Week Thirteen Prompt Response: YA and New Adult

The idea that adults shouldn't read young adult or new adult books is one that, frankly, frustrates me. The idea that anyone should decide what is acceptable for others' to read borders on, or often is outright, censorship. I have read a large number of young/new adult novels in the past couple of years, often not realizing the book is even considered that until I've already fallen in love with the book and realized the characters are all 16-19 years old. These novels are the ones that got me back into reading in the first place. After years of not reading a thing, I decided to reread The Hunger Games series and I haven't looked back. Jennifer L. Armentrout's Blood & Ash series introduced me to the concept of "new adult" books, and I haven't looked back from that yet, either. 

I think the idea that these books are considered "less than" often stems from the idea that books made for teenagers or have primarily female audiences are not "good." This is something we've seen crop up for decades for romance novels or books deemed "chick lit." (My guess it is has something to do with the way our society tends to view these audiences themselves as less than, but I digress.) However, there is no proof that these kinds of books actually are "less than" or not "good" on the whole (obviously, just because a book gets published doesn't necessarily mean that it is good, or that it is considered good to every reader). Cataldi (2015) discusses the kinds of topics you can find in both YA and NA - topics that you can find in general adult fiction, too: depression, drug abuse, sexuality, mental illness, bullying, and more. I've often found these kinds of topics to be handled even more carefully in these kinds of books than they are in general adult, handled in ways that older audiences may appreciate even more than when they appear in general adult novels. I recently read Legendborn by Tracy Deonn (my YA annotation for the week), a novel that includes depictions of racism, classism, slavery, sexual assault, generational trauma, misogyny, and violence. All of these incredibly serious topics are handled with grace, dignity, and the appropriate rage, anger, sadness, and every other emotion that comes along with it. Even though the main character is a 16-year-old and the book is intended for teenagers, this was an incredibly beautiful, poignant story to read as an adult, and I have recommended it to adult patrons since I read it (and they loved it). 

Just because a book is "intended" for certain audiences, there is no reason libraries and librarians should not be promoting these materials to their patrons in "unintended" audiences. If the whole point of RA is that we are helping people find something to read that they enjoy - in whatever way that may be - why would we not promote these materials to adults? I have many friends and family who love reading young adult novels - they often make up the majority of their reading lists. I have retired patrons who love their young adult novels (and often lets me just hand her books to read if I think she'll like them). If we're doing readers' advisory and someone says "I've really been like fantasy romance books that deal with warring kingdoms, magic, fated mates, etc.," one of my first questions is going to be if they've tried anything by Sarah J. Maas - a primarily YA author who has become a key author of YA/NA fantasy novels - no matter if they have never read YA before. Wyatt & Saricks (2019) discuss ways to help our patrons branch out from what they normally read by finding things with similar appeal, including YA/NA is just another way to do that. 

Our job is not to judge what people like to read, but get them more things to read. And if branching out into YA/NA when they never have before is the way to do that, why wouldn't we? 

References 

Cataldi, E. (2015, August, 19). Betwixt and between: New adult fiction. Library Journal. https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/betwixt-and-between-new-adult-fiction-collection-development-september-1-2015 

Wyatt, N. & Saricks, J. G. (2019). The readers' advisory guide to genre fiction (3rd ed.). ALA Editions.