Of Pitfalls and Promises

What have we gotten ourselves into? 

When we ask ourselves to define a genre or literary period, we typically realize what we are getting into. Romantics wrote in England between the beginnings of the French Revolution and (arguably) just before or just after the start of the reign of Queen Victoria. So we call anything that was written by a British author during that time period and following the guidelines created by the Romantic Greats English Romantics – There is something funny about that definition, but for my purposes it doesn’t need to be perfect. Fantasy is that thing that isn’t reality, but also isn’t Science Fiction or Historical Fiction or Magic Realism – again, not the best definition, but it is easier to say what a genre isn’t than what it is, and right now that works for me, so go along with it. We feel pretty good with ourselves after being able to point out what thing is an example of a genre or period. But then we go and ask a question like – What is Young Adult Literature? – a thing that is so unlike anything else because it is hard to put into a category, especially because it is hard to say what is isn’t when it IS so many things brought together. It’s rather like a category, or at least something bigger than a genre. We know that. It can’t be a single genre because it encompasses so many: Science Fiction, Magic Realism, Non-Fiction, Historical Fiction, Teen Paranormal Romance (if you haven’t seen it it takes up a few shelves at the bookstore, and it made me sad) &c. So if it isn’t a genre it must be a category, right? Because we put other types of literature into categories. There’s um… ah… no, no, that doesn’t fit…. Well I suppose it must be a category, because we use it to define a book intended for a certain part of the population to read. I suppose it is must be in contrast to adult literature – which I suppose is something else we must define in order to fully understand what the difference is.

Thanks to those at Morguefile

Well, I suppose where I’m going with this is that I am going, at least to the best of my ability and understanding, with the help of some scholarly sources that make some conclusions (maybe), to answer this question about – What is Young Adult Literature? – what makes it different from its opposite, which I have proposed must be Adult literature because that really is the only other category that might be in contrast to it  – though I do suppose that Old Adult Literature or Senior Adult Literature might make just as much sense – and how Young Adult Literature can be used by we the educators as a tool for… well I suppose educating.

An Attempted Definition:

So, now with the help of some pretty well respected scholars in the field, I will now attempt a definition of what YA Lit is and what it isn’t. So, a very basic definition we can gather is that YA Lit is a type of literature that is specifically intended for young adults to read. Simple, unsatisfying and in some ways, just plain wrong. It is true that some people might think that an author who is writing a novel that is directed for a teenaged audience would be writing something that is going to fall into the category of YA lit. And they would be right – Yay! – but also wrong – not yay. And the reasons that they’re right are rather obvious, or not really, but either way they are because if a book is written by an author for young adults and then is published, by a publisher who publishes the book as a young adult book it might fall into the category of young adult literature. But the reasons that they’re wrong is something else. Is a book that is meant for teenaged readers really YA lit if only people, that is to say adults, who study YA lit are the only ones who read it?  That is to say, can we really call something YA lit if it is never put in the hands of or read by teenagers?

from those at morguefile.com

That is something harder to answer. We can tell that a book is Romantic because of when and where it was written and in what style it was written. You can’t simply say that something is YA lit because of when and where it was written, or even through the style used. We cannot say that YA lit is a type of literature that solely follows an adolescent protagonist – and we cannot exclude novels that follow adults or no-one in particular either. What I can say is that there are people who are more experienced than me who have been arguing over a definition for a lot longer than I have.

Marc Aronson seems to know what he’s talking about when he writes on what young adult literature is. Aronson writes from his perspective as a publisher/author concerning this very topic, asserting that “[t]he real problem in assessing what is, or what should be published as a book for teenagers is that almost anything at all fits that description” (93). I believe what Aronson has said here rings true. The problem is that it can be anything. But, if it an be anything, then why do we call some things YA lit and other things other types of literature. Aronson also writes that:

Reading should be open to teenagers past the markers adults accept. But the intriguing thing is, written words can do this not by echoing teenagers’ existing interests, but by revealing to teenagers interests and passions they hardly know they have. Our goal should not be to channel teenagers’ interests, but to expand them as wide as they can go. (95)

So, Aronson gives us a pretty good idea about what he thinks thinks YA literature is, and what it should do, or what he and his fellow publishers/authors should do with the thing that is YA literature. Aronson believes that YA Lit is hard to define because it encompasses so many different types of literature, but he also believe that it is the responsibility of the people who are in charge of creating, distributing, and promoting this literature that is meant for teenagers, to broaden their readers’ interests, to go beyond what is the norm and to create something that is beneficial for teenagers. These are all fine ideas, and they sound really convincing in their attempt to define what is so difficult to define. But there are others who still have differing ideas.

Stephen Roxburgh is yet another person who is well versed in the ideas and criticisms of YA literature. Unlike his colleague Aronson, Roxburgh is much more willing to give a more sturdy definition of what makes YA literature YA literature and how it exists as a different type of the same art form as Adult Literature. Roxburg says:

There is no difference between the young adult novel and the adult novel. There are distinctions to be made between them, but they are not different art forms. Don Quixote and Marius the Epicurean  and To the Lighthouse represent different strands of the tradition of the novel, as do Treasure Island and Charlotte’s Web and The Facts Speak for Themselves. Are there artistic criteria that apply to the novel that shed light on the young adult novel? Yes, there are. (5)

Now, Roxburgh as it seems, is not willing to concede that Young Adult Literature and Adult Literature are two different things, in fact, he claims that they are just two distinct parts of the same thing, the art form that is the novel. Later, in an attempt to show how YA novels are distinct from Adult novels, Roxburgh states that, “the elements that most often dominate in the narratives we include in the young adult category are […]: 1) they are plots of character; 2) the characters tend to be adolescent; and (3) the point of view is often the first person” (7). So, from what Roxburgh proposes, we can gather that a YA novel is only slightly different in content than an Adult novel, and that YA novels are essentially the same as Adult novels, only with minor differences in plot, character type, and point-of-view. But also note that Roxburgh does not say that a YA novel can have different types of characters, different types of plot, and different points-of-view, only that what he suggests is typically found in what is considered YA literature. He also does not say that adult novels cannot feature the same types of plots, characters, and points-of -view that are typical of YA novels. So, what we really have is an odd idea that YA lit is something that is not all that different from Adult lit, but if we can see it, we typically can identify it.

As it would appear, two different scholars pose two different ideas concerning what YA lit is. And they both seem to come to a common conclusion, that YA literature can be anything really. But they also have their own ideas of what can help define YA lit in the situation in which you cannot distinguish between YA versus Adult literature. Aronson says that YA lit should be able to broaden the interests of  the reader, the teenager, which is rather vague, because that seems to be a purpose behind literature in general, not just for YA literature. Roxburgh says that there are stylistic qualities that are typical for YA literature as opposed to what is most common in adult literature, but those are not always certain determiners. So what can we really conclude  to be a proper definition of YA literature. What is this thing that we say is meant for young adult readers and how is it different from what could be considered adult literature?

What I think we can conclude is that there are no real conclusion that can be made. Literature in general is supposed to have an effect on its reader, at least good literature. And, YA literature seems to be literature that is in a way more effective in evoking change, emotion, thought and growth in teenagers as opposed to adults. That is not to say that young adults cannot gain something from adult literature, or children’s literature (which I seem to have neglected throughout this consideration), and that adults cannot gain something from young adult literature and children’s literature. In fact, I don’t believe that to be the case at all, it just seems that, for right now, that is the best definition that can be created for something that is so indefinable.

How to use YA lit:

Now that we have devised a less than satisfying, but suitable, definition of what YA literature is, how do we as educators put such a thing to use? Well, if we focus on the idea that seems to surround the purpose of YA lit, we might find some simple ways to use it in the classroom to educate our students, then again we might also find a whole other big and enigmatic problems facing us. Something like a ghostly rhino charging at us…. But

Thanks to those at morguefile.com

that is beyond the point. The point is that literature, no matter who the intended audience is is supposed to have an affect on its readers. It is by some means supposed to either draw something out of the reader, like and emotional response, or to put an impression into the reader, or to cause the reader to look inward for answers. Know, saying that, do we see the purpose in YA literature from a moral point of view, something that is used to each teens how to properly live, act, and interact in our society, because that view has inherent problems. But, on the opposite hand, do we use YA literature simply as a tool for instructing on literary qualities (note that qualities in this sense are not equivalent to worth but more like characteristics) as opposed to other examples that are less engaging for the intended reader, that is teens. To be honest, we don’t do either, and we do do both.

It is our responsibility as the educators of the future non-children to help guide our students into a world  that is ever shrinking (or expanding) into a multi-cultural melting pot. So, how can we use YA lit to do that? Well, we can certainly show how different cultures view different beliefs concerning growing up. Young Adult literature is not and should never be limited by language, and because of this, we can use these novels that come from different cultures and societies around the world as a means of showing cultural differences or similarities and teaching acceptance.

thanks to those at morguefile.com

It is also responsibility as the English-Language Arts teacher (sometimes I think Literature and Language Arts teacher might be a more accurate) to educate our students on what makes literature into literature. What it takes to effectively write a piece of good literature. What types of genres and styles and categories or literature there are. I propose that we could use YA lit to provide examples of different genres of literature, different styles, and pretty much anything, as opposed to sometimes using texts that aren’t relatable to the students and don’t manage to hold their interests. I’m not suggesting that we remove classics from the classroom, in fact I’m strictly against that, but I am suggesting that sometimes it might be beneficial to integrate prime examples of good quality YA literature into the lecture so that the students might be able to connect more with what they’re reading and gain more than just what we are teaching them out of the novels.

Conclusion:

I still standby the question al the way up at the top. What have we gotten ourselves into? As you can see, from what I’ve written there is nothing that I can say about YA literature, in terms of a true definition that I can say confidently, other than I can’t make a confident assertion. I also apologize for all the double talking that has taken place in my above arguments. But i believe that that is the nature of what we are dealing with. Similarly to YA Literary Quality, we can’t really define what YA lit is. We also can’t seem to sy what it isn’t which is an easier task sometimes. So I conclude, that the conclusion I draw, though they may seem vague and incomplete, they are the best conclusions that I can draw given the circumstances. And somehow, I’m okay without a truly proper definition, as it leaves some freedom in a world typically bound by considerations of what something is and what something is not.

Work Cited

Aronson, Marc. Beyond the Pale: New Essays for a New Era. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2003. Print.

Roxburgh, Steven. “The Art of the Young Adult Novel.” The ALAN Review. Winter (2005): 4 – 10. Print.