The Evolution of YA: Young Adult Fiction, Explained (Feat. Lindsay Ellis) | It's Lit!
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“Young Adult” fiction is a term whose meaning has varied wildly over the years. It can apply to coming of age tragedies or Serialized adventures of babysitters, or insert really dated twilight joke here. But where did this “young adult” genre come from? And why did it get so big?
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Written by Lindsay Ellis and Angelina Meehan
Directed & animated by Andrew Matthews
Produced by Amanda Fox
Executive in Charge (PBS): Adam Dylewski
Music and Sound Design: Eric Friend
Hand Model: Katie Graham
Imaged by Shutterstock
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Ellis is killin' it with this short form, even though I still love her longer video essays as they are some of the best videos ever uploaded to TH-cam. Her scripts here are concise, has an impeccable sense of flow, and still covers a wealth of information while still being approachable to new folks!
Thanks PBS for giving yet another stellar content creator some work, and please keep this series going!
I enjoyed her video essays on The Addams Family (although it's mainly because I unabashedly love those movies).
And I agree, PBSDS is doing some amazing work online! Maybe they should give Lindsay her own show after The Great American Read is over?
She did a video essay on the Addams Family? Never saw it.
Welp... here I go into another Ellis hole.
"Thanks PBS for giving yet another stellar content creator some work, and please keep this series going!"
And here's me thinking I'd see Lindsay move to Brighton and create programmes for Channel 4!
She is one of the best essay portraier on youtube. She coud do just voice shorts on tv too, or another media plattform, or educational video games.
Morticia + Gomez = Relationship Goals
This seems primarily focused on American YA.
My favourite novel which happens to be YA (so the librarians at the local library could please take it out of the children's section with novels aimed at 10-year-olds) is Alyzon Whitestarr by Isobelle Carmody. While it was published in 2005, the treatment by Australia of refugees is unfortunately still extremely topical. Then there is also the undertones of issues such as radicalisation and addiction. But above all, it is a wonderful exploration of what the inherent nature of humans is.
As a kid, I read Walter Dean Myers and Sharon Draper. I loved how their characters, settings, and plot points felt realistic. Also, the Bluford series was pretty great too.
You know that Lady Lindsay has gone far when she appears on PBS. Good going, Master Ellis!!!
My fave series when I was a teen was the percy jackson series. I'd say the themes and tone of it aged up with the characters and the audience, just not as dramatically as harry potter. I was so excited to share the first book with the kid I nanny and was beyond stoked that he loved it too
I never got into YA novels during Middle School and High School because I wanted to focus more on Literary Classics like Wind in the Willows, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Mark Twain. Looking back, though, I'd say the only YA novels I enjoyed (despite being forced to read them for the bloody awful Accelerated Reader program) were written by Gary Paulsen: The Car, Harris and Me, and Dogsong.
Imo the bartemeius trilogy is super underated. Theres some quality character angst, world building, and politics in there.
Series of unfortunate events is the bomb and if i ever write a book i hope i can make a series as quirky as it
Throne of Glass😍😍😍😍 God cOuLD I bE aNy mOrE iN lOVe with that series?
I am 26 years old, but one of my favorite YA novels is "Turtles All the Way Down" by John Green.
Finally, someone says it! If not for J.K Rowling most of the young adult book series that came after, wouldn't even be published.
Where does catcher in the Rye fall into this?
Hot take, or just nerd pet peeve here. The Vampire Dairies and things like the Thirst Series predate Twilight by at least a decade. I think it should only really be credited to adaptional success and even then Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Teen Wolf (Michael Fox), Sabrina the Teenage Witch all already proved there was an audience for those teen centered supernatural stories. Twilight definitely helped the other older books in that genre be discovered again through reprints.
I absolutely LOVED the stravaganza trilogy (no idea if that is what it is called in eglish as well but also too lazy to google)
I have never met anybody else that has read it though and that’s a shame
Well according to my local library The Witcher series is YA... Which does not seem correct... But ok...
Does the Chronicles of Narnia or the Swallows and Amazons stories count as YA? My dad read them to me as a child when I was too young to read them myself. What about The Wind in the Willows?
i only read ya, i'm 20. i've tried reading adult books several times and there's just always something that feels off about them, especially since those that i've read have all taken place over several years, sometimes generations. that's so boring. i often enjoyed the setting and i like darker themes that may not often appear in ya but the boringness of adult books isn't worth it. granted, there are plenty of shitty ya books out there, but i like to scour goodreads and youtube for diverse fantasy and contemporary ya novels and there are just so many amazing ones out there.
my favourite books of all time are the shadowhunter chronicles by cassandra clare. i probably wouldn't enjoy city of bones if i read it today for the first time but that's because when i first read it, i was between 9 and 11 years old and while it was for 2007 already more diverse than most books, it wasn't as diverse as i like my books these days. cassandra clare's current books, however, are very suitable even for adults and very diverse too. i feel like they grew with me.
Even SEEING the Percy Jackson movie flash across the screen made my heart stop in fear
I am here from 2 months in the future with some truly fantastic news!!!
im tired What is this about?
@@sahantheegala8560 The author is helping to create an accurate TV series of Percy Jackson
What movie I don’t remember one go away please I don’t want anything to do with this hocus pocus.
made me want to cry
Ok so basically, Librarians are the best!!!
Katy Spencer heck yeah they are!
This was never in doubt.
Yeah I guess
Not really, but ok.
To quote Leslie Knope “librarians suck” lol
I grew up reading Animorphs. I'm sure to the adults around me it seemed like a cute little novel about kids turning into animals, but I walked with a head full of morale quandaries. The novels really ramped up fast, to the point where in the final novel some of the characters are put on trial for war crimes. It discussed a lot of topics like when is it right to fight back, what are the limits to resistance, what is unforgivable, when does your enemy have rights?
The ending was so sad tho, is scarred little me
I never finished the series and searched up the ending... I was shocked.
That series is wh, to this day I always sequester potential romantic partners in my basement for 3 days feeding them nothing but oatmeal
It definitely evolved in tone from like power rangers to like war drama about child soldiers
Surprised Goosebumps is considered Young Adult. It's so ubiquitous with childhood for me that I just assumed it was aimed for a more elementary school crowd.
If anything, Animorphs is more YA than Goosbumps imo
ChocoDoeEyes Animorphs is just bad. Too dark. Too nihilistic. Needed to be heavily edited if it was going to be aimed at the book fair crowd like it was.
Fair enough, I don't remember much about it other than being more serious and geared towards older kids.
I had the same thought about a couple of the examples given in this video. It seemed to be lumping Middle Grade into Young Adult... which, considering these are really just age distinctions and not genres unto themselves, isn't too surprising. The line between what qualifies as MG vs YA or YA vs Adult (or New Adult, which comes with its own categorization headaches) is incredibly blurry. The Harry Potter series is a good example - many would call the first books Middle Grade, but the latter books are solidly Young Adult. So what to do, then, when trying to label a series that ages with the reader? If you have a book with a teenage protagonist (which most would automatically call YA) but it deals with serious adult issues and features graphic sex/violence.... is it still YA, based on the age of it's protag, despite being written for a very mature audience? It's why I don't think it's really feasible to draw hard lines between reader-age-based categories.
Considering none of the Goosebumps protagonists are teenagers AND R. L. Stine has said that the books were written for the elementary school set, I totally agree. Probably should not have been included in this video.
Lindsay Ellis does it again! Superb analysis and explanation!!
I wish it was a bit longer... and more in depth.
I used to really love The Series of Unfortunate Events as a kid, listening to the audiobooks while riding to and from school. They were quirky, suspenseful, and I liked the darker humor. Only now, especially with the incredibly faithful Netflix series, have I looked back and realized just how well written the books are. It asks a lot and gives a lot to readers who are paying attention and it deal with a lot of subject matter that might be seen as really grim for the intended age group. I've come to appreciate the level of care and thought it had in treating little kid-me like an adult.
Agreed! Never really thought of them as YA/Teen books, but children's fiction, but going back and reading how dark they are, I second guess that.
Yes this! I'd say it's the really good books that kind of escape their genre - Harry potter, ASOUE to name a few. And these books have such wide appeal that you could name them a lot of different categories and it would still be accurate
Absolutely! Lemony Snicket has such a wild ability to expose the maliciously mundane apathy of adults that pay no attention, as just about every adult figure in that series is either bumblingly naive or nefarious. Kids are the only characters in that series with any common sense, and it really highlights just how overlooked the child perspective is in a world ruled by grown-ups.
I hated the netflix show. I know the movie isnt as faithful but i love it
Series of unfortunate events are superbly written books. Lemony snicket knows how to tell a tale!!!!! Loved them as a child and the Netflix series makes me want to read them again but as an adult my reading has been touch and go and i miss being a book worm. But the internet took off and yeah....
There are some "high-literature" books I've read throughout middle school and high school that I think have taken on more of a YA rebranding, in retrospect. Catcher In The Rye, Lord of The Flies, and even To Kill A Mockingbird, though lacking conventional YA tropes such as young romance, seem to have taken on a bit of a reclassification in recent decades as "young adult" must-reads. Though they do not fully abide YA conventions, it's interesting to see them being billed as such.
So is this like a series now? like with Lindsey writing and narrating? That's nice, this is nice, I like this.
Thing good
IT'S FINE THIS IS FINE
Unpopular opinion:
I actually LOVE dystopian YA novels
Britt P.
:)
YA dystopia is amazing
I just love Dystopian in general. Give me 1984, The Handmaids Tale, Hunger Games, Divergent, Maze Runner etc. A lot of people are fed up with the "girl destroys corrupt government" trope but I actually love it. :)
Girl With The Black Hoodie
Me too! I absolutely LOVE it!
Thats not unpopular but people are shamed for liking it (but i like it too!)
Surprised not to see Catcher in the Rye here, is there a genre distinction between "YA" and "coming of age"?
Kenneth Fender The distinction is a matter of snobbery. If the writer is a contributor to the new Yorker it slides more toward the legit fiction track.
Coming of age is a genre, YA is a marketing category.
Catcher in the Rye is also regarded as an early ancestor to what is now called YA fiction. I took a class that was just YA novels and my professor called it “one of the first”. They didn’t mention that other one (Seventeenth Summer?). It could be considered YA, though.
and I also think Catcher in der Rye isn't read by teens....I think they don't really get it. There are other great works like: "When I was five I killed myself" by Howard Buten ....or "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding....Some books simply feature kids/teens but are too complex for them to grasp.
@@FreyaEinde same thought went through my mind
A shoutout to Holes, by Louis Sachar and it’s underexposed sequel spinoff Small Steps.
Wait- it has a sequel????
I read that book in 5th grade omg i never knew their was a sequel
I love books and I love Lindsay. This series is perfect! 😍
Some YA books can be really unbearable because of that "twilight type romance" (I couldn't find anything to explain better).
But we love Rick Riordan, don't we? 😁
Hell yeah, I was surprised not to see him mentioned.
PERCY 4 LIFE
Finally, someone who realizes that people still read these days.
Definitely didn't think Series of Unfortunate Events was "YA" fiction, I started reading that when I was about nine. xD
I mean same, but rereading it as an adult I get a lot more out of it than I did then
As a kid I hated the adults in there for being so incompetent!!! Like 5th grade me waiting for the bus/my mom to pick up wanted to slap every adult in that book!
How about the best YA Supernatural Romance: Awoken?
“The League of Extraordinary Librarians”. I would read the s$t out of that! Good job Lindsey!!!
Also known as "LEL."
Any love for Tamora Pierce in the audience? She's been my favorite YA author for years and it's a shame that she's never quite found the mainstream appeal that some others have.
GG Crono So much love for Tamora Pierce! Particularly the Protector of the Small quartet
Oh yes! I love them still. Circle of Magic universe in particular ^_^
The Protector of the Small Quarter shaped my life! I adore Tamora Pierce! She was way ahead of her time as well, particularly with progressive attitudes like with LGBT characters.
My friends and I would buy each other Tamora Pierce novels for our birthdays and pass them around so everyone got to read it
GG Crono Mug shot of lindsay www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=u-MYW9rgCOrP5gLR4qSgBg&q=lindsay+ellis+arrested&oq=lindsay+ellis+arrested&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-img.12...4597.8577..9400...0....440.3139.0j9j3j1j2......0....1.........0j35i39j0i24.JpQq4m%2BZhX4%3D#imgrc=XyN2jDsUv8KseM:
My favourite young adult book (And book in general) is Markus Zuzak's The Book Thief. Has all the things I look for for: A young girl trying to get by during the rise of fascism, the character of death, hella symbolism, reckless rebellion, and vague, obscure, and unexplained fantasy elements. I love it!
Saaame!! Well, aside from Harry Potter being my all time favorite series, but yeah, The Book Thief is WAY up there in my all time favorites
I love HP as well. If ye enjoy a well-developed Death, I recommend ye read the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, especially Mort, Reaper Man, Soul Music, Hogfather, and Thief of Time, where he plays a major role- though in full I'd recommend starting from the very beginning, as it allows you to see him and the universe grow linearly. Though be warned, TP was a new writer with the first books, so while I like them enough, some don't, but they do get much better!
I love The Book Thief! It really changed my view on death as a figure and a way of life. The Deathly Hallows from the Harry Potter series also influenced my view on death as well. The Book Thief though will always hold a special place in my heart as it shows so many things in a different light.
Is that YA?..
Hell yeah
"Eleanor & Park" all the way! Realistic characters and school, abusive family problems, struggle of being "that" kid, there's so much for this book.
My favorite YA authors will always be Sarah J Maas, Holly Black (who's reach and influence spans back for years), and Leigh Bardugo. All use the fantasy aspects of their writing to not only pull from actual different myths and legends across the world to feel like a more expanded world (with Black going so deep as to basically just slap you with Celtic fae lore) but also touch on deep subjects. None of their characters are ever blameless and not every book ends happily. It's up to the reader to interrupt just where the line should be drawn for what makes a character good and who is in the right- especially in war.
The Outsiders is great and it's still taught in schools. It's one of the few books out there that make the troublemakers and "bad students" feel seen at that age.
rkgk1517 I just finished it and I’m not sure we read the same book. Ponyboy isn’t really a bad kid. He’s in a gang, sure, but he saves kids from a burning building and is also one of the few characters to always do the right thing (him and Johnny). He gets his friend to stop harassing those girls. He runs away with Johnny even though he didn’t have to. He CLEANS UP A GLASS BOTTLE he broke in self-defense. Also, he makes really good grades. So I don’t think he’s super relatable to the “bad students”. S.E. Hinton said she wanted to write a “realistic teen novel” and just nothing about that book is realistic :\ but then again, I’m not a fan of a lot of books that are forced on kids in schools. I don’t think they should be put up on a pedestal when there are plenty of contemporary novels that are more relevant to kids today that are being regarded as trash because they aren’t “classics”.
Whitney Elizabeth S.E. Hinton was a teen herself when she wrote The Outsiders, the idea was based off her friend getting injured in a gang fight. I didn't find it super unrealistic for Ponyboy to be a good person who got roped up into a gang, since that does happen. And it was probably more realistic than most novels aimed at teens at the time.
@@whitneymouse note that I put "bad students" in quotations. I'm not saying Ponyboy or any of the Greasers are really bad - they've been labeled that way by society because of their social class. That's the point.
The boys in The Outsiders go to prison and always get in trouble, especially Dallas, and they're known to get in fights, steal etc. It's known in the book that Ponyboy isn't really like that, so while you passionately listed examples as to why, it is a known fact within the book already. Two Bit even says something along the lines of "stay as you are, don't become like us" during the broken glass scene to Ponyboy. This book is relatable because it highlights issues of social class and how children from broken homes/poverty are generalized as "bad" even before they are given the chance to be something else, and even when their privileged counterparts engage in dangerous behaviour as well. It's important for that reason, and to show that like Ponyboy, you are capable of becoming your own person and don't have to fall into the identity society may try to push you into. Also, Ponyboy does fight and even helped Dallas chase little kids away for fun, so he's not some angel lol.
It's interesting to see that serials like Goosebumps and Animorphs (Animorphs was totally my jam) were introduced as YA fare, when by the time I was going through school they were being relegated into the pre-YA shelves (aka elementary school libraries).
Does Anne of green gables count as a YA novel? Maybe??? I'm gonna say Anne of green gables is just a really good YA novel (if it's one) to me
BKgirl483 - it would technically be middle grade since Anne starts off as 11, but like in Harry Potter she does age as the story progresses and also like Harry Potter which is technically middle grade it does still appeal to audiences of all ages
If it is, than it was a comparatively innocent example and was still readable for children. But it certainly has the coming-of-age aspect...
I mean, that series does eventually mature, too. There's a (humorous, mostly) scene dealing with underage drinking, and IIRC eventually Anne's daughter deals with her boyfriend fighting in WWI.
BKgirl483 - I think technically it is YA.
Great example of classic YA, although I think back then it would be considered children's, probably cause as the video purports ya wasn't really a thing.
Anything Rick Riordan writes is the best part of my life /sobs a little bit/
I hated the newest one. I mean it was a good book but **SPOILER ALERT** Jason is one of my favourite characters. A little underwritten, maybe, but I still love him.
4:04 - Little disappointed you didn't squeeze a copy of Awoken into this section...
Error: Awoken not found
Was just about to say the same thing.
(for anyone who doesn't know, Lindsey co-wrote a satire of Twilight-esque YA romance in the form of a Lovecraft-based YA romance published under the name Serra Elinsen).
I'm a proud owner of a paper copy of Awoken.
I too! Still proudly sits on my shelf!
In his house at R'lyeh, great Cthulhu lies dreaming...of her.
What I love about YA, and a lot of entertainment marketed to younger audiences in general, is that adult in adult entertainment, it's so easy to make a conflict/villain more evil, just by adding sexual assault/harassment, gore, and torture. While all these things can be effective in a narrative, often the adult market can use a heavy hand with these things, and it can be overused and cliche. When marketing to a younger audience, you can't immediately reach for those narrative cruches, and it can often force writers to be more creative in increasing the danger of the conflict. Either you have to suggest those darker themes, and often times leaving things up to the imagination is much more chilling than writing them out in lavish detail. Or you must throw them out altogether, and think of more unique horrors an antagonist can unleash upon the protagonist.
I remember basically living in the Young Adult section of the library in the town I’d just moved to during middle school before my new home had wifi. Classic YA novels like The Outsiders, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Face on The Milk Carton, Tiger Eyes, and of course Harry Potter and Twilight sustained me in a time where burying my face into books was such a relief during a very awkward phase in my life.
Yes ! The Face on the Milk Carton :) That is an amazing book so is Tiger Eyes :) I loved those books! Thank you Genie for reminding of them :) I was also a huge HP fan so was my mom :)
The heart is a lonely hunter? I don't think it suits the label... unless I missed something.
My favorite YA book has got to be The Book Thief by Marcus Zuzak. Go read it, I'm sorry.
It's also hard to believe that I started reading Harry Potter in the 90's, the 90's!
I remember really liking Holes when it came out
The movie adaptation was also really good!
I remember I put that book away when I first got it and one day out of boredom I decided to read it and was immediately hooked.
You know, in Ireland it’s one of the required reading books for school.
I'm so sorry, but am I only one who read this comment wrong at first?
My favorite YA series is Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
Adults were reading plenty of genre fiction marketed to young adults way back when, they were just hidden in plain sight as genre books. A majority of the fantasy novels of the 70's through the 90's were really young adult novels without the safety rails of the YA genre.
Heralds of Valdemar is a great example...I discovered the series in a used bookstore a couple years ago, and while it’s definitely pulpy YA fantasy, the care for the world is neat, and I didn’t really realise for a while that it was intended to be YA.
the outsiders is definetely my favorite. And recently I fell in love with "Radio Silence" by Alice Oseman, totally recomend.
I think my favourite YA novel looking back is Holes. It was my first experience with interconnected storytelling from different time periods and locations, as well as dealing with headier subjects like racism and dehumanization resulting from imprisonment.
How do we know the adults from 18-44 that are buying half the YA books aren’t buying them for their kids?
Yay more Lindsay Ellis!
The Outsiders was the first book to make me cry. 14 year old me found it very moving. Thanks, Librarian Ladies from like more than half a century ago. You're still making an impact, decades later.
I did not expect to see Hunter x Hunter immediately upon clicking on this video. Caught me completely off-guard.
**shows hunterxhunter in the beginning on tv** editor better be trying to raise exposure to one of these storytelling classics and not be dismissing it as "trash" tv, i will defend it with my life
Nicolle yeah, Hunterxhunter is awesome
"storytelling classics"
It was from Chimera Ant arc, of all things. I do think they meant well - otherwise they could have shown something from the Hunter Exam arc, when everything was bright, sunny and still marketed towards children for some reason.
The hunter eam features a creepy molesting murderer , a kid ex-assasin as hero and more darkness lurking . I dont think Kids were the intendet target audience. The best and most selling manga are generelly for adults too, like hunterxhunter one of the most popular complex worldbuilding manga.
Ned Barks it's a Shonen Jump series, though. It's not mainly targetet at adults.
While volumes are released slowly, per book, hxh is one of the best selling series in Japan.
I loved The Outsiders as a teen. One of my favourite YA books I didn't see mentioned was The Giver by Lois Lowry.
Favorite YA series is the His Dark Materials trilogy, which sort of overlapped with Harry Potter on the timeline of YA fantasy becoming "respectable", though not to the same degree of commercial success as the Potter series.
I love that series and recommend it so teens get introduced to and burned out of their edgy atheist phase asap.
Suspicious Squid Productions Still my favourite as well. I reread it at 30 and understood things I didn't at 13.
One of my favorites is The Underland Chronicles by Suzanne Collins (who later wrote The Hunger Games!). They're surprisingly dark, though, with themes of war, death, violence, and genocide. This is even more surprising when you realize the protagonist, Gregor, is only 11 years old!
Finally a person who remembers the Underland Chronicles! I admit that I've never gotten around to finishing all of them (made it up to the fourth one) but I did really enjoy the ones I did read and loved the entire world that was created. It was rather thought provoking at times.
Great to meet another fan! I think my favorite characters are Ripred and Temp. The last book is a great ending, and it also shows a softer side to Ripred.
I admit that it's been a long long time since I last read any of the books (it's all a bit of a blur at this point) but I do remember really liking Ripred! I should really pick them up and try reading them again. I'm a little sad that they've been completely over shadowed by the hunger games
I read them years ago, but as far as I can remember all your points are accurate. I think it's one of the first book series I read, and after finishing it I just sat for half an hour in shock.
Some of my favorite books ever! I remember reading them as a kid and being so moved by the themes and the characters.
I love the animation of this and as an animator I shudder at organizing all those assets!! Great work
‘We were liars’ literally gave me whiplash yesterday when I finished it
Great video! It took me a while to read "The Giver" because it was YA. Until it was handed to me without the YA thing on it and I didn't realize it. But I started out with science fiction. My nickname is Ray and one day in a library when I was like... 10 or 11 I picked up my first real novel by a guy named Ray Bradburry and it was the book Fareinheight 451, a hell of a first novel and I went on to read the rest of his books along with a lot of the the sci-fi classics. I had a hard time breaking away from that, but in school we had these tests that we had to get so many points and each book was worth so many points so I picked the books worth all the points and ended up reading Moby Dick and Les Miserables and passed each test for the entire year, plus the 2nd was a really good the book. Moby Dick felt like it was written by someone with ADD. Kept jumping into whaling specifics in the middle of the story. Like reading 20,000 leagues under the sea. A lot of description, little story.
I'm glad you gave The Giver a try! Fahrenheit 451 was also an early favorite of mine, although now I think he's a much better short story writer.
Did the structure of Moby Dick make it less enjoyable to read? Personally, I like that it's a mish-mash of different literary forms, it makes it feel very modern. Some chapters are even written in the form of a play, with stage directions! Melville's descriptions are great too, some fantastic metaphors. And lots of whale jokes, of course.
To be honest, I was probably 15 when I read it and I only read it to take one test to finish with that entire thing for the year. (Most people read multiple smaller books, I figured since I've already enjoyed so many I could just take the one test and be done. And I did and was done. While everyone else stressed about it throughout the year.). So.. I'm 36 now and know enough to know I'll never know enough where back then I knew it all. So I can't really comment on the memory too clearly. But of the two books I read for that test, Les Mis drew me in and I still remember it's storyline. Where Moby Dick... I passed the test, and I know Ahab wanted his wall and that They call the one guy Ishmael and that I thought it was information to become a whaler. So, to the 15 year old me. It was a very very boring story. And I enjoyed Ray Bradbury's short stories. Like the cream shoes and sitting in a tree to stretch a day out by watching it and the martian chronicles was a personal favorite. But in that mindset too, I avoided 1984 because it was past 1984 so it obviously didn't happen so I couldn't read it. (I've read it since and if I could tell my younger self that as far as the guy can tell, it's 1984 because they've messed with their own history so much nobody is clear on anything, I may have read it.) But that's what growing up's about, and at one point I decided to try looking into all those things I avoided for some reason or another and found a lot of books I loved.
n0nTox!c it bothers me that you distinguish certain books as “real novels” because of who they’re marketed to. The Giver is a “real novel” and a GREAT one at that! Just because something is considered a “classic” doesn’t mean it’s good or any more important than more contemporary novels.
I had to read The Giver in 6th grade. It was intense reading for 12 year olds but I'm glad that we did.
Well, I'd like to point out that I was writing from the perspective of my 15 year old self. I didn't read 1984 for so long because it was past 1984 and I couldn't see it as a "sci fi" book if it took place in a future that's passed. But I can't go back and tell myself to think differently than I did.
I also would only "watch" rated "R" movies as a kid thinking those were the "Real Movies" My Dad owned a movie rental place for the first half of my childhood, then my Mom worked in a half movie rental place/half gas station and grocery store for the rest of it and the entire time I had free access to any movie. My parents never censored me, just told me that what's on the screen is not real. So I grew up loving horror movies, which... I don't so much anymore, but I can say it's done nothing to make me violent. I'm the type to throw myself inbetween people about to fight begging them not to. It' the only type of fights I've been in anyway. I've been punched twice but by strangers who were taking somethign from me. Otherwise, I've never felt the need to "hurt" others. Not that I haven't by accident, but never intentionally and when I did it was more with words than by actions. In fact, it turned out when I was younger I was good at calling out people's fears and making them feel like shit. But, thankfully I kept growing both physically and mentally. The trick is to never think you know enough. :P
My favorite has to be Animorphs! I read it throughout my childhood, and it had a surprising impact not on me personally, but primarily on how I consume media. I read the novels based on whichever cover seemed the most interesting at the time, so I experience character introductions and development nonlinearly, and I think that helped me to "piece together" more esoteric stories.
I'm loving this series! 😁
My favourite YA book, hm. The Tiffany Aching series by Terry Pratchett (which bridges children's lit and YA, like Harry Potter), the Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire, Cornelia Funke's Inkworld trilogy (those were childhood faves). Also enjoy YA graphic novels and comics, like Lumberjanes.
Cendaquenta Books I loved the Inkworld and Tiffany Aching books! I should check out the other ones you mentioned!
Cendaquenta Books Aaaah the Tiffany Aching series ! The books that made discover the Discworld. Another YA novel buy the same author is « The amazing Maurice and his educated rodents » really worth the read. Scratch that, the entire Discworld series is worth it. I just love the witches subseries.
I would love to see Lindsay review Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo 💛 It's the perfect example of a YA book that resonates with an older audience too.
Same here! I'm kind of sad that they sort of stopped BYOA. I really enjoyed watching Lindsay and co. review books
I've just finished reading that and its sequel. I really enjoyed both, but am not really sure what exactly defines them as Young Adult. They seem to possess the same level of complexity and "adult" content as much of what I read in the common or garden variety adult fiction.
Whatever the case, I'd throw my support behind 6 of Crows and Croooked Kindom too, if you're looking for something in the "grand heists in low fantasy world" genre while you wait for the next book in Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastards series.
It might be lumped in the YA category because of marketing but also the age of the protagonists and as much as I love the series I do wish that Bardugo made some of the characters in their early 20s at least. Anyways I still love the duology and it's definitely Bardugo's best work so far.
Personally, I didn't really see a lot of distinction between "Young Adult" and not-YA books as a child. I was the kid who would read Stephen King novels, Bruce Coville's works, and whatever Goosebumps books I could get my hands on. They all had monsters (of one kind or another), and used the conflict(s) created by the monsters to present engaging stories that stuck with me both in a literary sense and in an 'ethical' sense.
Similarly, I don't care if "The Boxcar Children" counts as whatever...I still have a couple books across my four bookshelves, next to classic "Sherlock Holmes" and Agatha Christie, as well as Mary Higgins Clark and Robin Cook.
Admittedly, Harry Potter does have a special place in my heart as, well, I grew up with it (being born in 1991 and reading whatever I could get my hands on, it was inevitable)...and thus grew up with the characters and the tone. But, that element works for a lot of things regardless of if they are oriented towards children or adults or both or neither.
i'm not quite sure if there's a YA novel that I love but- *I LOVE YOU LINDSAY ELLIS* YOUR WORK WITH PBS FILLED MY EYES WITH TEARS OF JOY AND I CRAVE FOR MORE
One book series I think could thrive if written for the YA genre is Guardians of Childhood, the book series that inspired Rise of the Guardians (the underrated animated movie from 2012). In the first book it delves into Santa Claus, "North" and it mentions his difficult life as a kind-hearted King of Bandits, and a few pages afterwards his whole bandit tribe dies to a creature similar to Medusa where she turns them into gems and stones while he goes off to save a village of children from demon creatures known as nightmares. If it was written for YA it could definitely dive into the darker areas that it only mentions and hints at in this series, and would love to see it rewritten like that!
That sounds awesome Violet! Thanks for letting me know it's based off a book series. I loved that movie:)
Nice art
TheFvpss Mug shot of lindsay www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=u-MYW9rgCOrP5gLR4qSgBg&q=lindsay+ellis+arrested&oq=lindsay+ellis+arrested&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-img.12...4597.8577..9400...0....440.3139.0j9j3j1j2......0....1.........0j35i39j0i24.JpQq4m%2BZhX4%3D#imgrc=XyN2jDsUv8KseM:
As someone who works at a library, we have five major sections for fiction: Picture books, Beginner/Intermediate books, Junior Fiction (the strangely entertaining gray area between books "for kids" and teens), Teen books, and adult fiction. Around my library, Goosebumps, Babysitter's Club, Encyclopedia Brown, Skullduggery Pleasant, and even the Warrior cat books fall under Junior fiction.
Personally, I've avoided books in the Teen section for many reasons. Most of the books I dislike fall under the problem of either being intentionally difficult to picture or clearly paid by the word. Also, jumbo-sized book series aren't my type.
So, if we're going for junior fiction, I'll have to go with Finding Serendipity and its two other subsequent books. Apparently, Australian writers know how to tell a story straight and true and still be interesting.
My library has goes Picture Books - Learner - Early Readers - Middle Grade/Juvenile - Young Adult/Teen - Adult
To be fair, Teen/YA books are just like any other books. There's some bad ones and some good ones. I personally enjoyed the Lockwood and Co series (which i've seen as both YA and MG) so if you're looking for something new, maybe try those?
No section for "New Adult" fiction?
I have read a lot of juvenile fiction in my library like Warriors Rangers Apprentice and Harry Potter but mostly as I got older I jumped right into adult fiction and I rarely venture to the YA part. I do read some of that though.
My favourite YA series is Australian- Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden. I loved it as a kid, and I love it now.
Those two trends of paranormal romance and dystopia were basically my high school years and I loved both genres and have carried that love of them ever since :)
My favorite will forever be Percy Jackson!!!
Favorite YA Novel? "The Knife of Never Letting Go" by Patrick Ness.
This was really good and informative! I didn't realize The Outsiders was YA and that's one of my favorite books. And the fact that you pointed out there was an uptick of reading just made me happy.
The outsiders is one of the greatest YA books I’ve ever read. I’d definitely say in the top 10.
"Millennials and whatever the Generation after Millennials are..." You mean, Generation Z?
Yeah, but we were Gen Y until we weren't.
We haven't come up with a good name for them yet, and I think it's fair to admit that the name is still in flux because they're only just hitting adulthood, like, now, and so we (and they) don't know much about them yet.
lol, you mean generation "payback's a mf"?
Only other name I've heard is "iGen"
It hardly matters. Sociologically speaking, there is only one named generation, and it's the Baby Boomers because of the particular phenomenon of exploding birth rates after World War 2. Every other "generation" since then has only been very loosely defined because people are being born all the time and social change is a gradual process, not something that can be locked down into a specific set of years. Gen X kids growing up in the American South would likely be pretty different from those from the Northeast or the West Coast, for instance. There are no real unifying concepts that apply to every or even most members of a generation. The named generations are more marketing terms than sociological ones.
So if being called a Millennial bothers you, just say "millenials don't really exist." It's a fabrication made up to try and have a term less cliché than "kids these days." If you'll notice, most traits associated with millenials are not actually unique to them at all, and have been used countless times to refer to the previous "new generations."
I find it dumb that they call "us" millenials in the first place. Wouldn't it make more sense if millenials WERE the generation after ours ? Those who were born during the first or so decade of the third millenium ?
My favorite is proto-YA, simply because it came well before the YA designation was invented: Little Women. The novel is centered around a family of adolescent girls who grow up and come of age during and immediately after the American civil war. The mother is a remarkable character. She struggles to impart wisdom and morals and worthwhile survival skills on her daughters and to give them opportunities for joy and wonder even when circumstances are undeniably bleak. The father is away at war, and later wounded. The family always teeters on the brink of poverty. The characters grapple with war, poverty, disease, social status, career goals, and even undertones of racial issues. Just undertones on that last one. All of these are addressed through the lens of adolescent and young adult female characters. In later entries in the series, one of the characters founds a school for boys. The adventures continue through this lens, but with notable female influence - especially Nan, the little girl who pursues her dream of becoming a doctor. There's something magical about these books. I fell in love with them when I was a child, but I re-read them every few years now that I am adult.
My favorite YA series is the Star Wars: Young Jedi Knights books by Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta. They're not high literature, but they are a fun continuation of the original Star Wars trilogy. Lowbacca is my homeboy.
I'm glad that YA books have become more literary and written on the same level as "adult" fiction these days, but I miss the shorter, more easily digestible serial YA fiction of the '90s. Low word counts don't have to be a bad thing!
I loved the Jedi Apprentice books! They might be characterized as "Junior Fiction" now since they weren't that long, but they had some complex ideas, sometimes more complex than a lot of the adult Star Wars novels. Jedi Apprentice was the first time I read something with the concept of a quagmire and how to conceptualize pain (the way they talked about thinking of it as your body trying to alert you to being hurt really spoke to me). I reread them as an adult and they still hold up.
Last year I read the Rebel Force books, which basically ties up all the loose ends from the Jedi Apprentice and Jedi Quest books, and really loved them. Jedi Apprentice is absolutely on my to-read list.
Fun fact: Jude Watson, the author of Jedi Apprentice, created the first LGBT character in Star Wars (that I am aware of), Ferus Olin.
That sounds good. I just wish they were more available at libraries. The ones I reread were so old. And they are so young looking I wouldn't want them on my bookshelf (I don't buy that many books anyway- I usually use the library). I would def buy them for my kids. Jedi Apprentice books were what made me like Qui-Gon. Certainly much more than the prequels ever did. He was still flawed then, but he was a lot more likeable.
Oh, I read them all as ebooks.
Young Jedi Knights was an awesome series. Fun adventure with great characters, but at the same time working in and examining some pretty heavy subjects like racism, responsible use of weapons, and the dangers of drug use - and not sugarcoating any of it or shying away from the real consequences.
I read so much more as a teen than I do now tbh :') My dad kept trying to get me to read "adult" books, but I found them really boring. He got upset when I said they were written by for and about boring old men xD
The Bartimeaus Trilogy
And as a close second, the Artemis Fowl series
Thinking back, I was a big fan of the Little House on the Prairie books, which seem like they were tailor made for Young Adults.
Also growing up Animorphs was my jam.
I sure did love the Animorphs series.
Of course my favorite YA/favorite book ever is "The Outsiders". I was introduced to it in 7th grade and absolutely fell in love and I assure you; I wasn't the only girl in my class going gaga over them. I went crazy, to a point of obsession. When reading the book in class, my aunt gave me the movie and I watched the movie over 7 times. I ended up turning my personal Instagram into a "The Outsiders" fan page. Later I did change it back. But yeah, that book, is just so fantastic and I believe has changed me as a person, maybe better or for worst. Still love this book with all my heart. But yeah, now I'm in 11th grade, and the 'phase' went down a lot. One time in middle school; I came outside of a "Del Taco" and recited the first line of the book.
The only comment I have for this fantastic video is that, I feel animorphs is more of Harry Potter's style of YA novel, in so far as in another world it would of caught fire like Harry Potter did.
Agreed, it was just a little ahead of its time.
i know, like don’t hate on animorphs. that was my jam
Animorphs is still one of my favorite books. I haven't read it in a long time (I'm sure some of its contents will feel dated), but it taught me a lot about complex things. And the ending itself is darker than most movies. I'm glad it's mentioned here!
I still have every single Animorph book. If I ever have kids someday I'm going to pull them out and be like "Check this out!"
I was one of those kids that was dedicated to picking up each monthly release of Animorphs while it was still being published, and is still one of the series I look back on fondly. I also have all the original books that I purchased (on a shelf displayed proudly, actually), and I think I read them over so many times I can recount certain segments almost moment to moment even years after reading them.
I didn't get caught in the Harry Potter craze when they were being released, however, and I'm just starting to indulge myself in the series actually. I have seen all the movies, and so far do enjoy it.
But, Animorphs will always hold that special place for me that HP does for a lot of Potter-heads ❤️😺
I feel like the sci-fi, fantasy, or even horror genres from the early 20th century (Tolkien, Lovecraft, etc.) were the first real YA, but with a readership - or fanbase - that stuck with the authors as they grew older. It seems like it was the kind of books you'd read when you were a teen and that grew on you as time went by. But the hidden and unacknowledged geek/nerd demographic niche was probably too difficult to define at the time.
Mary Shelley too
Yeah and where does CS Lewis fit in this? Narnia is aimed to younger readers than Tolkien and Lovecraft, but the YA category didn't have a name back then.
They were not written 'for' or marketed to YA. It wasn't until the advent of pulp (as in the cheap paper -> cheap books) that marketing a book to anyone other than adults really made sense. Children's books were marketed to parents (maybe teachers too). Teenagers just weren't a thing.
Simon... I don't know the name, but it certainly had a market. CS Lewis was meant for parents to buy for (and probably read to) kids to impart good Christian morality. The Hobbit was a bedtime-story book also for parents to buy. That is children's, not YA.
I don't know who Tolkien was thinking the audience for LoTR would be. My sense is that it was more of just the books he wanted to write and he imagined an adult audience.
Lovecraft was certainly not writing YA.
Neither was Mary Shelly. She expected her readers to already know Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives, and the Sorrows of Werter.
I think Tolkien wrote LOTR just because he wanted to, He wrote the Hobbit for money but he based on ideas he had since college. It's a known fact that for him the world of middle earth was just an environment for his made up languages like quenya and sindarin. He loooooooooooooooooooooooooved linguistics. After the succes of the hobbit he began lotr as a sequel but had so many ideas he abandoned that idea and wanted instead to have 2 separate books only partially conencted to the hobbit: silmarilion and lotr. Id remember what happened to silmarilion.. i think it just wasnt marketable. So he published LOTR alone and silmarilion was ony published after his death.
Books by Lois Lowry are still some of my favorite, my middle school teacher however wasn’t happy when I informed her The Giver had sequels and so the end wasn’t an unsolved open ending
No mention of " The Perks of Being a Wallflower " ? What about " The Catcher in the Rye "?
from this thousand comments you're the only one who mentioned perks.
I love that book. It's my favourite
@@smnrys mine too! i also kept scrolling to look for a mention of it XD
Those two omissions confused me, too.
I like that they managed to give Lindsay some space for her wry vocal "footnotes". It wouldn't be the same without it!
I didnt know Great Expectations and To Kill A Mockingbird are considered YA. They seem too high brow.
Talks about YA, doesnt mention the fact that the vast, vast, vast majority of successful YA right now is fantasy. Mentions Angie Thomas but doesnt mention Leigh Bardugo or Sarah J Maas.
Cmon now
Leterature Demographics
*Baby Books* (10Months-2 Years Old)
*Children's Books* (3-7 Years Old)
*Middle Grade Books* (7-10 Years Old)
*Teen Books* (11-14 Years Old)
*Young Adult Books* (15-22 Years Old)
*New Adult Books* (23-44 Years Old)
*Senior Citizens Books* (45-75 Years Old)
*Elderly Persons Books* (75-99 Years Old)
Lindsay and Angelina are such a dream team.
Oh my god some one else actually remembers animorphs! nice
It's hard to pick a favorite but some of my favorite YA novels/series include A Monster Calls, The Six of Crows duology, and Harry Potter. I don't read much contemporary fiction but I second your The Hate U Give recommendation!
I really agree! Also Chaos Walking (also by Patrick Ness)
Crookshanks Is Awesome I’ve been meaning to read that and just more Patrick Ness in general
snowcherryleopard Read More Than This and Chaos Walking. Those and A Monster Calls are his best books by far, I think.
Of course kids are becoming more well read; they can't afford any other forms of entertainment now.
Jason Fuentes 😂😂😂 books are SO expensive! Not as expensive as video games or sports equipment, but one hardcover book when it comes out can run between $15-30, depending on the genre. Most YA books run around $18-20. Even eBooks are usually around $12-15 a piece. If it’s just one every once in a while, fine. Not too expensive. But if I was buying all the books I read instead of going to the library, I would be spending money quicker than I could make it. And Ik I’m far from the only one lol
As someone who goes to library frequently to get books I'm honestly so amazed by all of the people who go around having book hauls! So much money for books you don't even know about!
Whitney Elizabeth Books can be found that are fairly cheap.
I buy books off Amazon all the time, sometimes for as little as ten cents. Libraries are all over the place, and give away or sell for coins all the time. Yard sales, church sales, and flea-markets all sell books quite often. Hell, even Goodwill sells books. Even Barnes & Nobles or Amazon sell e-copies of certain books, especially classics, for cheap. I bought every Jules Vern book he ever published for less than ten dollas last week.
You should try Thriftbooks.com. It's mostly used books (from people's personal collections or libraries). You can find a lot of them for only $3.
Now I’m waiting for the physical vs. audiobook episode...
thanks for spoiling hunter x hunter in the first second of the video
What about the relation between fantastic and fantasy genre with YA ? Poe, Brontë, Lewis Caroll, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis etc. I've never read any of the books listed in this video, and would not absolutely classify the previous authors in the YA genre, but I did read them in that period YA is supposed to be. (except Tolkien whom I've read far too young to understand anything)
erelde before the fantasy genre was called fantasy most of the authors you named were marketed as fairy tales. These were different than the collected folk tales of the Grimm brothers because these authors actually can be traced back to their work. I did a video on the hobbit a couple months back that covered this part of history.
Basically fantasy became the name of a genre when adults started reading these more often (1960s) lord of the rings being one of the (if not the) major reason the genre was taken more seriously.
I loved Tolkien as a child! I grew up on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, reread them when I was old enough to see the themes of the books, and then worked my way through the Silmarillion and the Children of Hurin. I also enjoyed C.S. Lewis’s work, and somewhat abnormal/nearly fantastical books like Frankenstein, Black Beauty, Lord of the Flies, Island of the Blue Dolphins, and basically any classic or fantasy/sci-fi I could get my hands on.
Twilight got me into reading AND writing. I've written multiple books and none of them would exist without my cringeworthy Twilight phase at thirteen, and I know I'm not the only author in that boat.
< grabs and ore >
Favourites: Harry Potter (obviously), If I Stay (makes you think about love, life and death), The Giver (a classic), Uglies (the real prelude to the 2013/14 dystopian boom, and an interesting take on what beauty is), the Lunar Chronicles (beautifully characterised/written) and Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (beautiful).
Not sure if it's technically YA, but John Carter of Mars jumps to the fore of my mind.
Owen Symes YES. I loved reading the first John Carter book. I can never find any of the other ones at my library though... :(
You should see if your library has a loan program. Here in Michigan, we use MelCat, where you can get a book from another library loaned to your local one. Very useful!