I read "young adult" literature and so should you

A t-shirt for Maureen Johnson’s #YASaves project which was sold on DFTBA.com, a site created by fellow YA author John Green and his brother Hank.

In June 2011, Meghan Cox Gurdon wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Darkness Too Visible.” In her editorial, Gurdon argued in favor of censorship and book banning in order to protect teens from current Young Adult (YA) literature, much of which she said was of poor quality and/or dealt with topics that were too difficult to be appropriate for teens. In particular, she was concerned about books that explore topics like suicide and self-injury. She argued that talking about those issues would surely encourage teens to self-injure or to consider suicide. (I could write an entire article about why that is not only wrong but also dangerous, but I’m going to restrain myself.) At the time, it inspired me to write an angry blog post (the blog I posted it on is now defunct, but a slightly rougher version of what I wrote can still be seen on my tumblr).

More important than my personal reaction to the editorial, however, was the reaction of a not-insignificant sector of the internet. A number of YA authors have strong online presences and dedicated online communities dedicated to their books/to reading in general. In fact, many of the plugged-in YA authors regularly interact with each other via the internet, and there is a general YA community online around them as a whole. This community responded vocally and enthusiastically to Ms Gurdon’s editoral. Spearheaded by author Maureen Johnson (The Little Blue Envelopes series, the Shades of London series, and others), YA fans around the world tweeted using the hashtag #YASaves, talking about how important young adult literature had been in their lives, the important lessons it had taught them. It wasn’t long before it was trending worldwide. Blog posts about the importance of YA literature, even – or especially – the “dark” stuff sprung up across the blogosphere. Most of the posts weren’t even written by teens, the target audience of YA lit. Most of them were written by actual adults in various age groups, some in their 20s, others in their 30s/40s or older.

If your only picture of the current state of YA lit today is Twilight and its copycats, then you are probably wondering why the heck something like #YASaves happened or why on Earth I’d be saying that not only do I, at 28 years old, regularly read YA lit but that I also highly recommend you to do so as well. The truth is that YA lit is like any other genre of literature – some of it is crap, but a lot of it is fantastic. You just have be discerning. (Also as a general rule if you avoid anything with vampires or fallen angels, you’ll be a lot more likely to end up with something good in your hands.)

In March 2012, NYTimes.com’s Room for Debate feature weighed in on the issue. Although Joel Stein contributed an incredibly haughty insistance that “Adults Should Read Adult Books,” most of the stories in the feature were positive about the increasing popularity of YA lit among people outside of its target audience. Lev Grossman, author and Time Magazine book reviewer, contributed a post entitled “Nothing’s Wrong with Strong Plot and Characters.” YA authors Patricia McCormick and Matt de la Peña each weighed in, talking about creative risks taken by YA authors and how YA lit gives teens characters with whom to identify.

Even more interestingly, in September of this year, a new study was released which found that 55% of people who purchase YA lit (officially geared towards readers aged 12-17) are 18 or older. Not only that, the largest segment of YA purchasers, a full 28%, were aged 30-44. And lest you say “sure, but they’re buying them for their kids,” the study also found that 78% of adult YA purchasers said they were buying the books for themselves rather than for another recipient whose age might actually put them in YA’s target audience. Many of the respondants in the survey said that they often get recommendations of what YA books to read from their similarly-aged friends.

So you don’t have to take it from me that YA lit is worth your time. Take it from those statistics, or the words of Lev Grossman, or the fact that an Adult Nerdfighters (a name that the community of fans of YA novelist John Green have given themselves) group exists on Facebook and currently has over 5,100 members and grows daily. Better yet, go browse the YA section of the nearest bookstore and see for yourself the number of quality books available for purchase.

If the thought of wading into the YA section unguided seems a little daunting, here are some personal recommendations from me.

Genres to look out for

Until you find your feet, you’d probably be safer staying away from the “paranormal romance” sub-section that most Barnes & Noble stores have in their YA section these days. That’s where you’ll find the Twilight series and its many copycats. Instead, look for contemporary fiction, steampunk (a retro-futuristic blend of Victorian aesthetics with steam-powered technology) fiction (or its cyberpunk cousin), dystopian fiction, and historical fiction.

Authors you can trust

As a rule of thumb, you are going to be safe picking up the works of authors like John Green, Maureen Johnson, Scott Westerfeld, Lauren Oliver, David Levithan, Veronica Roth, Cory Doctorow, or Libba Bray. (There are other great YA authors out there, but those are ones I thought of off the top of my head because they feature strongly on either my already-read or to-read lists.) You can also trust blurbs from those authors about other authors/books.

Some specific recommendations

Here’s a small selection of books I have actually read and enthusiastically recommend you pick up.

1. Paper Towns by John Green – This book deftly deconstructs the manic pixie dream girl trope and explores how we see and do not see each other as well as the idea of identity as construct, both the identity we present to the world and the identities we construct for others. One of the most emotionally-affecting books I have read in recent memory.
2. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs – I had to sleep with the lights on a few times whilst I was reading this spine-tingling and super-mysterious book. The narrative is smoothly blended with vintage creepy photographs. There’s a mysterious island, an abandoned (or is it?) orphanage, and some genuinely scary monsters.
3. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E Lockhart – I read this book because Dana of Reasoning with Vampires recommended it by calling the main character, female boarding school student Frankie Landau-Banks, as “the anti-Bella Swan.” And she really is. Bella Swan might not have any agency as a character, but Frankie’s got it in spades. A delightful read.
4. The Leviathan Trilogy (Leviathan, Behemoth, Goliath) by Scott Westerfeld – I just finished the last book in this series earlier this week and I am still in that “holy crap this was so good I can’t begin to describe it I need more why isn’t there more” phase. So I hope you’ll understand the sheer awesomeosity of this series when I tell you that it is alternate history STEAMPUNK WORLD WAR I. With a girl disguising herself as a boy to serve on an airship! And a secret prince! AND NIKOLA TESLA! (See, I’m still all capslocky. I’m never getting over these books.)
5. The Hunger Games Trilogy (The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay) by Suzanne Collins – You should absolutely read this chilling dystopian masterpiece, because to be quite frank I can see our society barrelling towards a combination of this series, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451. But also when you do read this series you should remember that you are not prepared and you never will be prepared. By the end of Mockingjay you’ll be wondering why you even have emotions anyway because everything hurts and nothing is beautiful (to bastardize Kurt Vonnegut a little). But read it anyway! It’ll be fun!

That is a tiny selection of the awesomeness that awaits you in the YA section of your bookstore. Talk to the booksellers at your local bookstore and ask them about the YA section and what they recommend for someone who wants good, non-sparkly-vampire YA. I especially super-strongly recommend that you read literally everything that John Green as ever written, because he is a fantastic author who never fails to make me cry and laugh and feel like I’ve learned something important and experienced something beautiful.