They try to tell us we're too old, or young but...
...if a book is good, does it matter what shelf it's on?
Before we begin…
When was the last time you read a book that was supposedly written for children, tweens, teens? What called you to that book at that point in your life? What did you find within the pages? If you've been reading at your “age level” for a long time, what do you miss about the books you read and loved when you were still a “young adult?”
Welcome! You’ve reached Spark. Learn more here or just read on. If you received this from a friend, please join us by subscribing. It’s free! All you have to do is press the button below. If you have already subscribed, welcome back! If you see something you like, please hit that heart so others can find us more easily. And if this email is truncated in your inbox, just click the headline to this newsletter to come on through and read everything all at once.
I’ve never read Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me Margaret. I’ve never read any of Blume’s books and now I’m wondering why not. “Margaret” came out in 1970. I was a freshman in high school then and miserable miserable miserable. If I’d heard of it then, I probably still wouldn’t have read it. I would have thought it was “too young” for me.
Yet, how do I account for my dive into all the Paddington Bear books when I was just a year younger? And then there were the Mr. Popper’s Penguins which soothed me like warm cocoa. At thirteen I encountered The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe and all its sequels, shelved in the library with other books for teens and younger. Those were not at all soothing, they were more like biting into a beautiful but still hard and bitter plum.
The reality is that I might not have wanted to read Blume’s novel at that time because the last thing I wanted was to be reminded of what it was like to be a twelve year old girl. These days, I want to be reminded. For the past few years, I’ve been reading more books written for children and “young adults” in an effort to tap into the perspective of a young character in my novel-in-progress. At first, it felt like an assignment I had given myself. Now I’m reading books aimed at younger readers because I want to and, sometimes, because I need to.
After reading Kate DiCamillo’s The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and Because of Winn-Dixie my heart hurt, in a good way. She puts her characters out into the world as it is in all its complexity, darkness, light, and incomprehensibility, and we suffer and triumph with them. A toy rabbit and a nine-year-old girl who must make her way in a new place with a single father restored me to a place where hope and acceptance live side by side.
Turns out that the best books deal with themes that are timeless. In the hands of a wonderful writer like Kate DiCamillo or John Green or Angie Thomas, those themes turn into unforgettable characters and stories with voices that echo long after I’ve turned the last page. It’s also true that the same reader radar that leads me to any book will make me steer clear of certain YA books or other books aimed at younger readers. I have never read and probably will not ever read The Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants to which I was introduced and stubbornly resisted while working with The Juvenile Court Book Club here in San Diego years ago. Don’t ask me why but I could never get past the first few pages. Yet that same organization led me to Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street and Towelhead by Alicia Erian and I got to re-read S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders.
As read YA books or books aimed at younger readers, the writer in me takes note of the economy reflected in the prose, the focus on action, and the very strong voices of the lead characters. I noticed that a number of books read and loved by teens that are written in the first person. For a while I struggled with the character in my novel who goes from 18 months to 18 in the story – she seemed to want to be the one telling the story. I was unsure; I’d always seen the novel from the grandmothers’ perspectives and cared deeply about that. Also, I was apprehensive. I wasn’t sure if shifting the focus would make it a YA book. What would that mean for the writing? What did I know about the audience anyway? In the end, the choice is just to keep writing the book the best way I can and trust that the readers who need or want to find it will make their way to it – no matter their age.
Some Links
Reading children’s books while old can be good for your health, according to this article from The Spectator.
I came across this list of one hundred “Best Ever Teen Novels” that NPR compiled in 2012 based on 75,220 responses to a survey. Of these, I’ve read 18 and I had fun noticing that I read the bulk of those when I was in my twenties, thirties, forties, fifties and sixties.
A look at the JCBC reading list from 1996-2020 illustrates how difficult it is to define books based on the age of the reader, and how alive and open the curiosity of teens can be even when their bodies are locked up.
Here are some books that I recently finished, loved, and will talk about some more very soon. All are, arguably, intended for younger audiences: Dave Eggers’ The Eyes & The Impossible, Grounded by Huda Al-Marashi. Aisha Saeed, Jamilah Thompkinds-Bigelow, and S.K. Ali., Fair Game by Robyn Ryle, Kate DiCamillo’s Because of Winn-Dixie. I’ve just started Nice Girl by Julia Carol Folsom. Oh, and I just added Are You There, God? It’s Me Margaret. (finally).
What should I read next? What would be on your list of books you loved when you were an adolescent?
If you like what you see or it resonates with you, please share Spark with a friend and take a minute to click the heart ❤️ below - it helps more folks to find us!
What is YA anyway? Two Spark Authors share their perspectives
Two of the authors in the Spark community have written books classified as YA. I asked them to share a bit about how they came to this genre and how they view it as both writers and readers.
In Fair Game, Robyn Ryle takes on the ways women athletes get the short end of the stick beginning as early as high schoo. Here, her female characters, all high school seniors or juniors, challenge the boys’ team for the use of the “good” practice court in their high school triggering all kinds of unexpected consequences. The central character in Julia Carol Folsom’s Nice Girl, is a teenage girl who must confront the fallout from a relationship with an older, married man which worsens when she learns she is pregnant.
Robyn intended her novel, Fair Game, to be read by young audiences. Julia encountered conflicting views when it came to categorizing, Nice Girl. Each of them was kind enough to offer her perspective on the sometimes confusing, always interesting question of writing for a particular audience.
You've both indicated that your novels are or could be considered YA novels. What, in your view, defines a YA book?
JCF: I never set out to write a YA book and I’m still not sure I did. But since my protagonist was a teenager when the book began and still a teen when it ended, some readers have told me it belongs in the YA genre. My very experienced editor, however, disagreed. She thought it was "women’s fiction.” I went with her advice. Later, I entered the book into a contest as “women’s fiction,” and one of the official critiquers chastised me because I didn’t enter it in the YA category, where he thought it belonged!
RR: I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the answer to this question. The first novel I wrote had multiple points of view, including two teenage characters. I didn’t think of that novel as young adult, but when I sent it to agents, they all said, oh, yes, that’s young adult. But one of the characters—one of my favorite characters—was a sixty-year-old woman. There was no way I was ditching her to fit into the YA category.
Years later, I watched the Netflix series, Stranger Things, which is told from the perspective of the kids but also adults like the sheriff, Hopper. The creators explicitly wanted that age-diverse perspective. I don’t understand why it’s so hard to do that in books as well and I think the idea of genre has become way too controlling.
So, what defines a YA book? It comes down to the people who are selling the book and deciding where it goes on the shelf in the bookstore. That’s what I think.
I’ve also heard agents say that YA should have some romance in it. I don’t agree. I know young people who never read YA because they don’t want to read romance.
Did you consciously set out to write a YA book? If so, why?
RR: Okay, after that down-with-genre manifesto, I will say, I did set out to write Fair Game as a YA book. That was because I knew I wanted young people to read it, so it needed to end up on the YA shelf. Specifically I wanted young women to read it, but young people in general. I teach college students and I’ve witnessed the kind of fire that gets lit when they realize that the things they assumed about gender might not be true. I wanted to give young people outside the college classroom that experience. I particularly wanted to introduce them to the possibility that what we believe about men’s superior athletic ability might not be true and that the girls could beat the boys.
Also, I wanted the story to be fun in a way that might have been harder with adults as the main characters. And given the premise—a girls team challenging the boys to a game—it was hard to imagine circumstances in which that might happen outside a high school or college context. So it just fit best as a YA book.
JCF: I didn’t seek to write YA; in fact, I don’t know the “rules" for YA fiction. My novel, Nice Girl, does deal with adult issues (abortion, adultery, thoughts of suicide) facing a teenaged girl. Hers is the voice that whispered to me.
What decisions did you make in order to appeal to the audience you had in mind? Or, did you just write the book you wanted to write regardless of audience or how the story might be categorized?
JCF: I wrote this book because I had no choice. This was the story that wanted me to tell it. The book begins in 1963 so it’s considered “historical fiction” now even though the current abortion controversy shows that girls and adult women are still struggling with the dilemma of unwanted pregnancy.
RR: I did have to do some research about teenage high school life in the 2020s, given how long it’s been since I was in high school. I knew I wanted one of the characters to have a very embarrassing secret, but realized that what was embarrassing to me in high school might not be embarrassing to today’s high school kids. So I texted my daughter and asked her and that’s where the sub-plot about Maddie’s nudes came from.
When I was growing up, the boundaries between YA and everything else were much more porous. I mean, To Kill a Mockingbird and Catcher in the Rye were YA. Are they still? I don’t know. I read a lot of Cynthia Voigt and Judy Blume when I was young. I loved depressing YA. The more depressing, the better. Jacob Have I Loved and The Island of the Blue Dolphins. - R. Ryle
Do you or did you read a lot of YA novels before writing yours? What kind of reader were you growing up? Did it matter to you how a book was categorized?
RR: I do read quite a bit of YA. I read a lot of fantasy YA, but I’m also a fan of contemporary YA by Rainbow Rowell and Angie Thomas and Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé and Amber Smith and Gabby Rivera (Juliet Takes a Breath is amazing). Today’s YA is so diverse in terms of LBGTQ+ characters and Black characters and Indigenous characters and characters of color. It’s great stuff.
When I was growing up, the boundaries between YA and everything else were much more porous. I mean, To Kill a Mockingbird and Catcher in the Rye were YA. Are they still? I don’t know. I read a lot of Cynthia Voigt and Judy Blume when I was young. I loved depressing YA. The more depressing, the better. Jacob Have I Loved and The Island of the Blue Dolphins.
I also read a lot of science fiction. Isacc Asimov and Frank Herbert. Not YA, but I ate it up. The older I got, the more snobby my reading became. I wanted to read the ‘classics.’ No Sweet Valley High for me. I went for all the Caldecott and Newberry award winners. I hope I’ve moved away from that sort of snobbery, but I was very much a small town, rural kid with something to prove in my reading.
JCF: When I grew up, there was no YA category. As a teenager I read Hemingway (For Whom the Bell Tolls) and Graham Greene novels. Also I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Bell Jar, To Kill a Mockingbird, Gone with the Wind. I knew nothing about book categories then.
Who are the writers and what are the books that have inspired you as a reader and writer?
RR: Wendell Berry. Elizabeth Strout. Liane Moriarty for writing those moments that feel so true to life. The essays of James Baldwin.
JCF: I read constantly and am inspired by great writing anywhere I find it. Love hIstorical detail and a compelling voice. Adored Hamnet, Cutting for Stone, Demon Copperhead, The English Patient, to name a few. I’m now reading Portrait of a Marriage. I also enjoy a humorous tone as in The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, and Miss Benson’s Beetle.
I didn’t seek to write YA; in fact, I don’t know the “rules" for YA fiction. - Julia Carol Folsom
Can you share with us a bit about your next project?
RR: I’m in the very beginning phases of a new novel that’s a little like The Westing Game, but set in a small town in our new post-pandemic world. Interestingly, the two main characters are a ten-year-old boy and a thirty-year-old woman. Is it YA? Or not? I don’t know. I’m just writing it because that’s the way I want to tell the story and I’ll figure the rest out later.
JCF: My current project is a sequel to Nice Girl. Some of my readers were annoyed not to find out what happened to Callie at the end of Nice Girl. So this book is for them.
How easy/difficult was it for you to climb into the skin of a character was so much younger than you were when you wrote your novels? Robyn mentions some research she did -- asking her daughter about some things -- but what else, if anything made it easier/more difficult to write a teenager?
JCF: My book is about a teenager during 1963-64. I first heard this “voice” in a therapy session when it was suggested that I speak in first person about an experience that I had as a teen. It was like an acting exercise. I actually sat in a different chair to begin talking. After that it was easy to write in that girl’s voice.
It strikes me that studying acting could be helpful to writers. Accessing a different voice and personality and even physical appearance could open mental doors.
If I were to write a contemporary story about a teen, I’d have to do some research, for sure.
RR: Having a daughter about that age made it easier. For many characters, I would think about her and her friends. Also teaching college students. Some of the characters started with students I've had in classes and then went from there. They're slightly older, but it seemed close enough. And channeling my own awkward, inner teenager. There's a particular dynamic with one of the characters and how she drifted apart from the boy who used to be her best friend once they hit junior high. That came from my own experience at that age. I remembered how sad it made me and how puzzling it was. Some teenage experiences are eternal, I think.
Let’s talk some more
What are you reading ( by ear or on the printed page) ? What do you want to read? Share a book rec, a poem, or just let us know what you’re thinking about here in the comments or other meeting places such as Notes here on Substack or the new Threads offering over on Instagram, or IG itself. You can find me on either of those social media sites under the handle of @egmarro_spark.
Thank you and Welcome
Thank you to everyone who has shared Spark with a friend. Please keep sharing. Invite a friend to join us!
And to those who have just subscribed, thank you so much for being here. If you would like to check out past issues, here’s a quick link to the archives. Be sure to check out our Resources for Readers and Writers too where you will find links for readers, book clubs, writers, and writing groups. And if you’d like to browse for your next read, don’t forget to check out books by authors in our community at the Spark Author Page or the many wonderful reviews you’ll find among the #Bookstackers.
Let me know how you are and what you’re reading. If there’s an idea, book, or question you’d like to see in an upcoming issue of Spark, let us know! Use the comment button below or just hit reply to this email and send your message directly.
And remember, If you like what you see or it resonates with you, please take a minute to click the heart ❤️ below - it helps more folks to find us!
Ciao for now!
Gratefully yours,
Betsy
P.S. And now, your moment of Zen…Frida and Lily weigh in
Calling for Your Contribution to “Moment of Zen”
What is YOUR moment of Zen? Send me your photos, a video, a drawing, a song, a poem, or anything with a visual that moved you, thrilled you, calmed you. Or just cracked you up. This feature is wide open for your own personal interpretation.
Come on, go through your photos, your memories or just keep your eyes and ears to the ground and then share. Send your photos/links, etc. to me by replying to this email or simply by sending to: elizabethmarro@substack.com. The main guidelines are probably already obvious: don’t hurt anyone -- don’t send anything that violates the privacy of someone you love or even someone you hate, don’t send anything divisive, or aimed at disparaging others. Our Zen moments are to help us connect, to bond, to learn, to wonder, to share -- to escape the world for a little bit and return refreshed.
I can’t wait to see what you send!
And remember,If you like what you see or it resonates with you, please share Spark with a friend and take a minute to click the heart ❤️ below - it helps more folks to find us!
(Wherever possible the books here are linked to bookstore.org where every purchase helps local bookstores and, if they link to our own page, they generate a commission. )
one of the things I loved about being a mom of reading children, is I just went ahead and read everything they read... and what an adventure it was. They read many of my childhood and teenager favorites, and also all of the newer ones that were published in their era. I miss this. I still read things they read but one is a graduate student in contemporary German culture and the other is a surgeon so it's less likely "reading" and more like "floundering ". I still do try, though. Maybe someday, I will get to go all through childhood and young adult literature once again with with grandkids. :)
I have discovered a lucky thing in my life recently, involving YA books! My son is a 24-yr-old adult with autism who lives with my husband and I and needs 24/7 support. When he went through school, he missed out on YA literature, as I imagine many with developmental disabilities do. He reads at the picture book level (which is still fun for both of us) but in the past few years, he’s allowed me to read to him in small bits, so I’m choosing YA books that I loved, or that I missed out on. It’s so great.
I’d already read Harry Potter, but really enjoyed re-reading some of that series with him. I just recently read Because of Winn Dixie for myself – loved it so much, so will read that with my son next (he’s loved Kate DiCamillo’s Mercy Watson books). Back in the day, I loved Judy Blume’s books, A Wrinkle in Time, Sci Fi and mysteries, and Choose Your Own Adventure books – I’m eager to show him these, too - but I really want to read with him the books of his generation.
Right now, we are reading Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and it’s so touching and real and funny. It’s been a weird experience reading aloud about girl crushes and other, um, private activities of young men, not to mention the hard truths of racism and bullying and family struggles, but my son absolutely needs to hear these stories, too. He may not get all of the nuance, but then again, he just might. I’m so grateful to authors who create young characters and situations that speak to important issues in accessible ways. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable way to connect with my kid - and I get to read some really great books!