Are YA Books Objectively Bad? (PART ONE)
In the book reading community, across the board, there’s an argument that I’ve seen prevail, and it’s about young adult books: books that are written with a target audience of people who are between 13 and 18 years old. I’ve heard and read tons of different arguments regarding whether or not these books are good or bad as a whole, so I decided to take some time, do some research, and put together a post about the idea that YA books are objectively bad by default.
After writing this post, I’ve decided to split it into two parts due to its length. In today’s post, I’ll be talking about the arguments against YA, stating why people believe it’s bad and what the condemnations against YA books are as a whole. Next week, I’ll have another post out that follows this up with the positives of YA and will then deliver my personal verdict.
What Spawns These Ideas?
The first thing that we need to look at when it comes to the argument that YA books are objectively bad as a whole is the origin of these assumptions. Where do they come from and is there anything factual to them? Can this side of the argument be understood and empathized with? Targeting an entire age range of books and stating that the whole is of low quality is an extraordinarily broad, sweeping statement. How can someone make such a vast accusation against a swath of books?
The best way to approach this is to break YA books down into their common denominators; this means picking apart the books across all genres in this age category and finding what the most common traits of these books are. This will be ignoring the occasional outlier books that don’t contain any of these traits, which would be considered exceptions that prove the rule. When people make broad, sweeping accusations toward YA books in general, they’re largely talking about ones that are popular and commonly read or discussed.
So, what are the common denominators that make up YA books? Much like people who state that YA books are objectively bad as a collective whole, I’m going to be generalizing here, so bear with me. These are the things that I have found to be common throughout a significant amount of YA novels.
- Black and White Morality/Simplistic Good vs Evil Plots
- Dystopian or Declining Societies
- Love Tropes (Love Triangles, First Love)
- Adults are Bumbling Baffoons
- The Chosen One
- Outsider/Outcast Main Character
- Cheap Clone/Knockoff Works
- Extremely Easy to Read
The above list that I’ve compiled of things that are common across genres in the YA category of literary works is one that I can definitely concede is prevalent. Many of the books that I read when I was in that age range (and that I see people reading today) contain at least half of these, and some contained all of the tropes. However, just because something is common doesn’t mean that the work is necessarily bad. I’m going to cut out a few of these that I don’t think necessarily make a book bad, even if they’re tropes that I don’t particularly like. Specifically, I’ll be pulling out Black and White Morality, Dystopian Societies, and The Chosen One. Yeah, yeah, I hate The Chosen One, too, but it doesn’t necessarily make a book objectively bad, let alone can it condemn an entire category of literature.
So let’s talk about the ones that remain, shall we? I’ll be playing devil’s advocate here, so bear with me while I go through this.
Going for Mass Appeal
The big problem that I have with a few of these is that they’re about mass appeal: it’s clearly an author who is really just trying to jump on a trend train and make some cash, maybe earn some fame without much merit. I’ll be honest, I’m not super involved in this space like I used to be, but I remember in the early to mid 2010’s when everything was an exact clone of the Hunger Games, and before that everything was an exact clone of Harry Potter. That, I think, is problematic. Really, it’s a problem with the publishing industry as a whole (and authors who are just looking for a payday rather than showing creative integrity).
Creating clones and knockoffs of other popular works is definitely a problem, and I don’t think there’s anyone out there who will deny that this happened for a good while (and, I’m sure, is still happening today. However, this isn’t the only problem that I have from the list I provided that deals with people who are just going for mass appeal and hoping to trick someone into buying their book because it’s part of a trend that will surely die in a few years. See, the other problem is… the outside/outcast main character.
What? How can that be a problem? How can that be someone going for mass appeal? It’s just a character trait!
Hold your horses, bud; let me clarify.
It’s not just any outsider or outcast main character I’m talking about, here. The problem is when the author creates a main character that the reader will almost definitely relate to. Someone who, I don’t know… just prefers her quiet life. She might have a crush on someone, but she keeps it to herself. In truth, there’s nothing she’d rather do than sit and read.
You know… like the person who bought this book is doing? It’s a cheap trick and I see it all the time. Again, there’s nothing wrong with an outsider as the main character. It can be done really well. There is something wrong with writing a book specifically because you want it to sell, and there is something wrong with essentially tricking young people into picking up and sharing your book around because you tick all the boxes that are all but guaranteed to make your story a viral phenomenon.
So yes, I’ll cede that in this regard, there’s a problem with some (possibly many) YA books. There are definitely quite a lot of them that were written just to ride a trend train and pocket some cash, usually to the detriment of the audience who read the books. I definitely do not think that this applies to every YA book or can be used to condemn YA books as a whole, but it’s certainly something to consider and be cautious about.
Negative Impacts
Now let’s talk about how these books tend to treat adults and romance. This can often be summed up in one word: poorly. Again, this isn’t every YA book, but often we find that adults are completely useless in these books and romance is typically handled extremely poorly. I think the last one is the most key, as I’ve found that many YA books tend to unapologetically glorify toxic and/or abusive relationships.
Adults being idiots? Sure, whatever. Every teenager—or most teenagers—thinks adults are idiots who don’t get it and don’t understand anything. I was definitely one of those teenagers and having a book where all the adults were stupid just helped to solidify that idea for me and made the book more relatable (there’s that mass appeal, again). I think that out of everything else, this is the one that will be easiest for readers to outgrow and overcome. You become an adult before long and, eventually, you’ll realize that many of them did know what they were talking about.
What I find to be most detrimental in many of these books is how it treats romance. I know it’s detrimental because it has been detrimental to me. There are all sorts of things that many YA books put in front of readers and call ideal relationships. Many of these things are toxic, abusive, and wicked. I’m pretty confident that a lot of the authors who write these books know the relationships they’re writing are incredibly toxic, but they don’t care that they’re telling young readers to glorify a vile and toxic relationship. Most commonly, the abusiveness and toxicity come from one of two things (or both): possessiveness and love triangles.
Truth be told, if you want to have toxic and abusive relationships in your story, go for it. These things happen. They’re real. Young people should honestly know that they’re real. But it should be made abundantly clear in your story that these sorts of relationships are unhealthy and not to be sought after. Especially if your audience is young and inexperienced, you should be working hard to make it clear in your story that they should not be pursuing a relationship that is genuinely toxic and disgusting.
The Easy to Read Argument
This is honestly the dumbest of the arguments that I’ve seen. I’m sorry, but saying that something is easy to read as an argument against reading it is just unapologetically stupid. I agree that you shouldn’t only be reading extremely simple things that don’t challenge you, but I’m also not going to sit here and tell someone that they shouldn’t read any books that are easy, or that easy books don’t count as reading (which is something insane I’ve seen people say, too). It’s still reading!
Do you know what’s easy to read? Brandon Sanderson’s stories. Maybe his books aren’t as easy as many YA books, but his writing style is extremely approachable, whether it’s one of his adult novels or his young adult novels. His works are easy to read, they’re extremely straightforward and they’re still worth reading. I myself like to sprinkle in a book that’s easy to read into my TBR every now and then—something I think I could knock out in a day or two as opposed to one or two weeks like most of the books I read.
Being easy to read is absolutely not an argument against any book—heck, it may well be an argument in favor of the book!
Again, yes I think that people should be including books that challenge them every now and then, but that’s also an entirely subjective opinion and everyone has the right to read whatever books they want at whatever challenge level they desire!
Conclusion
These are the most common cases that I see against YA as a whole; there are many more niche arguments out there or ones that are specific to certain genres within YA (or that go so far as to target specific books). I can empathize with many of these arguments, though I don’t agree that they’re enough to condemn YA in its entirety. There are definitely problems within YA that need to be addressed (and that hopefully will be addressed as the publishing industry adapts and changes in the future), but I don’t think that we can condemn YA in its entirety, let alone its readers!
I’ll be continuing this in my second part next week when I’ll be speaking in favor of YA and its merits, as well as giving my personal verdict for stories that are written for young adults and what they’re able to contribute to the world of literature. I hope you’ll stick around for part two, next week!