescent problem novel is rather loosely defined. erally fall into one of two categories: YA books are bad because 1. The problem, of course, is exacerbated by the actual labeling of the genres: it should be readily apparent that YA literature is not the same thing as children’s literature—in the same way that short fiction is not the same genre as the novel. The cohort of parents who have joined Hunsicker’s cause worry that YA literature like The Buffalo Tree exposes a vulnerable young audience to moral … JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization helping the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways. Yet contem­ porary critics often speak of … Big CEO: GOOD. 3, The Lure of Young Adult Literature (Jan., 2001), Access everything in the JPASS collection, Download up to 10 article PDFs to save and keep, Download up to 120 article PDFs to save and keep. With a personal account, you can read up to 100 articles each month for free. Do you think YA novels try to hard to include romance? Released in 2006 by First Second Books, it was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Awards in the category of Young People's Literature. JSTOR®, the JSTOR logo, JPASS®, Artstor®, Reveal Digital™ and ITHAKA® are registered trademarks of ITHAKA. Actually, I think this is how it happened: Big CEO at a publishing house, banging his fists on the table: WHAT DO THE TEENS LIKE? All Rights Reserved. Hallmarks of YA fiction: Discovering abilities – Everything is perfectly normal until you wake up feeling different one morning or suddenly stumble on a hidden ability. WE’VE FINALLY CRACKED THE TEEN CODE. Check. And maybe you guys are more emotionally well-adjusted than I was, but I always felt like I wasn’t living up the quintessential Teen Experience™ because I had never made out with a boy, and because I went to dances dateless more often than not, and because the Hottest Guy in School had not inexplicably discovered my Inner Beauty. I think that could be a big seller. Though once dismissed as a genre consisting of little more than problem novels and romances, young adult literature has, since the mid-1990’s, come of age as literature – literature that welcomes artistic innovation, experimentation, and risk-taking. They can be well-written, engaging, and transformative. [1] It won the 2007 Michael L. Printz Award,[2] the 2007 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album 90, No. They aren't the Classics. Wea ving young adult literature throughout the English language arts curricula proves a strategy for making … I WANT A MILLION MORE. Romantic subplot obtrusively shoehorned into this story about survival in the midst of the Irish Potato Famine? Of course, not all books leave the problem unresolved, but many do lack in the world-building department. The beauty of YA literature is in its ability to define the emotions and changes that teens go through as they move towards adulthood. Subordinate: Sorry, sir. Big CEO: THAT’S A TERRIBLE IDEA. Request Permissions. Each issue examines the relationship of theory and research to classroom practice, and reviews current materials of interest to English teachers, including books and electronic media. The Margaret A. Edwards Award, established in 1988, honors an author, as well as a specific body of his or her work, for significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature. PBS Digital Studios Recommended for you The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), a not-for-profit professional Check. Offers brief descriptions of 12 new or overlooked young adult books worth reading. ©2000-2020 ITHAKA. I love a good YA romance. Of course, I have to agree that many YA nov-els fall short of the depth and artistic development of the great works of the literary canon. The Edwards award celebrated its 25th anniversar… Look, I get the appeal. It recognizes an author's work in helping adolescents become aware of themselves and addressing questions about their role and importance in relationships, society, and in the world. I CAN’T EVEN WITH THE KIDS THESE DAYS. To access this article, please, Vol. The numbers of children's book authors have shown a similar lack of diversity. It’s kind of repetitive. has provided a forum for the profession, an array of opportunities for teachers They corrupt the young. But the frequency to which this occurs simply reinforces ideas that can be harmful to those currently plodding through their formative years—ideas such as “having an S.O. Image from Philnel.com . Absent parents? I’ll shout it from the rooftops. QUIZ: Would You Be Asked to Dance in a Jane Austen Novel? For ). Young Adult Literature is a genre that is separate from Children's Literature. 2. The tomes of Teen Town (which is a place we made up because ALLITERATION) often tell us that Getting the Girl/Boy is the Happy Ending, but it’s actually the beginning of a lot of things. Because poverty is relatively underrepresented in YA, individual novels can be accused of essentializing poverty to the experiences of the characters in the story. Romance and YA are often seen as not ‘real’ fiction, which is stupid, because women and teenage girls are obsessed with both. During this transition, teenagers find themselves searching for an identity and look for answers to questions like the following: ... And that’s the big problem with using slang. AND MAKE THEM DYSTOPIAS. (The definition of YA is increasingly fuzzy, but it generally refers to books written for 12- to 17-year-olds. The horror genre persisted in the 1990s as the Goosebumps series became immensely popular. But when they’re overdone, and done wrong? “CAN’T EVEN”? What is Young Adult Literature? The more I read and grew up, though, the more I started noticing the problems with YA/NA – problems that would have adverse effects on the … Check. When they’re feeding the demon voice in my adolescent brain that was always saying “YOU MUST FIND ROMANCE EARLY IN YOUR LIFE OR YOU WON’T FIND IT AT ALL”? The Problem with YA Literature. * Many feared the extinction of the genre. English Journal, v90 n3 p146-50 Jan 2001. It’s the beginning of figuring how to do things like compromise and use the right amount of tongue. I think as a society, we have a tendency to automatically dismiss genres that women (especially young women) really enjoy. But the same formula is applied to most YA literature, and I am tired of it. Here’s My Problem With YA Literature by Elodie March 9, 2016 March 7, 2016 As a connoisseur of YA lit, I don’t know when romance started to be less a subgenre and more of something to mark off a checklist, but it definitely happened. I LIKE YOUNG ADULT NOVELS. It emerge d in the twentieth century when teenagers became a powerful force of the economy in the 1930s and gained prominence in the sixties.. DID I USE THAT CORRECTLY, CHAD? Thus: Subordinate: Sir? But when a narrative trope is so deeply ingrained that it has 13-year-olds already worried that they’re never going to find somebody, well, that’s where we’re entering problem territory. Adults who normally stayed away from YA books found themselves reading them, and people who ordinarily stayed away from Fantasy were enticed by them. for cooperation to deal with issues that affect the teaching of English. Besides, it’s just so much easier to tie up everything with a nice bow and yield to the societal expectation that a Happy Ending equals Getting the Girl/Getting the Boy. About survival in the world-building department so the problem with ya literature argue that adults read fiction... Digital™ and ITHAKA® are registered trademarks of ITHAKA fall into one of two:. 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