YA Rites of Passage (aka Young Adult Fiction 101)

Are you a mom trying to understand why your daughter refuses to date real boys? Do you see teenagers in movie theaters screaming in outrage at the latest book-to-movie adaptation and want to experience that rage for yourself? Do you seek to use underage protagonists to make yourself feel young again?

Well, you’ve come to the right place! Libby’s tell-all guide to getting your start in YA will cover all the basics, from overly-cheesy titles to poorly thought out dystopian conclusions. Consider this Young Adult Fiction 101 (but way cheaper and with a way less qualified teacher). In this course, I will be covering six YA classics, which I like to call “YA Rites of Passage” because anyone who’s anyone in YA has read them. These books are the building blocks for your YA education. If you want anyone to take you seriously in this field, you’ll need to have an opinion on them.

Now, I’ve only included novels that are both ubiquitous in their popularity but also worth your time (absolutely no shade thrown here (please take my spring semester course on Teenage Colloquialisms if you are unfamiliar with “throwing shade.” Urban dictionary will be required reading)). The curriculum is broken down by genre. We will be covering contemporaries (realistic fiction, usually involves romance but not always), dystopians (futuristic setting), and fantasy (magic!). If there are no questions, I’ll go ahead and get started.

First lesson: YA is not a genre. Say it with me. YA is not a genre. YA simply refers to the age of the protagonist(s), which usually fall within the ages of 12-25. Yes, this does mean that books labeled YA are typically marketed to that age range as they are the demographic most likely to relate to the story, but this in no way means that YA cannot be enjoyed beyond that age. Like I mentioned earlier, the required reading for this course belong to three different genres but they are all under the umbrella of YA. Now with that out of the way, we can truly begin.

In the interest of easing you in, we’ll start with the genre of least commitment: the contemporary. Mostly consisting of stand-alones less than 500 pages, the contemporary is perfect for the person looking to casually read a book at the beach or the person who simply wants to get through a bad break-up without watching the Notebook for the 100^th time.

Our first selection is the classic contemporary romance, complete with cheesy title and cheesier cover that do not do the story justice. It’s Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins!

In this cute and funny contemporary, Anna Oliphant is sent to a American boarding school in Paris for her senior year, knowing very little French and even fewer people. She quickly falls in cool crew that includes a handsome history nerd named St. Clair. Rife with clever jokes and sexual tension, this slow-burn romance will have you dying to visit the City of Light! What makes Stephanie Perkins’ books particularly special is that they are all interconnected. You don’t have to have read one to read the other, but you can spot the main characters from one book as side characters in another. Instead of falling into the trap of generic contemporary romance protagonist, Stephanie Perkins uses those universal characteristics to make Anna one of the most relatable characters in YA. Instead of wanting to yell at her when she makes bad decisions, you think “Well, I probably would have done that, too.” After its release in 2010, Anna and the French Kiss quickly became a YA staple because it takes the classic themes of the rom-com and elevates them in order to explore the quintessential experiences of being a teenager.

Our second contemporary selection is ideal for understanding a large part of the YA culture. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell is your quickest way to immersing yourself into the world of YA.

Fangirl follows a girl names Cath during her freshman year of college. Besides being an introvert and having a little difficulty meeting people without her outgoing twin-sister Wren, Cath has a secret. She writes gay fanfiction of a magical fantasy series called Simon Snow. The book is a clever commentary on the generation that grew up with Harry Potter, but more than that, it’s a story of finding your place both in the real world and the fictional one. Cath’s relationship with reading and writing is what makes the book such a great reflection of its audience. There is no better way to truly understand the life and times of a YA reader than to read this book.

Our final contemporary read is by far the most famous, and it deserves every bit of its popularity. As long as you weren’t living under a rock in 2014, you know this book because it had the rare blessing of being turned into an amazing book-to-movie adaption. You guessed it…it’s The Fault in our Stars by John Green.

Now you may have many reasons to have pre-judged this book. Maybe you have to be contrary and can’t enjoy anything that so many people like. Maybe you think the premise is cliché and over-used. Maybe you just don’t want to make yourself sad on purpose. Trust me when I tell you, this book is not what you imagine. It’s sardonic, hopeful, and funnier than a book about two seventeen year olds with cancer has a right to be. This book is smarter than people give it credit for, much like the teenager who likely made you take this class. It’s a metaphor, okay?

The next part of our course surrounds the genre of fantasy. I know what you’re thinking. “Is this the part where we have to read vampire erotica?” No. That’s a different class. Though I’ll have you know that the most popular adult erotica books of the decade are just Twilight fanfiction, so who likes vampire erotica now hmm? All this to say that YA fantasy is as varied as any other genre. Now the two main types of fantasy are high fantasy and urban fantasy. High fantasy is set in a world of the author’s own creation and usually contains unpronounceable names and an unnecessarily convoluted map at the beginning. Think Game of Thrones. Urban fantasy involves a fantasy world within the real world, often kept a secret from the world of normal people. Think Harry Potter. Our reading for this part of the course includes one of each type.

First, our high fantasy selection. Unlike the other books in this course, this book comes from the new school of YA classics; its series isn’t even finished yet! Despite its short reign, Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas has quickly become a celebrity in the YA community.

It’s hard to describe these books because each one encompasses more characters, stories, and world-building that the last one is almost unrecognizable from the first, but they are a masterpiece in storytelling. It begins as the story of a teenage assassin who is broken out of prison by the handsome heir to the throne of Adarlan so that she can be his champion in the King’s competition to become his assassin. In the midst of the expected dangers of the competition and the not-so-expected dangers of a secret plot afoot, Celaena Sardothien (and that’s one of the easier ones to pronounce) grows closer to the prince and his best friend, the captain of the guard. Reading this book is an excellent first foray into the politics, magic, and romance that make high fantasy genre distinct, though I’ll warn you…you might not be able to stop. The exploration of real-world issues within uniquely imagined worlds rife with godlike magic is what makes high fantasy one of the most addictive genres of YA.

Next, we have our urban fantasy pick. City of Bones is the first book in Cassandra Clare’s YA fantasy empire known as The Shadowhunter Chronicles.

If ever there was a time to not judge a book by its cover, it is now….I’m serious. Stop staring at his nipples and pay attention. The Shadowhunter Chronicles contains 5 distinct series all set within the Shadow World universe, only 2 of which are complete with the third being published currently. City of Bones is the first book in the original series The Mortal Instruments, and remains the hallmark book of YA urban fantasy, a genre traditionally popularized by middle-grade series like Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and the Olympians. These books really take the urban fantasy genre to heart, as they are set in some of the most famous big cities in the world, like New York, London, and LA. They all surround angelic warriors called Shadowhunters whose purpose is to protect the world from demons. What makes the books so immersing is the complexities of Shadowhunter politics and their relationships with Downworlders (warlocks, werewolves, vampires, and faeries). Now this first book and first series in general are not my favorite of the greater works of Cassandra Clare, but they’re really where you should start to understand YA urban fantasy. Once you’ve established a foundation, you can move on to The Infernal Devices, which take on more of a historical fantasy vibe as they are set in Victorian England and are true masterpieces of YA in my opinion. Let’s just say there’s a reason Cassandra Clare still holds a monopoly on YA urban fantasy.

Finally, it’s time for the dystopian, the genre you previously thought comprised all of YA. A dystopia, the less ideal counterpart to the utopia, is a society where things have really gone to hell; they are typically set in the future and involve a totalitarian government or apocalyptic event. They tend to go hand-in-hand with the sci-fi genre. Dystopians first came on to the YA scene with The Giver by Lois Lowry in 1993, but we’re going to focus on the book that made the dystopian what it is today: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

Everyone has heard of The Hunger Games and there’s a reason for that. Other dystopian series have experienced similar hype, Divergent for instance, but only The Hunger Games has been able to maintain that popularity since its original publication in 2008. This is due to its consistent relevancy to events happening today. The absolute dumpster fire that is Panem is specific enough to be relatable but generic enough to be applicable to a variety of real-world circumstances. But where these books really succeed is in how they depict teenagers. In The Hunger Games, teenagers are forced to commit atrocities which serves to highlight their innocence. At the same time, it is teenagers who rise up to fight totalitarianism and corruption. These books enjoyed such wild success because they showcased teenagers’ ability to bring about real change.

Whether you’re getting your start in YA and or just want to understand what your teenager is reading, with these six books in your back pocket, you’re more than ready to explore the other corners of YA and understand the subtleties of each of its main genres. Most of what I cover here is from the old school of YA; each of these genres has evolved since these books were published and have their own new school classics (join me for Advanced Young Adult Fiction to learn about those). So the next time the host of your book club mocks your suggestion of a YA book saying “aren’t those a little childish for us?” you can pull up your power point slide show about the nuance and complex themes of YA books and explain that teenagers being complicated is what makes them interesting. If you’re interested in the history and evolution of YA, check out this video by PBS’s series “The Great American Read.”