I took my first professional job in 1967, working as the assistant director of the Logansport–Cass County (Indiana) Public Library. Yes, that was my hometown library, and as a compulsive browser even as a child, I was thoroughly familiar with its collections, with what they contained and with what they didn’t contain. This may be why one of the first tasks I set myself was developing a separate collection of books for teenage readers, a population whose reading needs and interests had previously been met by a few shelves of genre fiction that consisted mainly of romances by the likes of Janet Lambert, Betty Cavanna, and Rosamond du Jardin. Oh, there were also some sports stories, mostly by John R. Tunis; science fiction, mostly by Robert A. Heinlein and Andre Norton; and adventure, mostly by Howard Pease and Jim Kjelgaard. Today we might regard these books as demi-classics in their respective genres—at least contemporary collectors do, judging by the prices they’re willing to pay for first editions of them. But back then they seemed to me to be quick, disposable reads, more suitable for elementary school kids than for adolescents.
My opinion may, of course, have been rooted in my own reading development. I had read this type of genre fiction when I was in grade school but when I finished sixth grade, I graduated to the world of adult books. I claim no particular precocity in doing this, since kids had been reading adult books since at least the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the publication of books like John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.
I didn’t regret saying goodbye to these early teen books, though I never dismissed them as being baby books, as some teenagers have over the years. On the other hand I certainly didn’t regard them as having much literary merit or posing any particular challenge to high school–age readers. So where to turn to find the constituents of my new collection? The answer was simple: I turned to adult books.
I was hardly alone in thinking adult books perfectly suitable for teens. The same year (1967) that I was busy forming my collection, G. Robert Carlsen’s Books and the Teen-Age Reader: A Guide for Teachers, Librarians, and Parents was published. A veteran professor at the University of Iowa where his mentor Doris V. Smith had also taught, Carlsen, an expert on youth and reading, wrote in his landmark work, “In a good public library young adults [ages 12–18] should be encouraged to use all materials.”1 In fact, he believed that by the age of 16 the reader “will have moved into the type of book generally read by adults,”2 and he devoted nearly two-thirds of his book to adult literature.
Ironically, 1967 was the same year that a new kind of literature began to emerge that was suitable for teenagers; I just didn’t know about it then. I’m referring, of course, to young adult literature, which seemed to appear overnight with the publication of two landmark books: S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders and Robert Lipsyte’s The Contender. This literature differed from the earlier teen literature in its unsparing realism and appeal to teens of high school age.
Not knowing this, however, I made adult books the main focus of the new collection, though I did include a selection of the genre fiction mentioned above, knowing that some readers would find it entertaining and accessible.
Joining Carlsen and me in our focus on adult books was ALA, which had been including adult titles on its lists of best books for teenage readers since 1930, when it established its Young People’s Reading Round Table (young people in this context meant teenagers). Because there was no literature for this specific age group at that time, the Round Table’s annual list of best books included a sometimes uneasy mix of adult and children’s books, ranging from Will James’s Lone Cowboy to Edna Ferber’s Cimarron.
This situation continued until 1948 when, acknowledging that 12- to 18-year-olds had no interest in books for children, the list’s name was changed to “Adult Books for Young People.” In 1966 it was changed again to “Best Books for Young Adults” (BBYA), though the list continued to be exclusively one of adult books until 1973, when the ALA’s Young Adult Services Division (now YALSA) began including books published specifically for young adults.
Since that time there has been considerable discussion (some of it heated) over the proper proportion of adult and young adult titles on the list. When I served on BBYA in 1988–89 I nominated as many adult titles as YA titles. Not everyone agreed with that then or would agree with that today. Indeed, some have suggested that adult books should be eliminated altogether.
While this debate has yet to be resolved, YALSA, in 1998, set up a five-year task force relevant to the discussion. Named in honor of pioneering YA librarian Margaret Alexander Edwards, the group’s charge was “to plan, organize, and implement a series of lectures and booklists dealing with adult books for young adults.”3 Its members obviously found that adult books played a viable role in the reading lives of YAs, as the project culminated in the adoption of the Alex Award in 2002, an annual list of ten adult books deemed best of the year for young adult readers.
Less clear, however, are the factors the committee is to take into consideration when selecting its award-winning titles. According to the committee’s policies and procedures, there are two criteria:
1. Titles are selected for their demonstrated or probable appeal to the personal reading tastes of young adults.
2. Appeal and popularity are not synonymous. In addition to the question of appeal, committee members should consider the following when assessing titles: language, plot, style, setting, dialog, characterization, and design.4
These criteria are certainly helpful in evaluating a book once it has come under consideration, but they don’t speak to the preliminary issue: what kind of adult books interest and benefit young adults? While there is no absolute answer to the question, some general guidelines apply. In the case of realistic fiction, for example, a young adult should typically be the protagonist, or at least the major secondary character. This is true whether the book is plot-driven, like Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason’s The Rule of Four, in which two college students struggle to solve the mysteries of an ancient manuscript, or character-driven, like David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green, about a British boy who is a secret poet.
Second, the book must address situations and concerns that are relevant to young adults’ lives or interests. James Finney Boylan’s Getting In, a comic novel about the Byzantine process of getting into the college of your choice, is a good example. Plot-driven fiction (novels with strong story lines) remains important to YA readers, too. Some of the best examples can be found in genre fiction:
• Helen Fielding’s wildly funny British romance Bridget Jones’s Diary, which inspired the genre now known as chick lit
• Katherine Neville’s The Eight, a mystery about a young woman’s perilous search for a fabled chess set that, legend has it, once belonged to the Emperor Charlemagne
• Neil Gaiman’s fantasy Stardust, the charming tale of a boy who enters the realm of Faerie in search of a falling star
• Connie Willis’s wacky To Say Nothing of the Dog, featuring a terribly time-lagged young man who travels back to the year 1888 in search of a monstrosity called the Bishop’s Bird Stump
• Matt Haig’s The Radleys, a horror tale about “ordinary” next door neighbors who just happen to be vampires
• Larry Doyle’s I Love You, Beth Cooper, in which a nerdy high school senior publicly declares his love for the school’s chief cheerleader
Teens also like nonfiction, which is sometimes even more popular than fiction. According to Richard Abrahamson and Betty Carter, the most popular form of nonfiction among teens is the biography, followed by the interview.5 Not surprisingly, then, Rick Bragg’s All Over but the Shoutin’, about the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist’s poverty-stricken childhood in the American South, and Andie Dominick’s Needles, which describes Dominick’s lifelong struggle with diabetes, both won Alex Awards.
Other types of nonfiction popular with young adult readers include these:
Accounts of great adventures, such as Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm, two best sellers about, respectively, a doomed ascent of Mount Everest and a violent storm at sea. The appeal of these books is their fast narrative pace, lively characterization, suspense (will the subjects live or die?), and overall readability.
Narrative nonfiction, which employs fiction techniques to tell a story while respecting the integrity of factual information. Good examples are Larry Colton’s Counting Coup, which follows the fortunes of a girls’ basketball team on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana; and Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, the tumultuous story of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.
Books about subjects of current interest to teens, such as Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not a Gadget, a cautionary look at the pervasiveness of contemporary computer culture; and Bill McKibben’s Eaarth, about the dangers of global warming. Other subjects might include computer gaming, sports, and books about teens themselves, like Dave Cullen’s Columbine.
Nonfiction horror, a spillover from one of the hottest fiction genres. Books about “real-life vampires” are numerous: Joe Garden’s The New Vampire’s Handbook, a tongue-in-cheek guide for “the recently turned creature of the night”; Stephanie Boluk and Wylie Lenz’s Generation Zombie, a collection of essays about “the living dead”; Linda S. Godfrey’s Werewolves: Mysteries, Legends, and Unexplained Phenomena (everything you wanted to know about the man-beast and more!).
Graphic novels. Since the late 1990s the graphic novel format has become wildly popular among young adults, and most public libraries now stock such books. Technically all graphic novels are nonfiction (and cataloged as a form of art by many libraries), but there are plenty of informational graphic novels: Epileptic, by David B., a memoir of growing up with an epileptic brother; and Lynda Barry’s autobiographical One Hundred Demons. Thanks to imprints like First Second Books and Scholastic’s Graphix, titles are now being published specifically for young adults. However, the lion’s share are still published for adults, and because some graphic novels are, well, graphic, book selectors should never rely entirely on reviews when making purchasing decisions. They should visit a local bookstore or, even better, a comics store (every community in America seems to have one of these) and actually examine the book before they purchase it.
Offbeat nonfiction—those attention-grabbing books about unusual subjects. Two good choices are Steve Almond’s Candyfreak, the story of the author’s lifelong obsession with chocolate; and David Bodanis’s The Secret Family, in which Bodanis literally examines the world of a typical family under a microscope. The “ick” factor of some of these books make them especially popular with male readers: Mary Roach’s Stiff reveals what happens to some of us after we die—that is, to our corpses. Ick.
A NEW YOUNG ADULT AND A NEW PUBLISHING PARADIGM
Along with changes in books young adults read have come questions about who’s reading them. Traditionally the term young adult has referred to those ages 12–18, but given the burgeoning “adultescent” phenomenon, it may now be time to extend that age range.
Consider that nearly fifteen million, or 52 percent, of America’s 27.8 million 18- to 24-year-olds are still living at home with their parents, delaying marriage until their late 20s, and refusing to consider a career path job (if they can find one in today’s economy, that is) until their early 30s.6 Many doctors are calling this phenomenon the “second decade of adolescence,” noting it begins at 18 and extends to age 24—some suggest even age 28. Despite the age disparity with traditional teens, these adultescents continue to be heavily invested in teen popular culture, shop at the same stores as their younger counterparts, dress the same way, go to the same movies and concerts, and be similarly devoted to every aspect of the burgeoning social media. Like Peter Pan, they simply won’t grow up.
So widespread has this phenomenon become that I have suggested, in recent articles and books, that there now exist three literatures for readers moving out of children’s books: middle-school literature for 10- to 14-year-olds, teen literature for 12- to 18-year-olds, and what I now call young adult literature for 19- to 24-year-olds.
Underscoring the importance of this young adult market is the fact that publishers of adult books are increasingly offering books that will also appeal to teen readers. Two classic examples of adult books with significant teen appeal are Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, a wonderfully imaginative novel about a boy trapped in a lifeboat with a 450-pound Bengal tiger, and Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, in which a boy with Asperger’s syndrome recounts his efforts to solve a mystery.
That these books have multigenerational appeal invites the question, who decides if they are to be published as adult or as young adult? The answer, increasingly, is the publisher’s sales and marketing department, often in consultation with the Brobdingnagian bookseller Barnes & Noble. Thus the final decision is made on the basis of not the content of the book but, rather, its sales potential. Will it do better with adult or young adult buyers? Why aren’t simultaneous editions published as they are in Great Britain? American publishers are reluctant to say, but the reason is, again, economic. Adult and juvenile departments are separate economic entities, each required to produce a certain level of income every year. As a result, neither is willing to share book profits with the other. This situation also exists at Barnes & Noble, explaining, at least in part, why the bookseller refuses to place a book in more than one section of its stores.
Literature for young adults (however you define it) is inherently dynamic, and likely major changes will happen in the near future. In the meantime, you will find a number of crossover books in the lists that follow.
FINDING REVIEWS
Where should you go to find adult books for your young adult readers? You can start with the three major young adult review media: Booklist, School Library Journal, and VOYA. Each of the publications includes reviews of adult books for young adults, but presents them in a different way. Booklist includes an added note to adult titles deemed to be of interest to this readership; School Library Journal features a separate section of adult books for young adults in its Book Review section. And VOYA uses the code “A/YA” to identify any “adult-marketed book recommended for teens.”7
All three have been providing this service for a number of years. But how much longer will they be able to continue? Despite the importance of reviews of new titles, print forms of traditional review media are suffering from the downturn in the economy and migration of print to the Web. Some journals are responding with online publication; others are in danger of becoming extinct. General-interest magazines are suffering as well—though, like newspapers, many now publish online editions, often with content different from the print versions. Since it’s important for book selectors to examine more than one review before purchase, these media are valuable adjuncts to the professional journals. The books reviewed are often popular fiction and nonfiction that offer opportunities for pleasure reading and feature topics of special interest to teens. Whether in print or electronic form, reliable sources of reviews include the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Entertainment Weekly, Time, and Newsweek. The online magazines Slate and Salon also have good book coverage.
Another new electronic phenomenon that is changing the world of book reviewing is the growing presence of blogs (a contraction of web log). As recently as five years before this book was published blogs about children’s and young adult books were a rarity; the field has since exploded. A June 2012 search of the website KidLitosphere Central reveals a strapping total of 728 active blogs—up from three hundred in January 2010.8 Exact statistics for adult book blogs are harder to find, but as of this publication there are 17,258 members of the website Book Blogs.9
Many blogs don’t feature traditional book reviews. However, their highly personal, idiosyncratic commentary—which is often unedited, sometimes controversial, and sometimes ill informed—is changing the way people define reviews (and reviewers). Major newspapers include at least one blog as part of their book coverage, as do professional review journals such as Booklist and Library Journal. These blogs are more reliable sources of information and opinion than the independent versions.
A number of review journals license their reviews to one or both of the two major online bookstores: Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble (www.barnesandnoble.com). Unfortunately, YA notes from Booklist are not included on these sites, though they are available to subscribers of Booklist Online (www.booklistonline.com). Because Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble include multiple reviews, it may seem more efficient to consult these sites instead of searching individual magazines for specific reviews. On the other hand, professional review sources include a good many book-related features not available at Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble, such as author interviews, bibliographies, and read-alike suggestions.
Another less-than-salutary phenomenon in the world of book reviewing, introduced by Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble, is the self-posted reader review. Just as anyone with a computer can start a blog, so can he or she post a book review. It almost goes without saying that the quality and reliability of these reviews vary wildly. Like blog reviews, they are largely unedited. In addition, many are posted by people who obviously haven’t read the book or are friends of the author. Some have been written pseudonymously by the author.
Given the popularity of social networking, it seems likely these sites will be the next major home for book reviews, whether the sites are generic (Facebook, Twitter) or subject-specific (Goodreads, LibraryThing). Here again, the problem is reliability. Consider a Google search for the phrase children’s and young adult book reviews. You will get an overwhelming 14,200,000 hits. Learning how to select from this surfeit of … stuff, and to evaluate those findings, is clearly becoming a fundamental part of every nascent librarian’s education, and poses a challenge for those combing the Web for adult books suitable for young adult readers.
If you go the online route, I’d suggest beginning with the Booklist and School Library Journal websites. Both contain reliable, staff-written blogs. Booklist’s Book Group Buzz, for example, includes tips, reading lists, and literary news. Booklist editor Keir Graff’s online Likely Stories addresses book reviewing and the publishing industry. School Library Journal offers Angela Carstensen’s column, Adult Books for Young Adults.
NOTES
1. G. Robert Carlsen, Books and the Teen-Age Reader: A Guide for Teachers, Librarians, and Parents (New York: Bantam Books, 1967), 8.
2. Ibid., 29.
3. Beth Yoke, YALSA executive director, e-mail message to author, June 18, 2012.
4. YALSA, Alex Award Committee Policies and Procedures, Suggested Selection Criteria, American Library Association, last revised March 2010, www.ala.org/yalsa/booklistsawards/bookawards/alexawards/alexawardpolicies/.
5. Richard F. Abrahamson and Betty Carter, “Back to the Future with Adult Books for the Teenage Reader,” Journal of Youth Services in Libraries 11, no. 4 (Summer 1998).
6. Jane Clifford, “Refilling the Nest,” San Diego Union Tribune, August 20, 2005, E1.
7. VOYA, “VOYA’s Review Codes,” www.voya.com/reviewers/our-review-codes/.
8. KidLitosphere Central, “Publisher/Editor/Group Blogs,” www.kidlitosphere.org/groups/.
9. Book Blogs, “All Members,” http://bookblogs.ning.com/profiles/members.