12 Reasons to Love the Young Adult Genre
“Have you read anything good lately?”
As English majors, English teachers, and avid readers, we hear this question a lot. And depending on who’s asking, our YA-heavy response tends to generate either excited squeals or a dismissive, “Oh. Just YA.”
Yes, just YA. We’re proud devotees of the young adult genre, and we think that as an English teacher, you should be, too.
If you’re an English teacher, we think the young adult genre should make a regular appearance in your reading rotation. No problem, many of you likely say. It does already. If this is the case, we hope you’ll enjoy today’s love letter to YA, but for those who don’t regularly read YA, we’re hoping it’ll convince you to try it out.
While we’ve always incorporated the young adult genre into our reading lists, we’re reading pretty much exclusively YA these days. We’ve made it a priority to regularly recommend current, diverse, and inclusive YA books that you can feel good about recommending to your students, even if you don’t have time to preview them all yourself.
And we’re embracing it. The young adult genre is popular with adults and teens alike, and the more we immerse ourselves in the community, the more we fall in love with the genre.
12 Reasons We Love the Young Adult Genre (and Think You Should, Too!)
1
YA books are really good.
For some of us, this is all we need to hear. There are really good YA books in every genre. Whether you’re looking for mystery, fantasy, romance, historical fiction, nonfiction, or realistic fiction, there are hundreds of options available to you. YA books have kept us up late turning pages, they’ve made us laugh, and they’ve made us ugly cry. What more can we ask for?
2
Reading YA literature helps you find engaging books for your students.
Many of our students are reluctant readers, which means they often need our help finding books to read. Sometimes they don’t know they need our help, so we adopt classroom practices like First Chapter Fridays. But sometimes they ask us directly for a recommendation they will like, based on their personal preferences.
Reading regularly from the young adult genre allows us to keep a running catalog in our heads of at least a few titles we can throw out to students when they’re looking for a new read.
3
When you read YA books, you create a safe place for your students to talk about books.
Steph’s 5-year-old goddaughter shared a lesson from kindergarten this weekend: “We don’t yuck other people’s yums here.” What a good rule of thumb: just because you don’t like what someone else likes doesn’t mean you have to make them feel bad about it.
The book world can be really snobby. Just go on a book forum and ask if audiobooks really count as reading, and you’ll need to duck to avoid the grenades. Readers can get especially snobby about the young adult genre, thinking of it as something silly that teenagers read but that has little value for the rest of us.
Setting aside our many arguments about why that’s not true, if we want to encourage our students to read, we have to make them feel comfortable about what they read. The last thing a reluctant reader needs is a teacher who looks down on their reading or who only ever talks about the latest Pulitzer Prize novel. Let your students see you reading the same books they read and hear you talking about them, and they’ll be more likely to talk about books with you, knowing that you’ll be eager to listen.
4
Reading YA books sets an example for your students.
It’s no secret that we need to model behaviors for our students. This is why, on independent reading days, we always read with our students. We wanted to communicate to them that reading was something we found important, not merely something to keep them busy while we got more important work done.
Kate was really good about primarily reading YA in front of her students; Steph tended to read whatever was next on her TBR. Yes, just modeling reading sets a good example for our students, but when they see us reading books that look interesting to them, they’re even more likely to join in.
5
The young adult genre is ahead of the game when it comes to diversity and inclusivity.
One thing that makes us proud to be YA readers is the effort YA authors put in to make all students feel seen and develop empathy in all of us. The young adult genre is one of the most multicultural places we’ve visited, and we’ve learned so much about so many different cultures, especially in the past year.
We’ve read beautiful novels featuring LGBTQIA+ students, differently abled students, students from different social classes, students with every interest and family background you can imagine, and students with a wide array of hopes and dreams. The young adult genre speaks frankly and compassionately about mental health and trauma, reminding teenagers (who suffer from both mental health issues and trauma at alarming rates) that they are not alone, there is hope for them, and they can speak up and get the help they need.
There’s so much intentionality in the young adult genre. Sure, there are plenty of books out there that are just for fun, but we’ve cried over more than one author’s note explaining the author’s own struggles with belonging, mental illness, trauma, or racism and expressing a desire to help teenagers grow up in a safer, more inclusive world than the one they experienced.
6
Reading YA literature helps you stay aware of current trends and what your students are reading.
Like many cultural elements, YA literature has its trends, and being aware of what’s out there helps you to know what kinds of stories appeal to students and which stories they’re no longer interested in. We all know that teenagers are turned off quickly when we get too enthusiastic about something that’s “not cool anymore.”
Because the young adult genre is trendy, it’s a good window into what issues students care about. The topics being tackled in YA literature are increasingly the topics that matter to your students right now.
It’s also helpful to be aware of what your students are reading. As a tutor, Steph has seen a huge uptick in high school students gravitating toward the new adult genre, which is often heavy on sex and frequently portrays somewhat abusive, even violent, relationships. While these aren’t novels we would recommend to a class of students, it’s helpful to know this is what some of our students are reading so we can ask what draws them to these books.
Sure, most of our students want to read about students just like them, but some of our students hate high school and long for a complete escape. When we know the why, we can, perhaps, recommend novels that model healthier relationships or ask questions that help students to think critically about what they’re reading.
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7
YA novels give you a better understanding of your students and increase your empathy for them.
Some of our students are happily open with us, no filter in sight, sharing every thought, feeling, and experience they have. But many of our students are not, keeping to themselves or, at least, keeping their most private struggles and hardest emotions to themselves.
Reading YA is like getting a sneak peek into your students’ minds, especially those who are flying under the radar, getting good grades but feeling immense pressure to be perfect or getting poor grades not because they don’t care but because they are carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders.
We’ve cringed a number of times while reading these books, thinking about how we would have responded to a student who presented like one of the characters in our books because we didn’t realize what was going on behind their disruptive behavior or list of missing assignments.
This is part of why we love our Reading Check-In assignment so much. Because the questions are conversational, they invite students to share some of these insights in a way a signature log or summary log don’t. And they allow us to respond, communicating to our students that we care about their insights.
8
Reading YA books reminds us what it’s like to be a teenager.
As adults, we sometimes forget what it’s like to be a teenager, or at least how BIG the concerns of teenage life seem to them. We have bills to pay, families to care for, and to-do lists a mile long. The insecurities of adolescence are in our rearview mirror, and we forget just how much emotional energy it takes to show up every day, in all your puberty-created awkwardness, to interact with hundreds of judgmental teenagers. Even if we haven’t forgotten, we’ve come out on the other side and realized that what people think of us in high school doesn’t actually matter, a perspective they haven’t had the life experience to gain yet.
And when we were teenagers, there weren’t smartphones ready to capture every wrong move and blast it into the cyberworld for everyone to see. It’s not uncommon to hear Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millenials comment that they would hate to go to high school today, and yes, YA reminds us of that frequently.
9
YA books often tell us what our students need us to know.
“Even though my head is pounding and my eyes burn
and I can’t remember the last time I slept through the
night.
Nothing is more important than Shakespeare.”
That last line, “Nothing is more important than Shakespeare,” felt like a gut punch. In Laekan Zea Kemp’s Appetite for Miracles, Danna’s grandfather has dementia, and she’s determined to make his favorite foods in an effort to bring his memory back. And her normal teenage insecurities are heightened every time her mother makes a comment about her weight. Trouble sleeping leads to falling asleep in class, and . . . how many times have we responded in anger when a student falls asleep in class? How often have we acted like Shakespeare is the most important thing in the world as our students’ worlds fall apart around them?
We’ve read quite a few comments like this one in YA books, and we’re glad these authors, many of whom are young enough to have been our students, are there to remind us that our students have things going on, things that make it hard for them to pay attention.
But the wise words of YA characters can encourage us, too.
“Mrs. Obi stands at the door of her classroom giving us high-fives as we go into class. She is probably the only teacher who does it, and at the beginning we thought she was extra for it. After all, we aren’t in third grade, but it makes you feel wanted even though none of us would admit that out loud.”
Lorraine Avila’s The Making of Yolanda la Bruja
How many times have we thought the things we do don’t matter to our students, given up on a simple thing like greeting kids at the door because we’re busy, or faltered in fear that our students will think we’re too “extra”? Our students may not tell us how much our simple gestures mean, but reading Yolanda’s words rang true for us as we recalled the students who greeted us in the hall each morning.
Because school is such a big part of teenagers’ lives, it’s a big part of YA novels, and seeing ourselves through the eyes of these YA characters is humbling, encouraging, and informative—if we allow it to be.
10
YA novels remind us of the influence we can have on our students.
“Henry E. Tarver Public School here on the East Side has far fewer resources than the middle school I went to on the West Side. But even though we have less money, I’m convinced we have better teachers. Teachers like Mrs. Delaney who assign us books written by people who look like us, and who can truly see our potential and encourage us to go to college. I’ve been thinking about college for years, but it’s only now becoming a real possibility. If I get in, I’ll be the first in my family to go. Mrs. Delaney knows this and says she’s going to do everything in her power to make sure I get in somewhere, which is why she’s my favorite teacher. Many students claim she’s their favorite. Every time I walk into her classroom, she smiles at me like she can see inside of me, like she knows who I am at the core. She asks me every day, ‘How are you, honey?’ She asks with such compassion and softness, I want to pour out my soul and tell her about all my problems.”
Black Girl Unlimited, Echo Brown
Teaching is exhausting and often demoralizing, and it’s easy to burnout and become cynical, believing nothing we do makes a difference. But we can have an enormous impact on our students, whether we realize it or not. Just like YA novels help us to see the ways we unintentionally hurt students, they also help us to see the powerful positive influence we have.
11
Books from the young adult genre can remind you to be hopeful about things you struggle with.
Another thing we love about YA literature is its optimism. These novels show us the world in all its brokenness, but they rarely leave us there. The characters are at the beginning of their lives, figuring themselves out, and with the support of friends and caring adults, they often end the novel on their feet, more resilient, more hopeful, and ready to step into the future.
And, oh, how we need that. In the midst of our own weariness and brokenness, we need to be reminded that we, too, can pick up and start anew. We, too, must learn to be brave, discover our passions and values, learn to be vulnerable with others, and do the right thing even when it’s hard. We’ve found so much wisdom in YA novels that has nothing to do with our role as educators but everything to do with our humanity.
12
YA authors LOVE teachers, and who doesn’t want to be loved?
The more we learn about the YA community, the more we realize what a connected, grateful place it is. In her collection of essays, I’d Rather Be Reading, Anne Bogel (perhaps better known as Modern Mrs. Darcy) writes about why she loves reading the acknowledgements at the end of the book, and Steph’s made a habit of reading them ever since. It’s so much fun to see which YA authors are friends with each other.
And without fail, almost every single YA author thanks teachers and librarians, not only for inspiring their own love of reading and writing, but for enthusiastically getting their books into students’ hands.
Many YA authors are active on social media, responding directly to fans’ comments and reviews, and it’s fun to be part of a community that appreciates you.
So there you have it. 12 reasons to love the young adult genre, especially as an English teacher. Did we convince you? Include your favorite reason? Miss your favorite reason? Please share with us at [email protected] or on Instagram @threeheads.works.
If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to our monthly First Chapter Friday Nearpods: we send out FIVE free quick and easy First Chapter Friday activities each month that we think you and your students will love. Looking for YA books to suggest to your students or use for your own FCF activity? Check out the YA book section of our website for all our recommendations.