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Young Adult:
A Book by Any Other Name . . .: Defining the Genre
C
hildren’s. Bildungsroman. Adolescent. Juvenile. such as The Gossip Girl, Clique, The Au Pairs, and The
Teen. Young Adult—so many names for such a Seven Deadly Sins deluging the market with what
controversial body of literature. many consider pulp entertainment. If one were to
As America’s readership continues to shrink, judge the books by their covers, one might assume
marketing departments scramble for new strategies for that the graphic-rich dust jackets, many pink with pop
getting books into readers’ hands. Bookstores have femininity, offer nothing but surface reading of candy
reshuffled their shelves and recategorized their writing. And indeed, many people have.
sections, drawing titles from both Children’s and Other converted critics have embraced Young
Grownup Fiction (Sadly, “Adult Fiction” doesn’t ring Adult so dearly that they have scoured the canon for
the way I wish it could) to create the new Teen, or any classics they could adopt into the Y.A. family. J.D.
Young Adult, sections of their stores. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Mark Twain’s The
Because the Young Adult umbrella seems to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Maya Angelou’s I
shelter the many simpler, aimed-for-children books as Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Harper Lee’s To Kill a
well as the overabundance of catty, chick-lit-ish Mockingbird, C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, Charles
novels, this new category has brought with it certain Dickens’ Great Expectations, and William Golding’s
negative assumptions from critics across the board. Lord of the Flies are just a sampling of the claimed
Young Adult Literature has been accused of being: classics, not to mention more recent Grownup novels
• For children only such as Stephen King’s Carrie, Mark Haddon’s Curious
• Somewhat simplistic Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, and Markus
• Chick lit for teens Zusak’s I Am the Messenger.
• Less than literary Still other critics have rejected
• Not serious enough for use in the Young Adult expansion by chal-
schools lenging and banning books they
• A marketing ploy As America’s readership thought contained subject matter
• Written by less serious or continues to shrink, too mature for children and teens.
amateur writers Among the most contested titles
• Experimental marketing departments are some that many would consider
• Not established enough to bid Young Adult classics—Robert
for spots in the canon scramble for new strate- Cormier’s The Chocolate War, Judy
Indeed, a cursory riffle through Blume’s Forever and Are You There
gies for getting books into
a local bookstore’s Young Adult God? It’s Me, Margaret., J.K. Rowl-
section might lead a critic to these readers’ hands. ing’s Harry Potter series, and Lois
conclusions, especially with series Lowry’s The Giver, among others.
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