Young Adult Literature

Brief History

       There was a time when little or no distinction was made about the age for which literary works were intended.  Few enough people could read anything, so most written works were directed at a small minority of educated people; oral literature (folklore), which provided a source of entertainment for the mass of people, was necessarily presented to mixed audiences.
      With the rise in literacy that accompanied the development of mechanical printing and the spread of trade (which required written records and communications), the audience for writing began to be differentiated.  The first book written specifically for children was John Amos Comenius's Orbis Sensualium Pictus (ca. 1657), a kind of visual encyclopedia of the world as it existed in the middle of the 17th century.   
      Other works specifically for younger readers followed – Perrault’s Fairy Tales, probably the earliest “children’s book” still popular today, appeared in 1697, the first European translations of the Arabian Nights early in the 18^th century, etc.  By the mid-1700s, a healthy trade in “chapbooks,” inexpensively printed, often fantastic adventure stories, entertained young readers, while “respectable” publishers like John Newbery produced didactic and amusing tales for the growing number of literate children, mostly members of the middle classes.
      The historical distinction between adult literature and “children’s literature” is thus at most three centuries old.  “Children’s literature,” however, proved to be too broad a term; early “children’s books” ranged from picture books like Heinrich Hoffmann’s Struwwelpeter, clearly intended to modify the behavior of younger children, to hefty novels like Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, which deals primarily with the adolescent struggles of four sisters and follows them into young womanhood and marriage.
      As Western society has had less need for young people to enter the workforce at an early age, and additional education became socially and financially necessary for more people, the period of transition between childhood (itself considered by many social his­tor­ians to be an artifact of modern bourgeois society) and adulthood be­came extended.  Thus was created a distinct “adolescent” period.  The primary task for this transitional period is identified as separation from the parents/ family and individuation, or the development of a sense of one’s identity.  The adolescent psychologist Erik Erikson explained that this process caused an “identity crisis” in young people from about the age of 12 until at least 19.
      The state of teenage dependency on adults is an artifact of modern life; as the Pinskers note: “Until the nineteenth century, children labored in the fields alongside their parents.  But by the time they were fifteen, they might marry and go out into the world.  Industrialization and com­pulsory education ultimately deprived them of a role in the family work unit, leaving them in a state of suspension between childhood and adulthood.” This lengthening of child­hood has become even more pronounced with the increased emphasis on college today (160).
      Responding to this extension of the transitional period, writing for children increasingly became fragmented, and a separate body of writing for and about adolescents has emerged over the past 30 years or so.  A traditional beginning point for the concept of “young adult” literature was Hinton’s The Outsiders (published 1967).
      This development primarily took place in realistic fiction, both contemporary and historical, although today the genre of fantasy (which always had a broader age range in its appeal) also has distinct YA works.  The new fiction tended to explore the social institutions and conventions that shape adolescent lives and to address specific problems and concerns particular to this age group – the problem of adolescent sexuality, for instance, or of the first discovery of one’s own mortality.   For this reason, many of these books have been given the label “problem novels,” although the label tends to suggest a larger didactic purpose than may in fact be the case.

Defining YA Literature

      Exactly what constitutes “YA” literature varies with the eye of the beholder, although there is a fairly wide consensus that the audience for such literature consists of teenagers.  But what body of literature that encompasses is somewhat ambiguous.  One writer described finding in library of a junior high he was visiting only “adult books and classics that make up the bulk of the required reading in secondary school”; in a book store, by comparison, it was mostly series books like Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High (Crowe 120).  Neither of these limitations address the variety of quality writing for teenagers that exists today.
      While “YA” can be used to refer to books that are written or marketed for adolescents, it may also include works that were originally written for adults but have particular appeal to and are read by teenagers; for example, J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye or John Knowles’s A Separate Peace, both written before the YA designation even existed.  They may also include books written for children that appeal to teen readers – Alcott’s Little Women or Rowling’s Harry Potter series.  And the term occasionally refers to “classics” of adult literature that are regularly assigned reading in high schools.
      A better distinction might be that YA literature (what we might call “true” YA literature) is that which addresses the particular issues of adolescence, and which usually features adolescent protagonists.  “Young adults are going through a number of developmental changes that influence their reading interests.  Their social identity is developing.  They are necessarily negotiating new roles in their families and in their work and leisure.  Love becomes an issue for them.  Peers are becoming increasingly important, with the result that peer pressure and conformity are major concerns.” (Literature and the Young Adult Reader)  In 1992, YA author Walter Dean Myers defined the role of literature for young adults as giving “strategies for living.”
      Of particular interest in the study of young adult literature is the way in which adoles­cents are presented to themselves – what kind of experience does the novel posit is “typical” of this age?  What is “interesting” to teens?
      “Erikson saw adolescence as precipitating an identity crisis” (Pinsker 151); this is in fact the primary occupation of young people from about the age of 12 until at least 19 (152).  Failing to develop a sense of oneself as an individual results in “identity confusion.”   Delaying the transition is called a “moratorium,” a period in which adolescents can, e.g., do things that adults may not, and are not expected to take on adult roles such as marriage or self support (Pinsker 152). 

SOURCES: Jean E. Brown and Elaine C. Stephens, Teaching Young Adult Literature: Sharing the Connection, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1995; Chris Crowe, “Young Adult Literature: What Is Young Adult Literature?” English Journal 88, 1 (September 1998) 120-22; Sanford and Ann Pinsker, Understanding Catcher in the Rye: A Student Case­book to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999.  Literature and the Young Adult Reader.  Pierson Educational, 2005 (forthcoming textbook; author unknown)

Last modified January 25, 2005