What YA Readers WantBut Seldom Get

My current work in process is a young adult (YA) novel. This is my first book in this genre, so I’ve been researching what YA readers want in the novels they read.

Publishers Weekly and other trade publications report that more than half of the readers of YA novels are not young adults at all; they are middle-aged adults. Therefore, publishers usually orient these books to middle-aged tastes, and librarians say it’s difficult to find YA books that deliver what young adults truly want.

To corroborate these reports, I had a text-message dialogue with my granddaughter Jill, who turns 16 this month. When Jill told me the title of her favorite book, I asked what she liked about it:

Jill: …It’s really interesting. It’s got a super fun storyline and really likeable characters.

Joe: Do likeable characters need to be heroes, or do you look for other qualities in them?

Jill: They are relatable characters. They don’t always have to be heroes. I just like how they act and what circumstances they go through.

Jill made it clear that she wanted to read about teens like herself, dealing with problems like hers. (Think about the problems you and I faced as adolescents. Peer pressure. The generation gap. Racial prejudice, etc. Plenty of story material there!)

The YA category was created in the postwar period to help young teens make the transition from children’s picture books to adult fiction. YA fiction also bridged from child to teen protagonists, from foreign settings to familiar ones. Several of today’s best-selling YA novels still come from this time—books such as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), The Lord of the Flies (1954), and To Kill a Mockingbird (1960).

On the other hand, recent YA best sellers tend to have adult or super-hero protagonists, not “relatable characters” that young adults like Jill want. Today's YA books also have violent or dystopian plot lines instead of exploring common problems in everyday settings. 

If YA novelists will return to the classic formula, I believe we can again help young adults make the transition from childhood to adulthood. I'm certainly willing to try.

Joe Allison writes both fiction and nonfiction, and has been a member of the Indiana chapter of American Christian Fiction Writers since 2010. He lives in Anderson, IN, with his wife Maribeth.