Young adult...not just for the young adults...or is it?

 by: Joelle Charbonneau

I have to admit that I never intended to write a young adult book.  I knew lots of authors who wrote for kids.  I thought their work was great, but I never thought I'd have a story idea that fell into the young adult category.  Since my first young adult thriller, The Testing, was published just over a month ago, I proved myself wrong. 

My mistaken assumptions about the young adult genre were part of the reason for this twist of writing fate.  First, I assumed that the young adult genre was the same as when I was a young adult.  (Which for those keeping score wasn’t all THAT long ago.)  Second, I assumed that the voice required for writing young adult books needed to be just that—young. 

Turns out I was wrong on both accounts.  No, the young adult genre isn’t merely comprised of Sweet Valley High books with a few Christopher Pike novels thrown in for good measure.  (Okay, maybe I’m older than I want to admit!)  Yes, some of the contemporary young adult books out there are filled with pop culture references and other teen slang that I’m not familiar with.  However, what I didn’t realize is unlike adult genre novels that have very specific categories and rules that govern them, young adult has only one rule:  a teen must be at the heart of the story.

It’s as simple as that. 

In adult fiction, the publisher is concerned about where a book is shelved.  Is it a mystery?  A thriller?  Is it science fiction or romance?  In young adult, they don’t separate books into categories the same way.  The books are young adult.  Period.  Which is why you find science fiction/thriller/romances or Fantasy/romance/mysteries topping the young adult charts. 

In my opinion, that mash-up of genres is the reason that so many authors have found joy in writing for the young adult marketplace.  Anything goes.  Young adult books (or books targeted for the ages of 12, 13, 14 and up) can have violence or strong, they can contain sex and provocative themes.  Anything that is allowed in the adult marketplace is allowed in teen books—as long as it is believable teen journey.

And teens aren’t the only ones reading these books.  Studies done have shown that adults are reading young adult books in droves.  Quite possibly this is because so many of the titles now available transcend the adult genre fiction rules.  Because the young adult marketplace reaches such a broad audience, it’s not a surprise that almost every publishing house has multiple imprints to accommodate their young adult titles.  Huge sections of bookstores are now devoted to “teen” literature and a great number of those bookstores have relocated their teen sections away from the children’s picture books in order to make them more adult friendly.

Which takes  me to the point of this little chat.  YA fiction isn't young.  It isn't simplistic.  In fact, the work I was doing this week on my new YA project involved a lot of math calculations to make sure I didn't screw up the world building.  The young adult fiction category doesn't mean that the story is uncomplicated or less violent--THE TESTING trilogy books are the most violent books I've ever written. Young adult fiction is a category that is growing every day because it appeals to readers of all ages.  At least, that is my guess.  And maybe you can help me prove that to be true.  I'd love to conduct a very unscientific survey.  Please let me know in the comments if you've read a book that features a teen protagonist sometime in the last year and whether you fall into the under 20 or over 20 crowd.  Let's see how wide the appeal of young adult fiction is with our DSD audience.  Most of you are crime fiction lovers...lets see how far your reading has taken you. 

Open Minds

By Russel D McLean (aged 31 and-a-half physically, but still only about 18 in his own head)

The other day I had the fortune of bumping into Alex Scarrow (Not to be confused with Simon Scarrow although I believe they are brothers). Scarrow is the author several adult thrillers, but where he has found real success is in writing for the YA/Teen market. He’s not one of those who jumped a bandwagon (I’m becoming increasingly annoyed with the cynical practice of writing younger versions of established adult protagonists or giving them an unexpected nephew etc and just writing the same book with slightly different linguistic tics) but seems to have been genuinely been excited by the prospect of writing for that market. In the same way that the brilliant Kevin Wignall has whole heartedly thrown himself into becoming KJ Wignall (and in doing so has charmed all the children’s booksellers that I know even if they’ve never met him).
I have no particular plans to write a YA novel (although I have an idea noodling around that I think would be great fun to write) but writing for that age group seems to be intensely more satisfying than writing for adults for one very simple reason:

Young people are not conservative.

What does that mean? It means that younger readers are open to new styles and opposing views. It means that they can get excited by story and not worry about whether it fits genre expectations (or that it doesn’t). It means that they seem to care more about whether the story actually grabs them than whether they think the story will. It’s not about what they expect. It’s about what they actually get.

I have a rule in my reading: it’s that I try to demand the same things I do now from a book as a writer that I did when I was a reader. In fact when I read a book, even if it’s for review or if it’s to check a section or two out for a close friend, then I do it with my reader head on first. Why?

One established author once told me they found it difficult to read books with the same joy they once did because “everything changes when you’re published”. Really? Does it? I don’t see why and I don’t see how. What made you a good writer was being a good reader (we’ll get to why you have to read to write another day - - that’s another issue that’s been banging around my noggin of late) and if you lose one you lose the other. Because in the end who are we writing for but readers?

In the same way I don’t see why we have to demand a dreary predictability in our reading as we get older. Sure, we can deal with more adult themes and ideas than when we’re younger and our own views might be less black and white (although I suspect in many cases its actually more so). What essentially changes about us in those years that we can’t get past what we expect? What makes us conservative and builds up these tiny little prejudices in our reading mind?

I won’t read crime.

I won’t read literature.

I won’t read non-fiction.

I won’t read horror.

We tell ourselves little stories as to why we won’t read these specific kinds of books. But the truth is that we don’t always have a reason and that we’re missing out on some great books by closing off parts of our minds to the experiences outside of narrow genre limitations.

Younger readers don’t have these pre-conceptions. And as such writers often feel freed up to do things with genre and storytelling they would never otherwise be able to get away with.

And it’s clear that adult readers feel trapped, too, judging by the numbers of them going straight to YA literature and the amount of crossover works that have appeared in recent years (Boy In The Striped Pyjamas would have been hailed as too depressing if it was an adult book as would Before I Die, while of course Harry Potter is seen as safe fantasy because it was written for kids, as ostensibly was Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy). In the end, I think adult readers, publishers and writers need to find their inner YA reader again and create adult books that deal with issues, that aren’t afraid to take chances with convention and that can shock, excite and surprise. Books that are written not for demographics but for the author’s inner reader, that ask the reader to put aside their own prejudices and take a chance at seeing the world through very different eyes. In short, we need to forget that we’re supposed to have learned everything by the time we become adults and accept that the joy of reading we has as YA and child readers – the joy of discovering new ways of thinking, new ways of engaging and new points of view we might never have otherwise come across – isn’t something we necessarily need to jettison. Life doesn’t stop when we become adults. We do not become set in stone. We should still be open to new ideas and entertainments that are greater than mere distraction through the familiar.

We should remember and foster our inner young adult. Even when writing and reading adult fiction.

YA – is it just for young adults? Hell no.

by: Joelle Charbonneau

Okay, this post will most likely make Steve Weddle froth at the mouth. Could someone please stick him in the ass with a tranq before he reads this? I really don’t want his family to experience him having a temper tantrum during the pre-holiday frenzy. That just isn’t festive. Besides, it would make me feel downright mean, and I don’t want to be mean.

(insert pause as someone knocks out my fellow redhead)

Is Steve out cold? Good. Here’s the thing. I read Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins for the first time about two weeks ago. Since then, I’ve read Catching Fire and Mockingjay – the other two books in the Hunger Games trilogy. Technically, theses are YA books because the heroine is the teen. However, the themes in the book aren’t what I would typically think of when someone mentions young adult books. I’ve read a lot of YA books that have teens learning and living and experiencing the heart ache of high school and college. They fight with their families. They chose whether or not to have sex and deal with all the issues that might bring. They have romances and break-ups and all the drama that being a teen holds. That kind of YA isn’t really for me.

No offense to that part of the genre. Teens love it. They should. It is meant for them. But some books don’t fit into the YA category as easily. Hunger Games and the two following novels are different. I’m going out on a limb here, but something tells me these books would never have been targeted at the young adult reader when I was a young adult. The market and the breadth of the genre has changed and the publishers understand that. Targeting a violent book like Hunger Games at the Young Adult market lends buzz to the book. Some adult readers will praise the book. Others will lament the violence and scream for the publisher to be held accountable for taking the innocence of our youth. Ha! You can’t buy that kind of press.

I am thrilled that our youth is reading period. That being said, I’m even happier when I know they are reading books that ask important questions. The Hunger Games and the two follow-up books do. They force the reader to think about government, rebellion and the ability of good, well-intentioned people to do the wrong thing. The books are violent, but the violence isn’t extraneous. It’s purposeful. Sometimes it makes you angry. Other times it makes you cheer and here and there it makes the reader cry.

These books have great depth, a kick-ass storyline and a heroine that is damage from the first moment she steps onto the page. It is that damage that makes her more than a typical YA heroine. She is more adult that youth. Her circumstances demand it and it is that maturity of spirit that allows adult readers to identify with her.

Sure, there were a few technical flaws in the books – very minor shifts to third person that I caught happening here and there. There were also a couple of flashbacks that I had to read several times and still found a tad bit confusing, but none of these flaws detracted from my enjoyment or my need to turn the pages.

I guess what I’m saying is that there are young adult books and then there are YOUNG ADULT books. To say that the entire genre should not appeal to an adult is belittling some really great reads. I admit that I failed to read Hunger Games or the other books earlier because I chalked them up as YA and therefore not as pressing to read as others. I was totally wrong. If Steve Weddle wakes up from his nap looking mellow – press a copy of Hunger Games into his hand and make him curl up in front of the fire. He won’t be sorry.

Young Adult Books for Adults

By Steve Weddle

So we're chatting on Twitter last week about adults reading young adult books. MOCKINGJAY had just come out at midnight and folks were excited.

It's possible that if you search the basement of DSD, you'll find an archived post in which I might have made what could be considered a "snide" remark about adults who read the TWILIGHT books about the 120-year-old guy seducing a teenage girl.

But many adults read young adult books. OK. As DSD's Jay Stringer said, "A good book is a good book." Of course, he should know. He wrote OLD GOLD.

I asked folks for a good recommendation for a young adult book that I might like. I said I'd listen to suggestions and pick one and then report back about how cool it was -- or wasn't.

Kent Gowran mentioned Robert R. McCammon's Boy's Life.

McCammon says this at his site:

I say Boy's Life is not about lost innocence, because I believe we all maintain the pool of innocence and wonder inside us no matter how far we get away from our childhood. I believe this pool can be revisited, and we can immerse ourselves in its healing water if we dare to take the risk of knowing again the children we used to be. This is a risky thing, because once we look back---once we let that wonderful pool take us in again---we may not ever fully return to being the adults we are now.

This is part of what Boy's Life is about: the rediscovery of magic, of wonders that lie drowning and half-forgotten in our souls. Boy's Life is about the dreams and terrors in the life of a Southern boy in 1964, but I hope it is more than that, too; I hope it is a universal key to yesterday, and by the opening of that door for a backward look we may all see today tomorrow in a much clearer, brighter light.

What it's about: The year is 1964. On a cold spring morning before the sun, Cory Mackenson is accompanying his father on his milk delivery route. Without warning a car appears in the road before them and plunges into a lake some say is bottomless. Cory's father makes a desperate attempt to save the driver, but instead comes face-to-face with a vision that will haunt and torment him: a dead man handcuffed to the steering wheel, naked and savagely beaten, a copper wire knotted around his neck. The lake's depths claim the car and the corpse, but the murderer's work is unfinished as, from that moment, both Cory and his father begin searching for the truth.


OK. That sounds promising. A few other folks suggested that one too, or agreed with Mr. Gowran. Well, let's put that one in the running.


How about JERNIGAN, also recommended by Mr. Gowran? 
"Self-pitying, alcoholic widower Peter Jernigan, unable to communicate with his confused teenage son and emotionally distanced from his live-in lover, narrates this depressing first novel."


Well I like the sound of that. I don't know from the work of David Gates, but this looks promising. No idea how this is young adult, but 'tis intriguing.


Hilary Davidson mentioned Sophie Littlefield's upcoming BANISHED. Now, I don't need much convincing to read a book from Sophie Littlefield. Of course, for those who could use a push in that direction, here's an excerpt you'll dig.


John Hornor Jacobs has a YA book, which I'll of course read because his THIS DARK EARTH is such a great novel. 


Allan Guthrie said Jess Mowry is worth looking up. He suggested WAY PAST COOL, which looked good and has an excerpt here.


THE NEW RULES OF HIGH SCHOOL by Blake Nelson was the suggestion of JimmyTheWorm. According to the Booklist write-up at Amazon, "High-achieving students may question whether Max's voice and lifestyle really belong to a Yale-bound kid, but many teens will recognize the book's rapid dialogue, school politics, and the young man's wandering, often painful ambivalence."


Amy Boggs may or may not have suggested MOCKINGJAY.


Tom Piccirilli said "Try Peter Abrahams's Reality Check or Bullet Point. Very strong, dark YA material. And Robert Cormier, of course, including FADE." 


How could you go wrong with Robert Cormier, right? The Library School Journal people said of FADE: "Those who find Cormier's novels bleak, dark, disturbing, and violent will not be disappointed with his latest."


Dave White said THE OUTSIDERS. I think I read that one when I was a kid. I think I liked it. You'd think I'd remember a book with Sodapop and Ponyboy Curtis.


That's the thing, though. I didn't read much young adult when I was a kid. Maybe it wasn't as popular. Maybe it wasn't a genre. Maybe it wasn't capitalized as YA, and I just didn't notice.


I read Salinger. I read Harry Harrison's STAINLESS STEEL RAT books. I read Piers Anthony. I read Dr. Strange comics. I read Spider-Man. 


When I was a young adult, science-fiction was young adult. There was fiction on the left-hand side of the Waldenbooks in the mall. There were children's books in the back right corner, along with some "merchandise." In the middle was all of the non-fiction. The biographies. The sports books. Cook books. And along the right-hand side of the store was the science-fiction and fantasy. That's where they kept the Steven Brust, the Isaac Asimov.


Maybe I need to head into the new stores and look in the YA sections. Maybe I need to see what all the fuss is about.


I still can't imagine a noir hero in a YA book, though. Someone who loses. Someone who doesn't [SPOILER ALERT] defeat Voldermort at the end of the book, or whatever the YA equivalent is.

Is it possible that Young Adult Noir even exists? I mean, yeah, there's the Glass family in Salinger's works, but anyone else?

Forget the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. Or maybe don't. I don't know. Young Adult mysteries. Thrillers. Noir. OK, DSD friends and neighbors. What have you got?