And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you kids and your meddling hormones

I think at some point we all  promise ourselves never to get old and lame. For me, the day I start identifying with Principal Vernon in the Breakfast Club, I will have lost sight of everything and might as well give up. Having revisited The Breakfast Club last night, I thankfully can say, I’m only part of the way there. I can still vividly recall (bear with me, 8 years ago feels like a lot when you are 24) being in high school, and feeling bored and disinterested in most literature geared towards my age group. I couldn't identify with the characters I was reading, they all felt reductive, and while I knew I couldn’t be ( and wasn't) the only teen who liked learning for the sake of learning it certainly felt like it. Being smart in the books I read meant something different than I wanted it to. It meant girls read Jane Austen, wore oversized glasses, were painfully shy, and could do their advanced math homework in 10 minutes. I hated reading Jane Austen, (sorry bros, can’t staaaand reading it) I didn’t wear glasses, I wasn’t shy or embarrassed to be smart, and I certainly wasn’t taking advanced math. I wanted to see kids engaged in the world - who cared about what was happening. Kids who took an interest in culture, who could be brilliant and still get a D in trigonometry.

I don’t doubt they were out there somewhere, in fact, they were my friends. Some of the smartest, most interesting people I know are the people I slacked off in French class with, but it bugged me not to see them in books. I’m sure that had I not been stubbornly independent and focused on being self reliant I probably could have found YA fiction vastly more suited to the way I saw the world. It is incredibly exciting to live in a world where YA has taken off so rapidly and grown so exponentially. As someone who knows the struggle of getting self described “non-readers” to read having so many more options and access points to literature for young minds is incredible. (My thoughts on how a good book can make a difference, and the importance of reaching kids through books later.) Despite all the growth in the genre, I still find myself frustrated, and pondering whether I am just too old. I find myself rolling my eyes, sighing, and dismissing characters and motivations because “really, seriously? I know they’re 16 but come on and stop acting so ridiculously.”  Books that seemingly have huge followings, and hundreds of thousands of readers who speak to the credibility and relatability of the book.

Upon review I have found I vastly preferred Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, Trenton Lee Stewart's’ Benedict Society Series, and Pseudonymous Bosch’s Secret Series to anything coming out for the 14-18 age group - which makes me feel like perhaps there is still something missing from YA. Both of these series follow the adventures of exceptionally intelligent, caring, and perceptive kids who, when faced with adult sized problems, solve them with wit, brilliance, and emotional fortitude that I admire. the authors treat their character, and intended audience with no pretense of lacking anything due to their age. All hallmarks of my all time number one book series ever as well. (oh my god you guys, Harry Potter. It’s Harry Potter.)  It’s almost as if turning 15 means losing your sense of adventure, wonder, and desire to be intelligent and instead it is replaced with a need to be involved in a tragic love story. Alright, I admit, that is kind of what happens when you go to high school; but did Hermione Granger teach us nothing? Can we not face the perils and hazards of navigating new found love (and hormones) while also maintaining intelligence, passion for knowledge, thirst for justice, and a sense of adventure? Why should the climax of every YA novel involve a break up fraught with outside complications? Or why should the solution always be involve absolution and social acceptance?

Being a teenager is about so much more than first relationships - and it comes in so many shapes, sizes, and colors. That’s the really cool thing, there isn't one way to be a teenager, or really to be anyone, so I am frustrated that YA fiction is coming up “50 Shades of Pale: Average White Kids Who Are Given Problems Fall in Love.” My grumping has led me to feel like my dad, who spends a lot of time telling me my favorite famous people have negative brain cells, and that all songs on the radio sound alike. I love my Dad (Hi Dad!) and he is probably right about the negative brain cells thing, and I’m not about to call him old, I’m just saying, those are marks on my yardstick to being old and too much like Principal Vernon.

There is some amazing YA fiction out there (I’ll even recommend some in upcoming post!), and naturally even stories about privileged white teenagers beating the inordinate odds of a high school class system to fall in love before they go to college and he cheats on her with a cheerleader while she knocks boots with the alterna-crowd has its place. However, I’d really like to see more works of YA that don’t make me feel like these two:

Am I missing out here? What are your favorite Young Adult novels?

*But you all know I secretly completely aspire to be Statler and Waldorf, right? I mean look at thos eyebrows - what I wouldn't do to have those caterpillars on my face.