So, I know that this hashtag was incredibly popular among the bookish set over the summer, but the passing of time certainly doesn’t diminish the issue of what YA literature means to teenager culture in the United States and elsewhere. Nor does it make the discussion of why exactly “YA saves” untimely, no matter when it comes up. It’s so important that young people have sources for information that will help cushion whatever falls they will have as they grow. Teens and kids today have to deal with so much negative, difficult stuff from their parents, their teachers, their friends (hello, Mean Girls! That movie might have been fiction, but the idea is real), culture at large, and–in the biggest way–themselves. I can’t fathom why (well, unfortunately, I can fathom why, but I don’t agree) anyone would want to discourage young people from finding communities in the books they read, so that they don’t feel so out of the ordinary in their troubles. How many times as an adult do I hear and say, when something has disappointed me or gone wrong, “You aren’t the only one who has dealt with this and made it through”? This is the lesson and the wisdom that young adult literature teaches, and I would have died to have had it when I was younger. Growing up, I had very little YA to guide me, entertain me, explain things I was too embarrassed to discuss, give me things to dream about and consider. To expose me to things that I didn’t understand about the world but that I needed to know. Now that I’m reading YA so often, I find myself relearning and solidifying those things that I picked up elsewhere, and I’m envious.
Back when this issue was really at the fore, I wrote up a little something about what YA means to me, an adult, and what I hoped young people knew about the literature that is out there for them, but I had nowhere to put it! I really want to share it now because I think demeaning the importance of YA and censoring teens from books that are about less than happy things is so sad and dreadful, and promoting young adult books is never irrelevant.
