YA

Did Young Adult novels even exist when I was a new teen? And what age range are we talkin’ about?

Chuck Wendig, on his website Terrible Minds, has a fabulous post: 25 Things You Should Know About Young Adult Fiction.

It’s tremendous—go read the whole thing. I’ll wait right here. For those of you who’d rather not get outta the boat, here’s one of his brill things you should know.

Young adult books are generally written for teenagers. I’ve seen 12-18, but really, just call it “teenager” and be done with it. (The age range before it is “middle grade,” which runs roughly from 8-12.) This is where someone in the back of the room grouses about how when he was a young reader they didn’t have young adult books and he read whatever he could get his hands on, by gum and by golly — he read the Bible and Tolkien and Stephen King and Henry Miller and Penthouse and he did it backwards, in the snow, besieged by ice tigers. “In my day we didn’t need teenage books! We took what books we had and liked it! I once read a soup can for days!” I’ll cover that in more detail, but for now, I’ll leave you with this lovely Nick Hornby quote: “I see now that dismissing YA books because you’re not a young adult is a little bit like refusing to watch thrillers on the grounds that you’re not a policeman or a dangerous criminal, and as a consequence, I’ve discovered a previously ignored room at the back of the bookstore that’s filled with masterpieces I’ve never heard of.”

So yeah, I read YA books on occasion.

Some favs:
Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time
Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Harry Potter (//snort// of course.)
Ender’s Game
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

To answer my own question did YA even exist when I was a new teen? Not as such, not as a publishing world big, BIG market but there was certainly a shedload of books with teen protagonists to be had.

Hello? Romeo and Juliet anyone?
The Anne of Green Gables series, especially Anne of Avonlea and Anne of the Island. I think those are overdue for a reread.
The Hobbit—unofficial required reading for all ‘70s teens.
There were the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books which always felt like guilty reads. Fast paced, easy, unchallenging. The book equivalent of zoning out with Mannix or McCloud.

Are you looking for good reads for your kid or yourself even? NPR has a fab list Your Favorites: 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels —with brief story rundowns.

Why does this come up now? I'm reading Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs (great name!) and I'm LOVING it!