I was visiting my parents this weekend, and I saw this poll in my mom’s copy of Women’s Day:
Two of the four books they suggest are YA, but they’re not called out as such. It’s not a poll about what books moms are stealing from their teens’ bookshelves, or what YA women would like to try. They’re just listed as books. Granted, they’re not at the top of this poll, but I’m glad to see The Hunger Games and The Book Thief listed here without being labelled as an “other.”
I saw the trailers for The Hunger Games online, and it was the first movie I’d seen advertised in a while that looked worth going to, so we went out for my husband’s birthday.
I liked the movie, so I decided to get the books, and I read them in one weekend. Then I gave them to my husband, who said he was surprised at how good they were. He was even more surprised when I told him that they were YA books. He said they didn’t feel like YA books because they were gritty and didn’t “talk down.”
When I was young, there wasn’t much in the way of YA, so I had to skip from Sweet Valley Twins (that was the closest thing we had to YA *back in the day*) directly into Jean M. Auel and Marion Zimmer Bradley. But how many young people didn’t make that big a leap?
There’s also the fact that there are adults who aren’t capable of reading dense, “adult” literature. This new crop of YA books which blur the line between child and adult reading is good for both young people and older people.
Definitely agree that there’s more in the way of YA these days, and that the quality keeps increasing (like The Hunger Games not talking down to readers). I also think that YA is filled with great stories, which readers of all ages look for.