“Too Good” for YA
Alrighty, I’m annoyed.
I’ve recently run into this sentiment: “I don’t want to read that book because it’s YA, a genre full of flat characters, minimal world-building, cheesy romance and lack of depth. I just read something the other day, an adult novel, which read like YA because the ending was predictable and definitely aimed toward young readers. As a 30-something year-old man, I am just not the target audience. Oh, and I certainly couldn’t get through Eragon or Twilight. But Neil Gaiman or Cory Doctorow? Their YA novels don’t really count as YA because they are exceptional.”*
There are many things troubling about this, and I’m not sure where to start.
Okay, here goes. I have not read Eragon, but I have read Twilight. And while I do think Stephanie Meyer did something special and that she did an excellent job at writing a compelling story, her saga should not be the measuring stick against which all other YA fiction is compared. No single author’s works should be. YA does not equal Twilight and Eragon. The genre is much more vast than that. Writing styles are different. Subject matter, plot complexity and word-building? All different! Some people love Twilight. That doesn’t mean they’ll love all YA. Some people hate Twilight. That doesn’t mean they’ll hate all YA. You just can’t generalize like that.
Instead, let’s look at the broader picture here for examples other than the ones with movies on the big screen.
Again I say, Scott Westerfeld. If his books don’t have complex world-building and intriguing multi-dimensional characters, then I honestly don’t know what does. And let’s add Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, Richelle Mead, Melissa Marr, John Green and Holly Black to that list, shall we? These are all terrific YA authors. No, not everyone is going to like all of them. And if you don’t like one of them, it certainly doesn’t mean that the entire genre is utter crap aimed at readers lower than yourself.
And it’s the aimed lower than yourself part that bothers me the most. I think many people tend to forget what it was like to be a teenager once they aren’t one anymore, and they underestimate their tolerance, passion and intelligence. Teens don’t want to be talked down to, they want to push boundaries and see the world in new ways. And this is why, truly, I am so passionate about YA literature myself. Because it often does push boundaries and go places that adults are afraid to go. Some of it is deep (and are all adult novels deep? no!), and I firmly believe can be enjoyed by readers much older than young adults if you don’t get caught up in thinking you’re too mature for it just because it’s shelved in a certain area of the bookstore.
And stating that Neil Gaiman and Cory Doctorow don’t count is just silly. They wrote YA. They aren’t above being classified as such. They are, in fact, great examples of what’s so good about the genre, and I don’t seem them clamoring to put themselves in a different category.
**Rant over**
*This is not an exact quote, rather a summation of many different sentences pulled together to form one massive block of superiority.
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Comments
Not much of a YA reader myself (then again I’m not much of a fantasy/urban fantasy reader either) but I agree that the quote is unnecessarily derogatory. I’ve read similar sentiments about a lot of different kinds of genre fiction over the years. There’s always someone ready to bash whatever’s popular at the moment, just because it’s not their thing. Why can’t people just say, “It’s not my thing.” and leave it at that?
Yeah, I’ve heard it about romance, fantasy, science fiction, etc. It’s the derogatory tone that bothers me the most and the sentiment that all YA falls under a blanket of terrible writing. Not liking it is one thing (I’m not much for contemporary romance) but putting acting too good for an entire genre gets under my skin. Maybe it’s cause I write in that genre.
I’m new to the YA party, but like you and Jen (um, the other Jen) said, I’ve run face-first into this kind of thing time and time again. I read horror novels, and sci-fi, and techno-thrillers, and fantasy and (yikes!) comic books: like YA novels, each and every one can be just as good or just as bad as anything else. However, because of the stigma attached to “genre novels”, they’re all labeled as being trash.
Anyone who doubts the validity of YA should do a quick Google search and see all of the college courses being taught on the Harry Potter series. Obviously some people see that there’s a depth to these books.
This kind of pretentious, derogatory garbage always pushes my buttons.
Ha! I just stopped by Diana Peterfreund’s blog and saw she’d posted a rant about this exact same thing (almost). Great minds…
http://www.dianapeterfreund.com/stuff-for-kids/
*claps*
you tell ‘em jen!
I’m always kind of amazed at the lack of intellectual curiosity in many people. They won’t look at something just because it’s labeled one way or another and they don’t read whatever that label is.
I recommended a YA book to a woman once when I was working at a library and her response was: “I don’t have any children.”
This is so ironic. I am one of those late to the YA party people myself, and it’s particularly amusing because apparently that’s what I’d been writing for the last couple of years.
I’m writing ghosty YA too, but had been querying it variously as literary paranormal, paranormal thriller– (what the heck is this thing?!)
I too, was afraid of the YA label because I wanted to be taken “seriously”– but I’m happy to resort my eyes have been opened– WIDE. By reading some of the terrific YA out there it made me realize YA can be very literary and every bit as complex and engrossing as other fiction.
Great post!
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