Garth
Nix: I don't
believe there is an actual stigma, but as some adults may believe there is, the effect is
the same. What is important here is that the books look like attractive novels full stop.
I do think that many YA novels would have a much larger adult audience if the adult
audience was aware they existed. From the e-mails and letters I get from readers, I would
estimate that half the readership of my novels Sabriel and Lireal are not
teens. Many of them comment that they did not know the book was a 'YA novel' until they
saw it labeled as such in a bookstore, and they often ask me why it is. Perhaps the most
important thing that could be done for YA novels (apart from the packaging) is simply to
work on booksellers and librarians cross-shelving the books, so that they appear in both a
YA section and in the appropriate adult genre (or simply fiction) shelves.
Laurie
Halse Anderson:
Most adults aren't even aware that YA fiction exists. Which is really stupid when you
think about it. They know teenagers exist. They are aware of the music, movies, and
fashion that teens like. I think YA fiction is just blooming --- metaphorically speaking,
it's a thirteen-year-old girl with new breasts, or a fourteen-year-old boy who has hair
sprouting in unmentionable places. Give it another year or two and everybody will know
what YA fiction is. Yes, YA fiction should definitely be promoted to adults. Identity
crises, isolation, rebellion against authority, sex, love --- adults love that stuff.
Chris
Crutcher: Yes,
there is a stigma attached to YA lit if you are an adult. I get a lot of letters from
adults, talking about my stories from an adult perspective, and I know a lot of other YA
authors do also. But most of those letters come from the library and teaching professions,
or from adults who have been led to those stories by their kids. The packaging puts adults
off. In fact it puts some teenagers off. I do think some of these titles could be promoted
to adults with success.
Walter
Dean Myers: I've
been accused of writing adult books and calling them 'Young Adult' books. Where does one
stop and the other begin? Mark Twain never thought of himself as writing for Young Adults,
nor did Shakespeare set out, in Romeo and Juliet, to test the YA market.
Sarah
Dessen: It's hard
for me to say, as a writer: I think that's more of a marketing thing. However, my
experience is a little different because I never really set out to be a YA author. I just
wrote a novel with a teenage narrator, and it was my agent who thought it fell into the
genre. I don't read a lot of YA, because I worry that if I am too immersed in the YA thing
itself, and what else is being done, that it might limit me in my own work. I just write
the kind of stories I want to read, now, which are pretty much the kind I wanted to read
when I was teenager. I am wary of people who seem to think that writing YA is easier, and
that things like plot and true character don't matter as much. If anything, it's harder to
write for an audience that doesn't have as much of a reading history; at my age, if
someone tells you a book starts slowly, you'll stick with it for at least fifty pages. In
YA, you know you don't have that option. You need to get to your story fast, and write in
a tight, concise manner that I think a lot of fiction writers, regardless of genre, would
find difficult to do.
Meg
Cabot: There seems
to me to be a stigma attached to reading anything but whatever Oprah has selected for her
Book Club. By the way, Oprah, if you'd like any copies of my books, just call.
