Changes in Teen/Young Adult Fiction
Let’s start with a confession: I am a woman in my late-ish
twenties with a relatively new but rather major addiction to Young Adult
fiction.
That was scary.
I expect you’re all wondering now why YA fiction is
relatively new to me when there isn’t so much of the young with my adult anymore. Well sit back, relax, grab yourself a
cuppa and a choccy biccy or two and I’ll tell you all about it…
When I was growing up, I was a massive bookworm. A 100+
books in 6 weeks MASSIVE bookworm (a summer holiday personal best). My
favourite place was the library and I spent as much time as I could with my
nose firmly entrenched in a book. As I grew older however, I ran out of things
to read. At that point in time I was choosing from the Children’s section but,
being older, I went searching for more.
What that more was, I didn’t have a
clue. I just knew that I had grown up and didn’t want to read about childish
adventures where the only mystery was a slight misunderstanding and a
half-heard conversation. Therefore I set my sights around the corner of the children’s’
section and came across the mysterious and scary ‘Teen Reads’.
Unfortunately the ‘Teen Reads’ section – as it was named at
that time – wasn’t nearly the home of thrills, excitement, fantasy and
adventure that the now-named Young Adult sections are. As such, once I was
through with Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman, Forever by Judy Blume and
as much of the Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz as had been written, I
quickly moved on. For some reason I was never a fan authors like Nicholas
Sparks or books like I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. I didn’t want the
feels and tears – very off-putting at that age. I ended up split between Harry
Potter of the children’s section and Terry Pratchett of the adults section (for
that last one I can thank my Pratchett-fan father).
It wasn’t until 2005 and the publishing of Twilight by
Stephenie Meyer that, to me, young adult fiction really got its kick into my
and the public’s eye. I have no doubt there were similar books beforehand but
to me, much like E L James for erotic fiction, Stephenie Meyer brought vampires
and werewolves to the fore of YA fiction. I will admit to holding out as long
as I could to read Twilight; I really hate conforming to popular trends and
this was a big’un. In the end though I gave in and I read it. And I loved it. I
still refused for years afterwards to watch the films – I couldn’t stand some
of the casting (apart from Charlie – he was fab). As book lovers well know, you
can’t put into a film every word, action and nuance or find the absolute
perfect actor to portray every character. More’s the pity. Make an 18 hour film
detailing all x number of pages with the right actors and I’ll be happy.
After Twilight came out, I started to notice more and more
YA Fantasy books and I, along with the majority of the population lapped them
up! Many will know well The Vampire Diaries by L.J Smith, The Immortals series
by Alyson Noel, the Fallen series by Lauren Kate and thousands of others too
numerous to name. Along with this popularity for YA Fantasy (and Paranormal
Romance) came a boost for other YA genres. Dystopian for example saw a rise
with The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins and then the Divergent trilogy
by Veronica Roth. General YA fiction came up again with The Fault in Our Stars
by John Green.
All of these however are admittedly fantastic introductions
to Adult literature. Adult Lite perhaps? The YA genre face hard topics head on.
Topics like the end of the world, terminal illness, love, loss, racism,
sexuality and more, all in a way that is totally accessible. Something everyone
can relate to in some way. I wish now I had tried a few more teen books –
really looked at the ones that weren’t Point Horror or Point Romance and gone
for something a little harder.
What it all boils down to though is that YA fiction has
grown so much – over the last 10 years especially. These books with their difficult
topics are no longer restricted to such an age-specific title of ‘Teen’. There
is much more of a link too between ‘Child’ and ‘Adult’ and these books are
there to teach and guide. But that is the joy of literature. 26 letters,
jumbled up with a hint of punctuation and a spot of grammar can bring joy,
sorrow, laughter, tears and every emotion under the sun to whomever reads it.
No doubt in 1, 5, 10, 50 and 100 years’ time there will be new books and new genre
fields but for now, teen literature is no more and the title Young Adult
(because by golly I’m growing up and I have something to say) is making itself
known and extremely well loved.
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