The YA Buzz
Want to know some of things that were discussed at YALC and what is at the heart of YA? Here’s Isabel Popple‘s personal pick of some of the most crucial comments made across last weekend’s events.
James Smythe, Sarah Green, Patrick Ness and Malorie Blackman. (© Rowan Spray Photography)
On what YA is…
Malorie Blackman: Young adult is not a genre. Young adult is about so many different types of books, and in that it’s about balance, it’s about having all those different endings, all those different genres within the young adult book sphere, so I think it’s absolutely necessary to have books that end on a hopeful note, books that end on a happy note and books that don’t. And I would argue that we need all of those; it’s about a balance of having all those different things covered.
Matt Haig: If anything, it’s an age range, but it’s not even that. I don’t even really know what YA is, its just books. I think as a writer, it doesn’t help to have any of that in your head at all. I think good things happen when you mix things up – I think you can write about aliens and Tolstoy together in the same book, it doesn’t matter. Good things happen when you blur boundaries.
On the difference between YA and adult fiction…
Nick Lake: If you sort of imagine youth as a tunnel I think you can maybe see YA books as being inside the tunnel looking out, whereas an adult book which has a teen character might be more likely – its not a hard and fast rule – to be looking back into the tunnel… Is the perspective adult, or is the perspective from the perspective of the young person? And I think you can tell the difference. I think we’re all writing for our 15 year-old selves, but as our 15 year-old selves.
On what age YA is for…
Malorie Blackman: One child might be emotionally ready for a story at age 11, and another child might not be emotionally ready for it until 14 or 15. Its about what that young adult, that teen is interested in. As Judy Blume said recently, I think a lot of teens self censor and they know what they can cope with, and if they don’t like something they’re reading they put the book down. And that’s the whole point about reading for pleasure, you can read and pick what interests you. For me, it’s about encouraging children to read more widely and more diversely, not about being prescriptive in their reading.
On taboo content…
James Dawson (© Rowan Spray Photography)
James Dawson: Puberty can kick in at 9, 10, 11, 12; I don’t think there is a right age, and I think the word that we’ve used and Non Pratt used is the word “curious”. We can either leave young people to the mercy of the internet, or we can actually give them books like ours which present sex in a non judgmental way that gives young people an opportunity to think about it and ask some of those big questions about getting older… It’s far better to read a novel than it is to ask somebody on the playground where they will be told the wrong answer.
Cat Clarke: Some teenagers have sex. Yes, this information is shocking. And if some teenagers do it then I’m going to write about it.
Charlie Higson: We never had young adult as a category in this country until four or five years ago maybe. You had children’s books, and then kids went on to read adult books. In fact, one of the really popular genres for kids to move on to was horror. I think kids and teenagers have always loved horror… I think the main thing there’s probably less of in YA (although its not a hard and fast rule) there’s probably less sex than you would find in adult horror… Otherwise they are pretty much adult books in many ways.
On the “worthiness” of YA…
Nick Lake: I think the danger talking about things like War and Peace is that it fosters the idea that something has to be long and complex and difficult in order to be intellectually satisfying and stimulating and interesting… I think it’s a desperate fallacy to think that a book has to be complex and difficult to be worthwhile.
Phil Earle: She shoved Holes into my hand – by Louis Sachar – and it was like someone turned the light switch on in my head for the first time in my life and I was suddenly surrounded by books that I actually wanted to read. Instead of 900 pages of Dickens, which just didn’t speak to me at all, there were 300 pages of Holes. And it was 300 pages, but it was 300 years of history and it was a wild western and it was a crime novel and it was a family saga… I spent two years reading everything that I wanted to read, it just gave me that hunger and it changed my life in that I suddenly wanted to try and write something that I would want to read myself.
On how dark YA should be…
Sarah Crossan: If it was an adult book that ended in a kind of nihilistic way then we wouldn’t be having this discussion, so it’s slightly patronizing for teenagers and for young adult readers to say, actually, these are the things we shouldn’t be talking about. For YA, you’re tapping into how people feel. It feels pretty hopeless when you’re young; I felt desperate when I was 15 to 19, and if you’re not talking about that and if you’re telling teenagers that the world is rosy, it doesn’t represent the world they live in and I think it can just make them feel a whole lot worse.
Patrick Ness: YA is huge. It has room for sad endings; it has room for happy endings; it has room for hopeful books; it has room for books that tell you that they understand that your life can feel hopeless. All you have to do is read what teenagers write; they write stuff that’s way darker than anything we’d ever be allowed to publish. If you don’t address that then you are abandoning a teenager to face that themselves, and I think that’s the immoral choice rather than false hope, fake hope. And I always think if I tell the truth about what’s dark and what’s difficult, well, then when I also tell the truth about what’s good, and trust, and friendship and things that matter, then I am more believed because I haven’t lied.
On the difference between YA and adult fiction…
Patrick Ness: Teen books tend to be about finding boundaries and crossing them and figuring out when you end, who you are and what shape you are. Adult books tend to be about already knowing those boundaries and feeling trapped within them.
© Rowan Spray Photography
On why writers write…
Patrick Ness: You know in The Cat in the Hat there’s Thing 1 and Thing 2? And there are two kids who are trying to clean up the mess that the Cat in the Hat is making? Authors are those kids. We are trying to clean up a chaotic world and make sense of it.
Charlie Higson: The interesting thing is if you have a panel of writers up here and you ask them any question about writing, you’ll get as many different answers as there are writers, and everybody comes to it differently and approaches it differently. I’d say if I was anything in The Cat in the Hat I’d be the Cat in the Hat, I’d be the one making the mess, coming up with the stuff and throwing it out there!
On the popularity of dystopia…
Malorie Blackman: I think the world we live in at the moment – you feel very powerless, and I think dystopian fiction is about the power of the individual to affect change. Each and every one of us can make a difference and I think perhaps that’s part of the appeal of dystopian fiction: that idea of one individual or a group of individuals affecting change on an entire society, no matter how bad that society is we can all make a difference.
On putting recommended ages on books…
Patrick Ness: I’m against ageing on books not because, a 10 year old, if they see a 14 on a book they’ll think I’ve got to read that, but for the opposite reason which is that sometimes 14 year olds need to read ‘10’ books and if they see a great big age 10 on that book, they’re not going to pick it up. And that would be a huge loss to a teenager struggling to read.
Isabel Popple, for Waterstones.com/blog
