Are young adult novels worth reading?

Adults should be embarrassed to read young adult novels

Question: Are young adult novels worth reading?
Position‹2 of 2: No, young adult novels are not worth reading
Argument‹2 of 2: Adults should be embarrassed to read young adult novels

Young adult novels are not serious enough for adult readers. Many writers are creating dull and uninspired stories that underestimate their demographics intelligence. Adults should be ashamed to read them, and teenagers deserve better.

The argument

Marketed at a demographic of twelve to eighteen-year-olds, young adult fiction is written with adolescent readers in mind, and some critics believe adults should be embarrassed to read novels aimed at adolescents. The charge is not only about the intended audience but about the writing that audience is thought to license. In some people's opinions, young adult novels often feature idealized romance, trope characters, lazy storytelling, and overdone themes — a set of habits that recur because they reliably work on readers encountering them for the first time, and that offer little to a reader who has met them many times before. One critic goes as far as saying 90% of young adult novels are crap. The sharper version of the complaint concerns prose rather than plot. Another critic believes young adult fiction is becoming dull and uninspired through its simplified prose. They criticized writers who simplify narrative, claiming it underestimates the intelligence of teenage readers and that they deserve better. That is a charge about condescension, and it is made on the young readers' behalf rather than against them. Children's writer Geraldine McCaughrean echoes this sentiment. During her 2018 Carnegie CLIP awards speech, McCaughrean spoke out about censorship of vocabulary in young adult novels. McCaughrean, backed by the librarians on the Carnegie judging panel, argued that stories with rich language and complex themes are vital in helping children develop their understanding of the world. The conclusion follows from the standard those critics set rather than from snobbery about the category. These proponents believe most young adult fiction is not good enough for its demographic, least of all for adult readers.

Premises

[P1]Critics contend young adult fiction, marketed to twelve-to-eighteen-year-olds, is often built on idealized romance, trope characters, lazy storytelling, and simplified prose—one going so far as to call 90% of it "crap." [P2] They argue this dumbed-down writing underestimates teenage readers, a concern echoed by Geraldine McCaughrean's defense of rich language and complex themes, so if it falls short even for adolescents, adults should be embarrassed to read it. [C] Young adult novels are not worth reading, least of all for adults.

Counter-arguments

Despite its teenage market, a Nielsen survey estimated 80% of young adult fiction is bought by adults over the age of 25. Many young adult stories are coming of age (Bildungsroman) novels. Coming of age novels focus on the moral or psychological development of their protagonist as they transition from childhood to adulthood.This evokes nostalgia in adult readers who are reminded of their own teenage years. Young adult novels often have a happy ending and are full of hope. Comfort can be found from reading uncomplicated prose, where the protagonist overcomes hardship to find their place in their fictional world. Young adult novels can offer adults escapism from the complexities of the real world.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise generalises from criticism of bad examples to the category, and the figure quoted concedes as much — an assertion that 90% of a genre is poor is an unsourced impression, and the same proportion could be claimed of any large popular category without telling us what its best work is worth. [Rejecting P2] The McCaughrean appeal argues against the conclusion it is enlisted for: her case was that young readers deserve rich language and complex themes, which is an argument for better young adult fiction rather than for not reading it — and it says nothing about embarrassment, which concerns the reader's social standing rather than the quality of the book.

Proponents cited

Geraldine McCaughrean
“Censorship turned all its guns on WORDS. Vocabulary must not be too challenging. Books will not be published unless they use accessible language. Accessible language is, to me, a euphemism for something desperate. Most of its tyrannies are brought to bear on younger books right now. But blink twice and today’s junior school readers will be in secondary school, armed only with a pocketful of single syllable words, and with brains far less receptive to the acquisition of vocabulary than when they were three or seven or nine...”
Otis Roffman
“At their worst, YA novels are training wheels riddled with tired, predictable tropes, imitated concepts and condescending writing, aimed at teens perceived as unready to read a real “adult” book.”
Anthony McGowan
“As with most areas of publishing, YA follows the 90% rule. And much YA is a lazy, disheartening mush of false problems, fake solutions, idealised romance, second-rate fantasy, tired dystopias. Easy to read; easy to forget.”