“Don’t be afraid to try YA” is Marisa Reichardt’s advice for adults curious about Young Adult literature:
Today’s YA novels don’t preach Afterschool Special-style morals to teenagers the way they did in the ‘80s. Books like My Name is Davy, I’m an Alcoholic, made me cringe more than feel like there was an author out there who understood what I was going through at 17. Today’s YA books also aren’t melodramatic like the Lurlene McDaniel books of the ‘90s. Fast forward twenty years later, and YA is legitimate literature where we can find beautiful lines like, “As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly and then all at once,” from John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. The depth and beauty of words like these will surprise many adults who have written off YA as being nothing more than angsty books about teenagers.
Meanwhile, Kelly Jensen chastises adults who claim “that YA books were never as ‘bad’ in their day”:
Of course they were.
The difference is that back in their teen days, the context was different. They were teens themselves! The context was living, breathing, and experiencing the hard truths and sharp edges that come with navigating adolescence in the moment. The context was discovering that sometimes bad things happen to people or the realization that grown-ups are flawed creatures. That sometimes — more than sometimes — the world is a cruel and unforgiving place, no matter how much you play by the rules.
Teens don’t read books like [Laurie Halse] Anderson’s or [Patrick] Ness’s, [Judy] Blume’s or [Robert] Cormier’s, or any other books published as YA each year as how-to guides. They don’t read them as prescriptions for how to engage in violence or how to join gangs or how to be promiscuous (which only ever applies to teen girl characters anyway). They’re smart enough to know the whole story matters. That challenges and situations matter in context — their adolescence.
The Dish 