I think that the draw of YA for me has been the strong voices (whether told in first person or third) and the creative story lines. A lot of the other genres of books I’ve been reading (especially fantasy, and science fiction to a lesser degree) have started feeling very repetative, but YA doesn’t feel that way, no matter the genre. Perhaps it’s because the authors aren’t relying so much on tropes, because they can’t assume that the readers know the tropes? Just a thought.

(I, too, read V.C. Andrews, including Flowers in the Attic and many books ghost-written under the name, when I was in my early teens or before. Somehow, I still managed to become a responsible, rational adult. Who reads YA.

That being said I don’t care for Twilight, but mostly because of what its done. I don’t want to read another teen fairy/vamp/supernatural romance. I love books that are different and it seems like the popularity of Twilight has caused a market flooding of vampance. I don’t mind fluff chracters or soppy plots, its the actual quality of the writing in books that makes me cringe. Who edits these things? Ahh well here’s hoping that more authors will soon be discovered who write feminist fantasy for teens.

Love the writing Justine.

Parents have to be involved in what their kids read, and make sure they dont read anything that they can’t handle.
And the goosebumps books aren’t bad, just too scary for 8 year old me.

I definitely think that parents have every right to say if they think their kids are reading something inappropriate. But that is a parent’s job, not the job of media, the bookstore, etc. They should know what their children are affected by. Obviously there comes a time when they should trust their kids to know for themselves if something is appropriate, that they’ve taught them values, and they’re old enough to know, say, “this character is doing such and such, and I like the story, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay for me to do that.” It’s probably a struggle for some parents to recognize when their teens reach that point, and frustrating for the teens when their parents don’t realize that they’ve grown up.

I do think it matters what you read, and I’d like to paraphrase C.S. Lewis who said that a book that is only good for children is not a good book at all. A good book is as good at 50 as it was at 10. That being said, I don’t think there’s a reason to keep kids from reading those books that “don’t hold up” for adults if they want to.

I’m in my twenties and I regularly read YA books. I read them more than “adult” books, actually. In many ways, I think YA books are better than contemporary “adult” books. They’re generally cleaner, for one thing. I have young cousins and I sometimes have to decide if I would recommend a book to the 12-14 year olds. I’m usually most concerned about sexual content or language, but then I’m pretty conservative.

But then I spent most of my youth reading classics. I read very few contemporary books until after high school!

Which reminds me: do you think I would have ever read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay without being a huge comic book geek? Probably not. But more importantly, Michael Chabon would never have wrote the thing had HE not been a comic book geek. Junot Diaz wouldn’t have written The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao without comics either. That’s two Pulitzer-prize winning novelists who grew up reading comic books (and still do in their 40s)

Furthermore, both back in college and now in law school, I frankly don’t have the time to read “real” novels, or even YA novels. I can spend an hour or so a week knocking out a few comics and trade paperbacks. Don’t tell me comics are rotting my brain, when they are in fact saving my sanity.

Every now and then I’ll look at my bookshelf and see multiple books that I’ve bought but haven’t even started reading and I’ll be a little dissappointed in myself, but then I’ll remember that I spend most of my time reading. The difference is I’ve been reading fanfiction, which to me seems even better. Not only do I read, but it allows a place to actually have mature conversations on different aspects of the show/book/whatever else the story is about. I can think deeply about things that I otherwise wouldn’t have given a second thought. Just because it isn’t a published work of art does not mean it doesn’t count as reading, and I read this stuff A LOT.

Interviews/ProfilesSuvudu interviews C.L. Anderson.Jeff VanderMeer interviews S.J. Chambers.Philip Pullman on censorship and free speechBackroom Comics interviews Chris Roberson, who reveals he’s scripting a comic prequel to Philip k. Dick’s Do Andro…

So again, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!! I’m linking this to our website for further reference!

K.

I do not believe in censoring reading for children: their greatest influences remain their parents and peers, not books. But books aren’t irrelevant either. That’s why we use them in schools and people get apoplectic about “kids not reading enough.” (It’s defining the enough of what that gets really thorny.)

I need to think on this some.

And congrats on the short list!

I’ve never heard of adults worrying about kids reading only nonfiction before. What exactly is the reasoning behind that? Ultimately the discussions about what they *should* read won’t matter. Teenagers will read what they want as long as they can get their hands on it, no matter what the adults around them think. I know I did.

But I DO want to mention that my most recent post was on the topic of “scary=not appropriate for kids.” And my conclusion was that kids handle scary way better than adults (particularly parents) do!

I agree wholeheartedly. As an adult who has enjoyed your books (purchased for my YA daughter but I get to read them first) and who spent his early teen years reading huge amounts of WWII history rather than novels I don’t think we should try and categorise one form of reading as good and another as bad.

As for “suitable” my mother once said that the only result she could see from putting the “unsuitable” books in our house on the top shelf away from the voracious reader when I was six and seven was it taught me to climb and she never saw any damage from me reading them.

// Tony

But I do think that reading fiction (particularly fiction) is an important thing to learn to do. Fiction imparts world-views and ideas in a really immersive kind of way that isn’t replicable with any other medium. Reading a novel takes a long time (much longer than watching a movie or a TV show or even reading a graphic novel) and spending so much time with a character or characters forces you to empathize with them. I hated almost every character in Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, for instance, but even though I only read the book once years ago, I still remember what it felt like to see things from such different and repellent-to-me perspectives. I think that’s cool and worthwhile, and I think it’s something only fiction can do. Even when it’s crappy.

Aside from that, I think I largely agree.