YA Literature
 Peer Culture – A Brief History
 Key Trends/Authors in YA Literature
History of Peer Culture/YA Literature
 19th-Century Developments that Led to the Rise of
Peer Culture
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Child Labor Laws
Mandatory Education
Relaxing of Parental Control
Increase in Leisure Time
Life Before YA Literature
 Prior to 1890, most literature written for teenagers
was non-fiction and focused on advice about how to
behave in society
 Works of fiction that were read by teenagers were
very DIDACTIC – meaning that they were intended
to teach teenagers lessons. Books that fell into this
category included Little Women and Anne of Green
Gables.
Life Before YA Literature
 Characteristics of nineteenth-century literature for
young readers:
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Parents and other adult authority figures are portrayed as “all
knowing” and wise;
Gendered literature put forward highly conventional futures
for protagonists:
Girls were shown preparing to be wives and mothers
 Boys were shown preparing for a career
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Authors often addressed readers directly and stated the
“moral” of the story clearly
Parents Know What They’re Doing!!!
History of Adolescent Culture/Literature
Series fiction, 1890-1930
Absence of parents – or tendency to
suggest that adults are “square”
Lots of adventure
Guidebooks to gaining autonomy
from authority figures
Parents? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Parents!
Wild Girls!
Tuff Boys!
Tom Swift’s Gadgets
Futuristic Tom!
History of Adolescent Culture/Literature
 Return of the Censors, 1930-1960
 Major publishing companies saw how much profit the smaller
firms were making, so they decided to spend more time
publishing Young Adult Literature.
 The result was, for the most part, a return to the sort of
conventional stories that had been popular before 1890 –
stories in which parents were wise guides to whom teenagers
went for advice.
 Most YA literature focused on everyday problems that a
teenager might face, like asking someone out on a date or
trying to get good grades.
“Gee, Suzie, will you go out with me?”
History of Adolescent Culture/Literature
 High School curricular decisions,
1940 onward
Shift from exclusive teaching of
the “classics” to texts that focused
on adolescence
Influence of The Catcher in the
Rye (1952)
History of Adolescent Culture/Literature
 Between 1960 and 1980, Adolescent Literature
undergoes these changes:
 Shift
from 3rd person narration to 1st
person narration
 Greater diversity in terms of protagonists
 Greater focus on realism when it comes to
dialogue, situation, and character
development
History of Adolescent Culture/Literature
The Teen Problem Novel, 1960-
1975
Increasing
attempt to write in the
“voice” of the adolescent protagonist
Focus on “hot button” issues that
most upset adults about teenagers.
S.E. Hinton, The
Outsiders (1967)
A Problem novel about boys’ gangs,
written by a 17-year old girl!
Scary Problem
Novel
Anonymous, Go Ask
Alice (1971)
Robert Cormier, The
Chocolate War (1974)
A Problem Novel with an
Indeterminate Ending!
Judy Blume, Are You
There God? It’s Me,
Margaret (1970)
The Most Popular Problem Novel
EVER!
History of Adolescent Culture/Literature
 Rise of Psychological Realism, 1975-Pres
 Authors
begin to disregard what adults
want young people to read; focus on
depicting the inner lives of teenagers; stop
writing “happy endings”
 New voices and new issues enter the field
 YA Novels become sites of resistance
against the larger culture’s ideas about the
behavior of teenagers
Psychological Realism in YA Literature
Nancy Garden, Annie on
My Mind (1982)
Jess Mowry, Babylon Boyz
(1997)
And then…there was Harry!
Graphic Novels
Popular Graphic Novels
Image and Text!
 Most emotions or ideas
come across with great
strength through a
combination of pictures
and text. Here, it might
have taken a traditional
author 5 or 6 pages to
convey what Yang can
convey in 4 frames.
Important Terms from Today’s Lecture
 Peer culture
 Didacticism
 Artifact
 Intended Audience
 Series Fiction
 Voice
 Indeterminate Ending
 Graphic Novel