From Hinton to Hamlet: Building Bridges between Young Adult Literature and the Classics,
by Sarah K. Herz and Donald R. Gallo
Introduction
Young Adult books are a fixture in public libraries and bookstores, covering topics—like sexuality,
violence, drugs, divorce, racism, depression, pregnancy, and death—that were once considered offlimits to teenage readers. Early teenage literary staples such as Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys avoided
these themes, but in the 1960s, a handful of new novels—led by S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders—gave
teenage readers the credit to handle real-life characters and plots. As more writers ran with the trend, a
new literary category took shape: Young Adult (YA) literature. In From Hinton to Hamlet, Herz and Gallo
argue that YA books are far better than their predictable predecessors at building a bridge to classic
authors like Shakespeare, Dickens, Melville, and Poe. In the excerpt here, they set the framework for
good Young Adult fiction.
From Chapter 2: What Is Young Adult Literature, Anyway?
Years ago, before the advent of YAL in the late 1960s, Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, and the a
dventures of Frank Merriwell were considered teen literature. These novels avoided controversial topics
such as sexuality, substance abuse, divorce, and death. They focused on one socioeconomicclass, for the most part—white middle-class teenagers engaged in white middleclass activities. They were considered superficial by many literary critics because they lacked credibility i
n portraying the true nature of adolescents’ lives. And they were never part of the school curriculum. Fo
r years, English classes in most high schools taught Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Nathaniel Haw
thorne, and other adult novelists whose writing perplexed struggling readers. Before YAL appeared on th
e scene, there were a few titles slated for teenage readers, such as Seventeenth Summerby Maureen Dal
y, Johnny Tremainby Esther Forbes, sports novels by John Tunis, and hotrod books by Henry Gregor Felsen. However, few if any of those were included in school curricula.
The turning point for YAL came in 1967 with the publication of The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton, which descr
ibes the problems of alienated youth; The Contenderby Robert Lipsyte, which reflects the hope and desp
air of African American urban youths; The Chosenby Chaim Potok, which describes the inner conflicts of
two Jewish adolescents; and Mr and Mrs Bo Jo Jonesby Ann Head, dealing with teen pregnancy. Other a
uthors began to change the focus of YAL as more novels addressed the realities of teenage life and offer
ed readers an honest view of the main characters’ hopes, fears, and dilemmas.
It is important to note that as YAL gained popularity among teenage readers, the literary talents of the a
uthors also became more evident. YAL authors incorporated into their books the same elements as thos
e in adult novels: a consistent point of view, a significant setting, a welldelineated but not complicated plot, vivid characterization, realistic and lively dialogue, and an attractiv
e style.
Here are Don Gallo’s characteristics of good fiction for young adults:
• The main characters are teenagers.
• The length of the average book is around 200 pages, though it may be as brief as 100 pages or (as in t
he case of the Harry Potter novels) as long as 900 pages.
• The point of view is most often first person, and it is usually that of a teenager.
• The narrator is most often the main character.
• The story is usually told in the voice of a teenager, not the voice of an adult looking back as a young pe
rson (as it is in To Kill a Mockingbirdor A Separate Peace).
• The language is typical of contemporaryteenagers, and the vocabulary, unlike that of adult classics, is
manageable by readers of average ability.
• The setting is most often contemporary, but can also be historical, futuristic (as in science fiction), or i
maginative (as in fantasy); it takes place most often in the United States but is occasionally set in foreign
countries.
• The books contain characters and issues to which teenagers can relate.
• In a majority of books, parents play a minor role or are “the enemy.”
• The plot and literary style are uncomplicated but never simplistic,though the plots of a few books are
quite complex (for example, those of Robert Cormier, M. E. Kerr, Chris Lynch, and E. R. Frank).
• The outcome of the story is usually dependent upon the decisions and actions of the main character.
• The tone and outcome of the novels are usually upbeat, but not in all instances. (Since 2000, there has
been an increase in the number of darker, grittier novels for and about teens.)
• With the exception of complicated plotting, all the traditional literary elements typical of classical liter
ature are present in most contemporary novels for young adults—wellrounded characters, flashbacks, foreshadowing, allusions, irony, metaphorical language—
though they are used less frequently and at less sophisticated levels to match the experiential levels of r
eaders.
• The very best YA books can be as appealing to adult readers as they are to teens.
Using these characteristics and comparing them with elements of adult fiction, we begin to realize that
many YAL authors—
such as Walter Dean Myers, Chris Crutcher, Karen Hesse, David Klass, Laurie Halse Anderson, Jerry Spinel
li, Joan Bauer, Tamora Pierce, Ron Koertge, Han Nolan, and Jeanette Ingold—
reflect mastery of the novel form combined with well-crafted writing.
There is no agreedupon literal definition of YAL. Some have defined it as any kind of literature read voluntarily by teenager
s; others delineateit as books with teenage protagonists, or books written for a teenage audience. Suffic
e it to say that YAL covers a broad spectrumof books, including books written for adults that are read by
both adults and teenagers. An example of this type of crossover is J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye,
published in 1951. Did Salinger write this book primarily for young adults? Which age group mostly read
s this book? Another example is Bobbie Ann Mason’s In Country, which was nominated for the National
Book Award in 1988. Esmeralda Santiago’s When I was Puerto Rican, Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, a
nd Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bonesare more recent examples of crossover novels. Salinger and Mason do
not write for young adult readers per se. Publishers categorize these novels as adult novels, but they ap
peal to young adult readers because they include some of the YA characteristics mentioned previously.
Regardless of the conflicting points of view among teachers, librarians, critics, and publishers, there is cl
early a distinct body of literature written specifically for young adults and being read by them. And the c
ontents of the books in the YA genre has grown better with each decade, with more high-quality, hardhitting books being published in the past five years than ever before.
Think Questions:
1. What can you conclude about American society and values from the literature available to
teenagers before YA?
2. How and why did literature for teenagers change in 1967?
3. Why do you think most YA books, according to Gallo’s list of characteristics, are told in the first
person point of view?
Writing Prompts – Choose 1
Having read the excerpt of From Hinton to Hamlet and after reading The Outsiders, compare your
experience of the novel to the impact of YA books as described in From Hinton to Hamlet. How does it
compare to other books you have read, in terms of realism, characters, events, and tone?
Or
The subtitle of the book from which this excerpt comes is Building a Bridge between Young Adult
Literature and the Classics. Based on excerpt details and your own reading, how do you think a good YA
novel—maybe your favorite, for example—can build a bridge to reading Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe,
or your own example of a classic work of literature?