All I want to add is that we all have our compensatory mechanisms, and reading trashy books or watching trashy TV is a very healthy kind of coping mechanism. Of course, it only remains healthy for as long as we realize that this is what it is and don’t enter into a creepy relationship with this habit, romanticizing it in strange ways.
16 responses to ““Why Nobody Should Read YA Literature””
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Should school libraries have no YA, but only children and adult lit, in your opinion?
Could it be different in schools outside English speaking countries (carrying YA lit)? School students, say in Israel, are capable of reading Judy Blume books much before they can read adult books in English, because of simpler language of YA. Other alternatives are reading child lit (which I did, but many teens wouldn’t, imo) or re-tellings of adult books in simpler English (which I never did, prefered to read original books in Russian translation).
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This is beyond weird. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are YA literature, for example. I, for one, think they are profoundly good literature. I am not going to spend the time to read the link.
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The author defines YA as “today’s trashy books marketed to teens.”
Of course, following this approach and defining (for instance) novels by women as “trashy books for women” would lead one to the same conclusion of “nobody should read,” and ignore the wealth of great literature created by female authors.
I agree that most YA are trash, but most adult books are trash too.
From her post:
But “the YA mark” is not some natural developmental hurdle you have to leap before you’re ready for the real stuff. If you can understand The Hunger Games, you can understand Animal Farm and 1984… If you can understand teen girl romances, you can understand at least one level of Jane Austen. If you want to read about love and death, you can read Anna Karenina or even War and Peace
I disagree that everybody can jump from fairy tales to “Anna Karenina.” Clarissa could and probably the post’s writer, but I couldn’t and for a while read many good novels for teens (Mark Twain, in Russian – “Dinka” and “Dinka says goodbye to childhood,” Sholohov “Donskie rasskazu,” etc.)
May be, they simply include what I call “novels for teens” into child literature and/or adult literature, and thus solve the problem.
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Admittedly, the only YA books I have read in recent years are those by Tamora Pierce, Nalo Hopkinson, and Nnedi Okorafor (earlier Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu.) I consider all three of these women to be literary figures of importance in present-day speculative literature.
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Twain and Sholokhov are hardly kids’ stuff. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is serious, complex literature. I took a course in college that spent the entire semester reading and analyzing this one novel. It’s a work of art of the highest order. Of course, the way one reads it (or Anna Karenina) at 15 is not the same as at 35.
“I agree that most YA are trash, but most adult books are trash too.”
– I read trashy books and stand by this hobby 100%. By God, I read Jodi Picoult, and it’s hard to go lower than that. 🙂 But what is central here is the realization that this is entertainment of the same order as watching sitcoms or Hollywood movies. As long as people don’t confuse this pastime with intellectual pursuits and growth, it’s all good. It’s like food, you know. It’s one thing to enjoy an occasional Big Mac but it’s an entirely different thing to eat nothing but them.
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“Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are YA literature, for example”
– No, of course not. 🙂 This concept didn’t exist then. I can’t imagine Mark Twain understanding who “a young adult” even was. 🙂 This is a very culturally specific and limited phenomenon that has no translation into any other language I speak.
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YA is an American marketing category. I think that any novel with a teenaged protagonist gets promoted as YA. As mentioned by David, some titles of speculative fiction genre gets promoted as YA and not as specfic/scifi/fantasy.
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“YA is an American marketing category. I think that any novel with a teenaged protagonist gets promoted as YA.”
– Exactly. That’s precisely what I’ve been trying to say. Of course, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet would be YA under this definition. 🙂
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Found this:
Hating on The Fault in Our Stars
http://delagar.blogspot.co.il/2014/06/hating-on-fault-in-our-stars.htmlJohn Green, who wrote the book, worked with kids who had cancer. That’s what moved him to write the book: his understanding of what it was like to be those kids. And this book captures what it is like to be on the other side of the cancer divide (to be in Cancer Land, as I used to think of it) better than anything I have ever read.
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These tear-jerkers do have cathartic value. But if people want to read about cancer, I’d recommend Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward. That’s really powerful stuff.
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I was in a bookshop in the US a few months ago where I saw an unexpected section …
“Young Teen Paranormal Romance”
Before you say, “OH, that’s where they keep the ‘Twilight’ books”, keep in mind that this was an entire section, and not merely a repository for one author’s works.
It’s just a bit oddly specific as far as I see it. 🙂
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Hmm.
I’m an adult who reads YA. I like reading something shorter, then if I enjoy an author I’ll pick up their 600+ page book for adults.
The Hunger Games may not show the sophisticated use of language that Orwell does but it contains some interesting ideas and good characterisation. What’s painfully dire is the derivative dystopias with pretty dresses written to cash in on the success of The Hunger Games.
But people can disapprove of books for the strangest reasons. After re-reading Rebecca I googled reviews and came across someone who disapproved of it for its low morality and use of profanity.LikeLike
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Yes, I kept reading the linked blog and realized that the linked author disapproves of YA books because they challenge the parents’ ownership over their children. That was disturbing.
“The Hunger Games may not show the sophisticated use of language that Orwell does but it contains some interesting ideas and good characterisation.”
– I read the trilogy and I can’t agree. The characters make no sense psychologically. But the plot rocks! I couldn’t stop reading until I just finished the whole thing. The last book of the series was disappointing, though.
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Here is me on Hunger Games, just in case: https://clarissasblog.com/2012/04/14/hunger-games-a-review/
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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