The Critical Merits of Young Adult Literature

Coming of Age

Crag Hill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780415819183
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134054749
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Educación general

This examination of the literary effectiveness of young adult literature from a critical, research-oriented perspective answers two key questions asked by many teachers and scholars in the field: Does young adult literature stand up on its own as literature? Is it worthy of close study?

The treatment is both conceptual and pragmatic. Each chapter discusses a topical text set of YA novels in a conceptual framework—how these novels contribute to or deconstruct conventional wisdom about key topics from identity formation to awareness of world issues, while also providing a springboard in secondary and college classrooms for critical discussion of these novels. Uncloaking many of the issues that have been essentially invisible in discussions of YA literature, these essays can then guide the design of curriculum through which adolescent readers hone the necessary skills to unpack the ideologies embedded in YA narratives. The annotated bibliography provides supplementary articles and books germane to all the issues discussed. Closing "End Points" highlight and reinforce cross-cutting themes throughout the book and tie the essays together.

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INTRODUCTION

Young Adult Literature and Scholarship Come of Age

Crag Hill

One of the criticisms of YA literature over the years has been that it lacks a strong “critical base,” that teachers and YA scholars focus almost exclusively on the pedagogical and sociological value of the books rather than examining them critically as pieces of literature. I know that’s not completely true—there are plenty of thoughtful, insightful publications that delve deeply into the literature and its place in the literary world—but I would like to see more of that, both in the journals and at the ALAN.

Virginia Monseau in Jim Blasingame’s “ALAN Award Winners: Virginia Monseau and Marc Aronson,” The ALAN Review, Fall 2007

If we date the birth of young adult (YA) literature to the publication in 1967 of S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, YA literature is well into middle age. YA literature courses are now a staple of English Education programs, and in states such as Washington competency in YA literature is one of the endorsement requirements students seeking a teaching credential must meet. Yet high school teachers, parents, professors of literature, and even English educators continue to treat YA literature as an illegitimate child. Often mentioned in derogatory terms—“kiddie lit” (Clark, 2004), or “juvenile lit”—YA literature is often summarily blamed for the slippage of morals (promoting sex, drug use, offensive language) or, in this age of testing, for the decline in national reading scores, as Sandra Stotsky is reported to have recently stated (Layton, 2012), with no empirical evidence to substantiate such a claim.

Building on the important pedagogical and critical work of its predecessors, The Critical Merits of Young Adult Literature intends to push back on the misconceptions that continue to plague the field. The essays in this collection will help secondary teachers and English educators to choose novels for their literature courses, to demonstrate a variety of critical approaches to YA texts, and, even more importantly, to begin to put to rest doubts about the literary value of YA literature. Collectively, these essays will equip students, teachers, and researchers with answers to the question that just won’t go away: “Why study YA literature?”

The Critical Merits of Young Adult Literature?

My claim that YA literature has come of age is not a new one. Twenty years ago, Monseau and Salvner (1992) declared that “young adult novels have come of age through their treatment of themes that matter not just to teens struggling with adolescence, but to all of us” (p. xi). Gallo (1992) asserted that YA literature has more literary merit than most English teachers give it credit for and that this literary merit is a sign of YA literature’s maturity. Hunt (1996) declared that YA literature “has been ‘coming of age’ for over a quarter of a century if you count from The Pigman and The Outsiders, more than half a century if you count from The Seventeenth Century” (p. 4). Moore (1997) also proclaimed that YA literature was coming of age. In Interpreting Young Adult Literature: Literary Theory in the Secondary Classroom, Moore showed—book by book, literary theory by literary theory—how adolescent literature holds up to contemporary literary theory. One of the explicit goals for Moore’s book was to convince readers “that young adult literature can come of age, can lose its stepchild status, only if we treat it with the same respect as other literatures we teach” (p. 2). Wilder and Teasley (2000) claimed that YA literature had matured over the previous twenty years, citing as evidence the “dizzying array of genres (science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, adventure, and romance), multiple points of view, multiple means of advancing the story (letters, faxes, poems, ’zines), inventive plots, important contemporary issues, and truly individual characters we haven’t met before” (p. 57). Soter and Connors (2009) claim “that young adult literature has already come of age in terms of its relevance to adolescents” (p. 62).

Yet Hunt (1994) has argued that in both form and content children’s literature—within which young adult literature is often subsumed—has lagged behind the content of adult literature. Arguing that children’s literature is exhibiting signs of increasing sophistication, Nikolajeva (1997) countered that “contemporary children’s literature is generally developing from plot-oriented texts toward character-oriented texts” (p. 85) and, employing Bakhtin’s theory of the polyphonic, multivoiced novel, contended “that children’s literature today is rapidly developing from epic to polyphonic” (p. 85). Nikolajeva regards “polyphony, ambivalence, intertextuality, and metafiction as typical traits of contemporary literature for young readers” (p. 89). Cart also argues that YA literature has caught up, and more. He writes,

Never before has this field been so creatively risk taking, so artistically rich, so intellectually stimulating or so protean in re-defining its audience as it pushes back the previous boundaries that had limited its readership to young people aged twelve to eighteen.

(2003, p. 113)

As the audience has expanded, the artistic potential has followed suit. Writers who may once have shunned the field, Cart writes, now “are freer than ever to experiment, to flex their creative muscles, to employ themes, tools, and techniques that were previously considered taboo in a literature that had once been defined by constraints and too often fashioned according to formula” (p. 113). Critically acclaimed writers such as Joyce Carol Oates, Michael Chabon, Julia Alvarez, Francine Prose, and Sherman Alexie, along with best-selling adult writers Carl Hiaasen, James Patterson, and Ridley Pearson, have published fiction for young adult readers (Bickmore, 2012; Cart, 2003; Daniels, 2006).

YA literature has come a long way, but it has a long way to go. Many high school teachers remain reluctant to use YA literature in their classrooms alongside the traditional classics that have been the staple of the literature curriculum for 100 years (Gibbons, Dail, & Stallworth, 2006; Herz & Gallo, 1996/2005). According to many high school teachers, YA literature is too simplistic in language, plot, and characterization (Gibbons et al., 2006; Herz & Gallo, 1996; Hopper, 2006; Jago, 2000; Knickerbocker & Rycik, 2002; Stephens, 2007). While YA literature is frequently used in the ninth grade (38 percent), it all but disappears by the twelfth grade (Moore, 1997). Soter and Connors (2009), however, argue that it is time “to push for [YA literature’s] acceptance as ‘Literature’ by high school teachers” (p. 62).

Recent Market and Critical Success

The surge of advocacy for YA literature in classrooms and libraries that began in the 1970s and which has continued unabated through the first decade of the twenty-first century has had a pronounced positive effect. YA literature is ensconced in our culture in print and in film adaptations and contributes to literature study in middle school language arts curricula (for example, many YA novels can be found in the exemplar texts posted on the website for the Common Core Standards, which have been adopted by 46 states).

A generation ago, YA literature meant books published for readers 12–18 years old, but in the last ten years the term has expanded to include readers “as young as 10 and (arguably) as old as 35” (Cart, 2004, p. 734). Between 1990 and 2000, a 17 percent growth in the number of persons aged between 12 and 19 years fueled a boom in publishing. Between 1995 and 2005 there was a 25 percent rise in the number of books published for young adults and a 23 percent rise in the number of books sold (Campbell, 2010; Cart, 2004). Campbell (2010) suggests several factors for these increases: the Baby Boom boomlet, the Harry Potter phenomena (undoubtedly Twilight has also played a factor), and major chain bookstores creating YA sections separate from children’s books. The establishment of the Michael L. Printz Award, selected by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), and other awards has further enhanced the stature of YA literature (Koss & Teale, 2009).

Cart (2003) also points to the effect of the newly created Michael L. Printz Award, the only award that is “granted solely on the basis of literary merit” (p. 114). Involved in creating the award, Cart states that others involved “were absolutely convinced that young adult literature had, indeed, come of age as literature, which could be examined, evaluated, taught, and appreciated on the same footing and terms as adult literature” (p. 114). It was deemed time to recognize the best YA book published each year, based entirely on literary merit. The books receiving the Printz award, Cart writes, “are changing the way people think about young adult literature and the way it is published” (p. 116).

Cart (2004) dates the expansion of YA into the 10–14 age range to the middle school movement of the 1980s. He argues that the expansion into the 19–35 demographic has been market-driven, the book market shifting from libraries and schools to bookstores: “Simply stated, this means that we adult professionals are no longer considered the principal purchasers of YA literature, the marketing-and-sales emphasis having now shifted to the young adults themselves” (p. 734). Publishers have responded to the shrinking institutional market by turning to teens, “a newly powerful consumer class that seemed to have taken up permanent residence in the malls of America” (p. 734). Beginning with the success of Go Ask Alice in the 1970s, publishers began to market original paperback series aimed at this demographic, including titles such as Sweet Valley High (Campbell, 2010).

Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak and Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallfower have had particular success, both commercially and critically. Speak has sold over a million copies, been translated into sixteen languages (Glenn, 2010), made into a film starring Kristen Stewart (now famous for her starring role in the Twilight films), included in classrooms around the world, and has been challenged so frequently it ranks in the top sixty on the American Library Association’s (ALA) (2012) list of 100 banned/challenged books. Perhaps more than any other recent YA novel, Speak has warranted numerous critical articles (Alsup, 2003; Detora, 2006; Franzak & Noll, 2006; Glenn, 2010; Latham, 2006; McGee, 2009; O’Quinn, 2001; Tannert-Smith, 2010). Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, also published in 1999, has achieved considerable success as well. It too has sold over a million copies, been translated into several languages, and a film version appeared in 2012, starring Emma Watson of Harry Potter fame. It has been challenged even more frequently than Anderson’s Speak, ranking tenth on the ALA’s (2009) list of banned/challenged books. Cadden (2000) focused on The Perks of Being a Wallflower in a discussion of character narration and double-voicedness. Blackburn and Clark (2011) incorporated The Perks of Being a Wallflower into an analysis of discourse in a long-term literature discussion group comprised of teachers and students. The prominence the 2012 film will give the novel will undoubtedly result in further critical study of Perks in the coming years.

YA literature’s commercial success has not been limited to the publishing industry. In fact, over the last few decades, film adaptations of YA novels have become a staple of the movie industry. From blockbuster serials such as Harry Potter and Twilight (with the record-setting first book of The Hunger Games trilogy ensuring the other two books will be adapted) to adaptations of YA classics The Chocolate War, The Outsiders, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Tuck Everlasting to Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, the plots and characters of YA novels have generated fortunes for many movie studios. In turn, these films have been used in language arts classrooms for a variety of projects, including supporting critical literacy (Simmons, 2011), teaching literary devices (Gillis, 2011), and practicing reader-response strategies (Foster, 1994).

The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Library Journal, and other newspapers and magazines have proclaimed that YA literature is not just for teenagers anymore. Adult readers, according to Scholastic, are now a third of its market. Bowker Market Research (2012) reports that 55 percent of buyers of YA literature (which publishers designate for readers aged 12–17) are 18 years or older, with the largest demographic being the 30–44 age group, accounting for a whopping 28 percent of YA sales. These books are not being purchased for children: 78 percent are purchased by adults for their own reading. Zdilla (2010) has demonstrated that adolescents are not the only ones reading YA fiction on a regular basis. College students, raised on Harry Potter, read Patricia McCormick’s Cut, the fairy stories of Melissa Maar, Ellen Hopkin’s verse novels, The Hunger Games series, and novels about the undead alongside their textbooks. Some read YA fiction because they can connect to a character close in age or have experienced similar situations; some for “quick” reads, students having less free time in their schedules; and some have never distinguished between YA and adult literature, YA being prominent in their preferred literature (Zdilla, 2010).

These market and critical successes are carrying over into the classroom, generating unprecedented opportunities for social interaction between producers, consumers, and teachers of texts. Publishers ha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword: Coming of Age with Young Adult Literature through Critical Analysis
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: Young Adult Literature and Scholarship Come of Age
• 2 More Than a “Time of Storm and Stress”: The Complex Depiction of Adolescent Identity in Contemporary Young Adult Novels
• 3 Sexuality as Risk and Resistance in Young Adult Literature
• 4 Hungry Like the Wolf: Gender Non-conformity in YAL
• 5 “The Worst Form of Violence”: Unpacking Portrayals of Poverty in Young Adult Novels
• 6 “I Was Carrying the Burden of My Race”: Reading Matters of Race and Hope in YA Literature by Walter Dean Myers and Sherman Alexie
• 7 Creating an Eco-warrior: Wilderness and Identity in the Dystopian World of Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies Series
• 8 The Emigrant, Immigrant, and Trafficked Experiences of Adolescents: Young Adult Literature as Window and Mirror
• 9 Annotated Bibliography
• End Points
• List of Contributors
• Index