Young adult literature or YA is fiction that is written, published, and marketed for adolescents and young adults. The following is a brief history of young adult literature.
The Beginning of Young Adult Literature
Seventeenth Summer by Maureen Daly is a novel about first love that was written largely for girls. It is the first book to be written and published especially for teenagers. This was in 1942, when teenagers were, for the first time, being considered as a distinct social demographic. Seventeenth Summer was followed by more romance novels and sports novels written for boys.
Welcoming More Mature Young Adult Realities in 1950s-1960s
The term “young adult” was first used in the 1960s by the Young Adult Library Services Association to represent the 12-18 demographic. Notable young adult fiction from this period include The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton and Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, though not exactly written and published for young adults, revolved around themes that characterized young adult literature of the time.
Most young adult fiction in the ‘50s and ‘60s was about culture and society, and focused on contemporary realism with a mature approach geared towards young people. These and other weighty themes in this period heralded the publication of more candid young adult literature in the ‘70s.
At the Height of Young Adult Literature in the 1970s-1980s
The peak of young adult literature’s popularity was in the ‘70s when Judy Blume, Robert Cormier, Lois Duncan, and other YA authors came out with books that had what were then considered as controversial topics. This was the first golden age of young adult literature, when readers would be drawn to books with themes such as the high school experience, being misunderstood, parents’ divorce, drug abuse, and other topics that truly touched upon the angst-ridden real-life experiences of young adults. One of the most popular novels from this period was The Chocolate Wars by Robert Cormier.
By the 1980s, readers were becoming tired of what had by then become formulaic stories. Instead, readers welcomed genre stories such as horror from R.L. Stine or Christopher Pike and bubblegum adolescent drama via the Sweet Valley High series.
1990s-2000s Paves the Way for More Teen and Young Adult Readers
In 1998, in an effort to increase the number of adolescent and young adult bookworms, Teen Read Week was launched by the Young Adult Library Services Association. Publishing houses started marketing directly to teenagers and bookstores had young adult sections for the first time in history. The Harry Potter series was published and would become a boon to the young adult category, eventually setting off a whole generation of fantasy books and fantasy book authors.
The State of Young Adult Literature Today
The world is currently in another “golden age of YA fiction.” Young adult literature is experiencing a strong resurgence with the release of YA novels by such authors as John Green, Suzanne Collins, and Veronica Roth.
Current – and successful – young adult literature trends include solo heroines (The Hunger Games), love triangles (the Twilight series), paranormal plots (Beautiful Creatures), dystopia (the Divergent trilogy), good vs. evil (The Mortal Instruments series), absent parents (the Harry Potter books), and the ordinary becoming extraordinary (the Percy Jackson series).
