I Used to Loathe YA Books and Now I Write Them

We all go through that stage where whatever is popular with the majority and is loved by millions, we have to hate it. My stage was in middle school and the first few years of high school. I deemed myself too smart for young adult literature. It wasn’t stimulating, it didn’t have those four dollar words I thought (and I won’t lie, still think) are important, and it didn’t have meat on its bones. I wanted meat. I wanted something that made me think and made me have to pick up my dictionary. In short, I was a snob. I’m not too proud to admit it. The only young adult or middle grade books I would touch were Paulsen’s The Hatchet, Rawls’s Where the Red Fern Grows, L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time or Lovelace’s Betsy Tacy if I was feeling nostalgic. I had become a fan of Poe, Hawthorne, King and Barker. I was reading Homer and Grimm and I felt so grown up and intelligent. I also snubbed romance novels because it embarrassed me to have people know I was reading romance. The covers always ensured that everyone would know whether or not you were reading smut. 

I sometimes think about whether or not I made a mistake by not following juvenile literature and depending on the day my answer changes. Nowadays I read TONS of ya novels and authors because that’s the genre I ended up writing but I’m still undecided on whether or not I’m really a fan. How sad is that? I want in on the genre but I’m not a die hard. Hypocrite, right? Let me explain myself.

I became a fan of ya again when I read the Harry Potter series. Honestly, I stuck to my guns as long as I could because I was in high school and the snob inside of me didn’t want to read a middle grade book but I had a certain English teacher, Mrs. Crabbe, who would not leave us alone about how great these books were. She was even thinking of making the first book part of our curriculum. Eventually my friends gave in. Rowling’s fourth book was coming out that Christmas and after hearing absolutely everyone praise the storytelling and the plot line I couldn’t take it any longer. I bought the first book, I read it (more like devoured it) and just like that I was hooked. I became one of Rowling’s avid readers who bought her books the day they came out, fighting small children and their mothers for the last remaining copy. Don’t worry I didn’t hurt anybody, I don’t think. Harry Potter was fresh and exciting and it drew me back into the world of juvenile fiction. My college years were too busy for extracurricular reading. Being a theater student meant you had sold your soul to the stage until you graduated but when I did graduate and left for the real world I was able to pick right back up where I had left off and jumped back into books. 

I loved, LOVED, Frank Beddor’s Looking Glass Wars. It was a fresh enough take on Alice in Wonderland for me to not be bored. Who didn’t like The Hunger Games series? And though I’m not a fan of the Mortal Instruments series I did like its prequel the Infernal Devices series. Seriously, who wants to read a series where the lead and her love interest think they are brother and sister and still make out. The only excuse I can think of for this had to be Clare was channeling Mark Waters’s The House of Yes . . . gross. Good movie but gross. I have read lots of ya fiction. I have my trusty library card and I’ve read a lot of good like Maggie Stiefvater’s Scorpio Races, and I’ve read a lot of bad (I won’t name them but they know who they are.)

 So, what makes me not appreciate young adult books after a few years of loving them? For starters, I have a kid now. My son is two so he is a ways off from reading novels but the trend I’m seeing really bothers me. Boy leads don’t seem to be popular anymore. It is all about the ladies. Girls get the pleasure nowadays of being strong and willful leads and I’m cool with that. They should be strong and have a head on their shoulders and if they don’t I expect bad choices and consequences just like I would with a male lead. Let’s face it, in real life if you make a stupid decision there will always be unpleasant and sometimes dangerous consequences. Lately if female leads make bad choices in a book the man fixes it for them or they manage to get to the end without learning a damn thing. Which brings me to brains . . . sometimes they are the dumbest character I think I’ve ever read, other times you would think they were Einstein reborn, but though they may not always be the smartest cookie they ALWAYS have street smarts which is what really counts in the post apocalyptic books (can you hear my sarcastic tone? No? I’ll do it louder.) You know those books. The ones where the tiny girls are street smart bad asses, because when I was fifteen I also could kick a grown man’s ass with the karate my boyfriend taught me a week ago . . . 

I’m not against super powers or paranormal happenings, it’s usually my favorite part of the book, but I do get tired of getting to the end of a novel where the girl is dating an angel or a demon, she spends all those early novels being a human and dying over the fact that she is mortal then somehow magically ends up being and angel or demon herself when all is said and done so that the two lovers can be together forever. Or they’re vampires, or werewolves thanks to their boyfriends friendly bite. Why can’t one of the lovers just die? Do stories always have to have happy endings? And while we’re on the subject of lovers does anyone else get tired of the rape vibe put out there by the male counterparts? And the fact that most conversations concern sex - to have it, to not have it, maybe he should be my first, my best friend does it why can’t I? None of this rings true and it brings me back to those wonderful shows in the nineties that dealt with “teenage problems” that no teenager really had but it made for good television. Sweet Valley High anyone? 

I didn’t intend for this to turn into a rant but I would rather kids learn that stupid mistakes lead to regrets, that they are not always going to win the fight and that there isn’t always an answer to the question. We all love happy endings but even good people can lose. And what I feel is the most important – your teenage years shouldn’t revolve around your boyfriend or girlfriend. That ends too. And if you find out you’re dating an immortal creature of the night, for God’s sake, RUN AWAY! I’m not naïve enough to think that I can change the genre and bring back a good blend of action and romance while keeping it somewhat wholesome but I do try to keep my characters grounded. They think, they reason, they make a choice and follow it, whether good or bad, to the end and they find that some things cannot be fought with brute strength and that other things should be taken on faith. I love young adult literature. I think it can make a huge difference in a kid’s life and I hope that these kids are like I was yearning for substance and fantasy so that’s what I try to write. That and I like to try and creep the hell out of them. I can’t wait for Halloween!