Living in a world where Gap Kids, the Jonas Brothers, and the Teen Choice Awards are the inescapable givens in order to train the pop-culture consumers of tomorrow, it's sometimes hard to remember that it wasn't always so. As in, the tastes and disposable income of teens didn't always dominate and dictate the trends of popular culture at large. Yes, yes, yes, I know: Ever since the 1950s "youth culture" has been fairly synonymous with "pop culture," but I know I'm not the only--or the first--adult who feels like the increasing demands to appeal to a youth market is making entertainment ignorant, awful, and downright offensive.
I'm not trying to sound like a cantankerous lout slouching toward impending middle age romanticizing a time when PG movies had smoking, nudity, and rampant profanity. Nor am I trying to claim I'm above a good dose of teenage brain rot every now and again (I did buy the import of the Veronicas' Hook Me Up, for crying out loud, and I can't believe I just said that in my out-loud voice). But surely everybody, even parents, have noticed the accelerating dumbing down of mainstream entertainment, the bowdlerizing of any content that might be seen as child unfriendly. It leads to the eradication of any challenging ideas to present a whitewashed lie of the world in which everything is beautiful and all you have to do is be obedient to thrive in it. Only predominantly positive, uplifting stories can be told, to ensure that nobody is offended, ever.
At least adults can still turn to books to be challenged, engaged, and, in general, treated like a sentient human being who has the option to choose how and what to feel about what may be presented inside its pages. I mean, since the teen demographic has already taken over music, television, and the movies, we can at least have books--can't we?
Apparently not. The past few years have witnessed an explosion in publishing for teens, to the effect that this past May Newsweek reported that books for teens is one of the few booming publishing niches. And while, yes, it's great that young people today are reading and not just whittling away their brain cells on social-networking sites or video games or text-messaging, as a nonprocreating, taxpaying, voting citizen who both pays attention and sincerely enjoys consuming pop culture, having my peers recommend me the latest vampire novel-qua-metaphor for a teenage girl's sexual awakening as a book to check out is unacceptable. I didn't like young adult fiction when I was a teen--let's just get this out of the way now: fuck Holden Caulfield--and I'm not about to start now.
Perhaps, though, I just don't know enough about so-called YAF. Perhaps I'm reducing young adult fiction to yet more unfounded childhood nostalgia for simpler, better times. Perhaps I'm merely snottily deriding but another book niche in which I'm not personally being published. Perhaps I just don't like kids. Whatever the case, young adult fiction is becoming an incontrovertible narrative force, and it's time to adapt or become extinct.
For the 2008 Big Books Issue I asked the City Paper's stable of books writers to explore young adult fiction, but not merely its aspects celebrated by mainstream culture guards. In this issue, Adrienne Martini reports on the increasingly large crossover between science fiction and young adult genres. Michael Corbin examines why so few YAF titles adequately address young, urban African-American readers. Ian Grey reports back from the darkest recesses of the YAF repertoire. Timothy Kreider examines why books we read as teenagers influence us more than books we read as adults. Brian Sendelbach offers a few pointers on how not to break into this market. And Lee Gardner, Michelle Gienow, and Jess Harvell fondly recall titles adored in youth. Love YAF or hate it, these kids are staying in the publishing picture.
