From the problematic, problem novels of the 1960s to the romances of the 1980s and current trends for dystopias, vampires and other paranormal creatures—alongside gritty truth and striking realism—the YA novel not only serves as cultural marker, an indication of the perceived shape of adolescence at any particular time (Hunt 1996), but it is also perceived as playing a critical role in the individual adolescent’s transition into an adult. In fact, Michael Cart (2008), speaking for the YALSA, suggests: YAL is “often described as
‘developmental’ […] recogniz[ing] that young adults are beings in evolution, in search of self and identity; beings who are constantly growing and changing” (n.p.).43 This notion of change is key: lacking clearly defined or easily definable
parameters, the most common defining marker of adolescence is change itself (see, also, Baxter 2008; Hilton and Nikolajeva 2012), and it is this change, in the form of identity formation, that YAL prevailingly grapples with (see, also, Hunt 1986).
Thus, YAL paradigmatically concerns narratives of “coming of age,” and while there is divergence on how this engagement occurs, the addressing of transition, or the issues (drugs, dating, sex, friendship) potentially encountered within such transition, is the generally agreed upon marker of YAL (see, also, Trites 2000; 2007; Hill 2014). Koss and Teale (2009) suggest,
although YA novels do still focus on social issues, there has been a shift from the big event/coming-of-age stories to a more general focus on teens struggling to find themselves and dealing with typical teenage life. (567)
must also be able to explain how a subject might be scored by relationality into uniqueness. (7)
This is YAL. It is unique precisely because of its particular relationship to children’s and (adult) literature. I address Battersby’s work in more detail throughout.
43 Since 1991, the YALSA has understood this individual to be someone between
the ages of 12 and 18, a broad range that certainly includes many kinds of changes.
This reflects the ever-increasing focus of YAL on the “issues” facing adolescents. From sexual identities to friendship and dealing with loss or mental illness to being “normal,” YAL is a mercurial field of literature, ever-evolving because of its relationship to and with adolescents.44
Within this, there is an underlying assumption that this literature performs, or at least has the potential to perform, a particular function in the life of “real” adolescents. As Cart (2008) states,
to see oneself in the pages of a young adult book is to receive the reassurance that one is not alone after all, not other, not alien but, instead, a viable part of a larger community of beings who share a common humanity. (n.p.)
In this way, the text serves as a mirror for the adolescent (see, also, Tatum 2009; Bodart 2006; Dail and Leonard 2011; DasGupta 2011). It offers a way of being in this world. Even the most obviously “for-pleasure” novel is expected to address in some way the adolescent’s needs—be they “real” or imagined.
In relation to the development of YAL—through the lens of Francis Pascal’s Sweet Valley High series (1983–2003)—Amy Pattee (2010) extends this reading by suggesting that early YAL novels “adhered to a recognizable formula that perpetuated dominant ideologies” (11). In one sense, Pattee’s claim concerns the lack of variation in early YAL, especially in terms of the mass-produced, often ghost-written, series. These series—Sweet Valley High (1983–2003), Nancy Drew (1930–2003), the Hardy Boys (1927–2005)—
depend on a repetition of conflict and resolution for their structure, often with a “hook,” a small unresolved subplot or the promise of a new mystery, to keep readers reading.45 Moreover, with the conflict serving as anything deemed
44 This preoccupation with “normal” is peculiar, not least owing to the fact that
two of the ten books nominated for the 2016 YA Book Prize concern being “normal” (“Shortlisted Books” 2016). See, in particular, Am I Normal Yet
(Bourne 2015) and The Art of Being Normal (Williamson 2016).
45 While outside of the scope of this thesis, it is worth noting that both the Nancy
Drew series as well as the Hardy Boys series are still in print, as “reboot” series. For discussions of Nancy Drew see: Dyer and Romalov (1995) and Rehak
counter to dominant ideologies and the resolution always showing the wayward adolescent figure brought back in line with those ideologies, these stories perpetuate conservative ideals whilst also entrenching certain beliefs about the shape of adolescence, a notion that I develop throughout this chapter.
In this vein, one argument I make is that the adolescent is a “hailed” creature, in the Althusserian sense. Althusser (1971) suggests, “all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects” (163, emphasis original). Ideology, or this hail, transforms individuals into subjects (Althusser uses recruits). This is particularly relevant to YAL, which, like children’s
literature, addresses a specific subject. In this address, YAL (as ideology) names its intended audience “young adult,” and it interpellates that “young adult” as such. In other words, through the interpellative aspect of this hail, the
individual addressed (the adolescent in the case of YAL) becomes the subject of the address. Her identity is (in)formed by the hail.
While I contend that children’s literature and YAL are different, they do share overlapping concerns, owing to YAL’s liminality. Both children’s literature and YAL rest on the premise of engaging a specific audience, and both name their intended audience. In a field of children’s literature criticism concerning this issue, The Case of Peter Pan and the Impossibility of Children’s Literature
(Rose 1984) is the seminal text (see, also, Tucker 1981; Wall 1991; Lesnik- Oberstein 2004). It is also the work undertaken by the Graduate Centre for International Research in Childhood: Literature, Culture, Media (CIRCL), headed by Karín Lesnik-Oberstein at Reading University. However, as Rose, Lesnik- Oberstein and CIRCL as well as Peter Hunt, John Stephens, and Perry
Nodelman—all stalwarts of children’s literature—ignore the adolescent in their work, this chapter shows my work, where pertinent, both in relation to, and diverging from, children’s literature critics and criticism.
Briefly, my divergence concerns a difference in perception of the “concrete individual” that Althusser discusses (1971, 163). For me, Rose and CIRCL lose the concreteness—the fleshy and physical—in their analysis, in
(2004), Greenwald also considers the Stratemeyer Syndicate, as does Billman (1986) and Johnson (1982) and (1993). Heiferman and Kismaric (1998) unites both Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.
favour of a wholly discursively produced child. While such a claim might be possible in terms of the child—though, I think not—the adolescent is a
particularly embodied creature, and, as I discuss in detail below, the body must be taken into account. For my argument, YAL creates and validates the very group that it is constructed as being for, yet, without physical, material adolescent beings, the field could not exist. There is a complex relationship between the fleshy, physical adolescent and discursive conceptions of that creature just as there is a complex relationship between the fleshy, physical adolescent and YAL, a particular narrative of adolescence. It is this relationship that the remainder of this chapter explores.
For now, YAL is a literature that is particularly bound up in creating the very subject it purports to address; it establishes its own ideal adolescent, and in so doing, it serves as an “Ideological State Apparatus”—or an ideology—and it provides a discursively and culturally specific image of adolescence
(Althusser 1971). As Joanna Croft (1994) suggests, in her PhD thesis
Adolescence and Writing: Locating the Borderline, “the adolescent subject is interpellated as the addressee (and source) of a unique form of narrative” (12). While Croft is specifically referring to the adolescent diaries with which she is concerned, the same kind of relationship holds true in relation to adolescence as a discursively produced state of being and YAL as a discourse participating in that constructing. Essentially, adolescence and YAL exist because of, and
through, each other, and in this way, YAL serves as an ideological framework that hails adolescents outside the text through narratives concerning
adolescents within the text.
Within this frame of interpellation, realism is most often praised as the genre best suited to this interpellative task—because it more readily represents the world in which the adolescent exists and is therefore “better” able to assist them in the developmental tasks of the stage. It is, in many ways, a truth claim: if literature, or an image, mimetically reproduces the reality with which it is concerned, it is somehow more truthful, more accurate. Yet, I often find realistic YAL ineffective, especially when it aims, in sometimes quite a didactic manner, to address an adolescent’s needs. Still, in popular and media culture, mimetic representation (realistic literature) dominates conceptions of what is best for
adolescents. It is a fact made evident by the overwhelming success of realistic YAL at winning awards—this is also the “book selection” front of the tripartite engagement of YAL.
Administered by the YALSA, the Michael L. Printz, Margaret A. Edwards and William C. Morris awards are three of the most prominent specifically in terms of YAL. The Printz is the weightiest. Recognising the “best book written for teens, based entirely on its literary merit,” the Printz has, with little
deviation, gone to realistic YAL (“The Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature” 2016). The deviation: a paranormal romance,
Midwinterblood (Sedgwick 2011), won in 2014, and Bone Gap (Ruby 2015),
which employs magical realism (a style that is fantastical in scope, though, as the name suggests, grounded in realism), won in 2016. While these two texts push the boundaries of realism, they are more mainstream than sub or counter- cultural. With the Edwards Award, fantasy and fantasy authors, have faired better: Tamora Pierce (2013), Susan Cooper (2012), Sir Terry Pratchett (2011), Orson Scott Card (2008), Ursula K. Le Quin (2005), Anne McCaffrey (1999) and Madeleine L’Engle (1998)—all fantasy authors—have each won, in the noted year. The Edwards award recognises a lifetime contribution to YAL, suggesting that fantasy requires a body of work before it is worth recognition?