I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because there seems to be some disdain, apparently, toward adults who read YA. Now, I’ve never experienced that personally, and really I couldn’t care less what someone thinks about the books I like to read. I like to read them. That’s all that matters.
But there was a recent NYT Room for Debate piece on adults reading YA that got people riled up. This isn’t a response to that so much as it is a puzzling out of just what it is about YA lit that I connect with and love so much, what I have in common with millions of other people—teens and adults alike. YA lit does not just speak to teens, and I’ll tell you why.
1. It’s often about making your own decisions—which leads to making your own mistakes—and having to deal with the consequences. Teens are just starting to deal with this on a larger level, and adults have been dealing with it for years. Doesn’t mean adults are any better at it or less likely to make mistakes. We can all relate.
2. It’s often about coming into your own. We think of this as happening during the teen years, but for many of us it doesn’t happen until our twenties, thirties, or forties when we really figure out who we are and become comfortable with ourselves. When presented in adult lit, it often seems pathetic or sad when a character hasn’t figured themselves out yet. But in YA lit there’s a feeling of promise.
3. It’s often about finding our passions. Teens are figuring out what they want to do with their lives, pressured to pick a college/university, pick a major, pick a career years before they’ll be working at it. Some adults still haven’t figured out what they want to be when they grow up, haven’t figured out their passions. In YA lit, it’s approached with hope. In adult lit, oftentimes it seems the characters who haven’t found their passions are portrayed as downtrodden or lost. Who wants to connect with that—with the feeling of being stuck, hopeless? Even if some of us may feel that way in our lives, it’s more enjoyable to read a book that explores finding one’s passion with promise for the future. It may inspire us to do the same. (And don’t we all like to feel inspired?)
4. It’s often about overcoming great obstacles when you don’t know what you’re doing or how you’re going to get through. Hello, Life! We grow and learn our whole lives. There’s always something that you have to figure out how to cope with, how to do, feel overwhelmed by and fear that you’re not equipped to handle it. Having babies, raising kids, medical problems, new jobs/careers, caring for elderly parents, etc. This is life. This isn’t just teen life. It’s Life life.
5. It very often involves falling in love—the first flutter of feelings, first touch, first kiss with someone can happen at any age. That initial excitement you feel tingling throughout your entire body, making your heart beat faster, giving you a grin you can’t hide doesn’t change as you age—it still feels the same whether you’re 16, 26, or 56. And we all love it, don’t we? Isn’t that the best part of falling in love? But it’s mostly glossed over in adult lit. There’s a hurry to get to sex, maybe marriage, children—what we often think of as the results of falling in love. The initial flutterings and excitement are barely explored in adult lit, if at all. But in YA, they are detailed slow and exciting just as we feel them in real life. It’s the build up to that first kiss when your senses are all heightened, when you feel most alive. It’s the process of falling in love. Some of us haven’t experienced that for a very long time and may never again (us old married folk!). That’s sometimes what people miss most about being single—the thrill of that first kiss and new love with someone. But we can feel it again through a book. We can experience vicariously.
Overall, YA lit is written with hope and optimism. Even the tough subjects, even the issue books are written with hope for what happens for the future of the characters, after The End. The characters don’t all necessarily live happily ever after—YA lit isn’t dipped in sugar. But it is steeped in hope. We lead happier lives when we have hope. We can get through tough times when we have hope. We can identify with characters who’ve been through the worst but survived with hope.
Reading books written with hope gives us hope for ourselves. Who wouldn’t love that?
I completely agree with you on all your comments. I love YA, in fact I would say it makes up about 95% of my reading material. I love reading about all the first..first loves, first kisses, first heartbreaks. I don’t know why but it appeals to me maybe because of all that hope.
Some adult books can be bleak and sort of depressing, even the contemporary romance ones. I don’t know, maybe I am just a kid at heart. :)
I think that really is what makes YA so popular, unique, and NECESSARY . . . the hope. We need that.
(I’m just a kid at heart, too.) :-)
I also think that some people associate YA literature as being “lower” on various levels than adult books, and therefore look down on adults who read it. I don’t agree with that at all. In fact, I find that YA bookshelves are overflowing with intelligent, beautifully-written work that challenge readers to view the world in different ways. I can’t get enough!
I think that every single adult can relate to being a teen – we all went through it! It’s one of the most challenging, but also the best and most memorable times in our lives. I personally love reading about all the “firsts”! :)
@ KindleMom – We’re all kids at heart, aren’t we?
I totally agree. I think YA (and MG) books are some of the most beautifully written books on the market.
But I also think the reason adults like YA is more than just relating to being a teen. When I read a YA book, I’m not looking back on being a teen. I’m not reading it and reminiscing. I’m experiencing the emotions, conflicts, excitement, anger of the characters because I can relate to it all as who I am now as a 42 year old adult, not as who I used to be 25 years ago. That’s the magic of YA books! They can be truly ageless.
I agree! I think that YA describes “connection” better than adult literature (I read both…not discounting either – just FYI) Humans crave attention. Whether its from other people, animals, or to objects (which is a huge theme in YA – loving inanimate objects that hold meaningful memories) In Adult lit the characters are generally introverted and are pushing themselves AWAY from people because of their choices or unhappiness. In YA the characters cling to their connections to help them cope. These connections are what draw people into the stories. You become emotionally invested in a way you DON’T with most (not all…of course) adult lit.
Ok, enough rambling.
Excellent point! You’re totally right about that. There is this quest for connection in YA that you don’t see in most adult lit and that’s a huge factor in what draws us in. YES!
You’re brilliant, Misty. I knew that. :-)
Very nicely put! I think the reason YA lit is sometimes thought of as “less than” adult books is that, until recently, there wasn’t a plethora of well-written, complex and poignant novels in the field. Sure, there have always been a few wonderful books here and there, but when I was a teen, the popular books were the Sweet Valley High series. Don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed these books and have even read them as an adult, but even though they sometimes contained hard issues, they came across as being more like an after-school special than anything.
So, while adults will acknowledge certain outstanding works of YA or MG lit, I think most still see these books as being all fluff and no real content. And they couldn’t be more wrong. When I was in college, my mom tried to convince me to read some book called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. ;) I believe my response was, “Mom, that’s a book for kids!” Fast forward a couple of years and I saw the movie and loved it and then fell completely in love with the entire series. It’s my favorite series of all time and I doubt that will ever change.
But just because I loved Harry Potter didn’t mean that I was instantly absorbed in the world of YA and MG books. I was still only reading adult books even though HP had a special place in my heart. I read the Twilight series a few years later and still wasn’t sure about YA lit. I then joined a book club in early 2010 and a couple of the girls read mostly YA. I was still pretty hesitant. But I read more and more YA and then I read The Hunger Games series and I was hooked. Now YA is the majority of what I read and I don’t see an end in sight. I’m also a writer and changed a 50,000 word WIP from adult to YA because that is what I love to read and is now what I want to write.
I also think that the idea of YA books being simple and all fluff is most likely perpetuated by the TV shows that are geared towards teens and preteens. Most of them are horrible. Sure, there are some great ones, and the ones geared towards teens seem to be getting better at a faster rate than those that are geared towards preteens. But I think many adults hear “Young Adult books” and think of Sweet Valley High, Twilight, and iCarly. And YA is so much more than that.
I’m in my 30s and sure, it was awkward that first time I went into the teen section at my library. But pretty much every time I go to the bookstore I’m not the only adult in the YA section. And if anyone questions my love of YA lit, I’ll just recommend a few of them and tell them to get back to me.
Great post, and sorry for the novel of a comment. Just had to add my two cents! ;)
Oh, Andrea, I’m so glad to have your novel of a reply. ;-) I think the successes of Harry Potter, the Hunger Games, and Twilight speak to the really broad appeal of MG/YA books. Millions of teens and adults read them, and continue to discover and read them. That will bring people to more YA books as a result, I believe. (And you handing YA books to people in the bookstore will help too!) :-)
Wonderful write up. I agree with everything you’ve said. I just went to a conference and one of the panelists said that everyone can relate to being a teenager. I am waaay past that age, but sometimes I remember like it was yesterday.
Thanks! I think you’re totally right—everyone can relate to being a teenager. But I also think our love of YA lit is more than just that. It’s that we can relate to the universals of the YA book—the experiences that you can have as a teen or as an adult. You don’t have to be a teen to be coming into your own, to be seeking a connection (as Misty pointed out above), to be falling in love. The stuff of YA novels can happen at any age, which makes them virtually ageless. And makes us love them. :-)