YA: not quite brand-new

This book by Michael Cart was first published in 1996. It is a history of YA literature, and it suggests that – gasp! – YA lit may have even existed before Harry Potter, before Twilight, before The Hunger Games. Which of course, it did.

I am younger than most, though not all, of the people who say, ‘There was no YA when I was growing up’. Not, ‘It was harder to find books for teenagers when I was one than it is today’ or ‘There wasn’t nearly the range of YA when I was a teenager as there is today’ or even ‘Even though there were books for teenagers, the perception was that they were all for young teens or pre-teens and older teens should be reading grown-up books’. Which might be reasonable things to say.

I think the reason it bothers me is two-fold. One is that I studied YA literature in college, and the origin of YA is placed at all kinds of points well before the last twenty years. Some would cite nineteenth century novels; I subscribe to the school of thought that looks at when teenagers began being marketed to as a specific category, around the 1940s in the US. If we’re claiming a ‘first YA title’ I’ll vote for Maureen Daly’s Seventeenth Summer (1942) over Little Women every time. And for S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders as the real kickstart, as very shortly after this there’s some of Paul Zindel’s best works, and Robert Cormier’s, along with Hinton’s later books.

The second reason it bothers me is that many of the books I read growing up weren’t brand-new contemporary reads (although I read plenty of those too) but books I’d found in second hand shops (oh, Chapters!) or in discount bookshops on holidays in the UK, or in the local library (where the teenage books were in a separate section in the Adult side of the library instead of in with the kids’ stuff). They had been published by UK publishers, there were recognisable teen-centred imprints, and they were teenage books from before I was born. Here’s a brief list, with dates, of some of the stuff I remember reading (some read in secondhand/library format, some widely available):

The Outsiders – S.E. Hinton (1967)

The Pigman – Paul Zindel (1968)

My Darling, My Hamburger – Paul Zindel (1969)

That Was Then, This Is Now – S.E. Hinton (1971)

Then Again, Maybe I Won’t – Judy Blume (1971)

The Chocolate War – Robert Cormier (1974)

The Cat Ate My Gymsuit – Paula Danziger (1974)

Forever – Judy Blume (1975)

I Am The Cheese – Robert Cormier (1977)

Hangin’ Out With Cici – Francine Pascal (1977)

Hey, Dollface – Deborah Hautzig (1978)

Jacob Have I Loved – Katherine Paterson (1980)

A Star for the Latecomer – Paul Zindel & Bonnie Zindel (1980)

Second Star to the Right – Deborah Hautzig (1981)

Dance on my Grave – Aidan Chambers (1982)

Waiting for the Sky to Fall – Jacqueline Wilson (1983)

The Other Side – Jacqueline Wilson (1984)

I haven’t included all of Judy Blume’s books here, though certainly you can argue whether something like Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (1970) is YA or pre-teen. Similarly, Paul Zindel wrote tons of books, as did Robert Cormier; it bewilders me when people who claim to be interested in YA are totally unaware of these guys. On this side of the Atlantic we had Aidan Chambers, still going strong, and soon after, Jacqueline Wilson pre-Tracy Beaker and the ensuing success with younger readers.

Many of the other books Cart talks about in his history of YA, the popular romance and/or career type books of the 1940s and 1950s, are ones I’ve never encountered. I imagine this is partly because many wouldn’t have travelled across the Atlantic (to UK publishers, I mean, not magically making the journey) and partly because books do go out of print or become harder to find; the longer the gap between a book emerging into the world for the first time and a reader looking for something in its category, the less likely it is that that particular book will be selected (unless it’s something hugely significant). If anyone this side of the Atlantic does remember older ‘teen’ books, do let me know. But these ones – these titles, some key in the history of YA, from the late sixties onwards – did make it over, or were here already.

I imagine/get the sense some were off-putting to actual teenagers by virtue of being in the children’s section, or perhaps thought to appeal mostly to younger teens, but many of these titles have the older protagonists and ‘edgy’ subject matter that we associate with today’s ‘edgy’ YA. I do also think that it was still much, much trickier to find YA books then than it is now, not to mention the cultural shift in terms of what certain ages mean for people. (If people leave school at sixteen or seventeen and it’s mostly for work rather than further education, that does lead to a slightly different notion of the teen/adult divide than a world where staying in school ’til eighteen and then probably going on to some form of third-level education is more standard.) So I can buy the ‘it was difficult to find YA books’, particularly depending on where you grew up. Or even not being aware of them then.

But… if you’re unaware that YA has a history that goes beyond the Potter/Twilight/Hunger Games phenomena, it’s really worth checking out some of these older titles. Especially if you write YA – not least because some of these are just really great YA reads. But also because writing in a field means that sometimes you’re considered an ‘expert’ on it, and it kills me when people who write YA don’t distinguish between the explosion of YA and the origin of it, between its success and its existence. It’s not as shiny and new as it seems.

Which means something else, too. Even if YA goes into decline after this incredible recent surge – and some people would argue the market is saturated already – it’s highly unlikely it’s going anywhere any time soon. YA itself isn’t a trend – it’s been around for a while.