Why I Read YA

@TeherehMafi recently told the twitterverse "YA books don't want to be graded on a curve. they're not lesser books. they don't want to be coddled. they dont want sympathy." It's something I've been thinking about a lot as a book reviewer, writer, and job-searcher.

Despite being three years into college, YA books surround me. My review of The Hunger Games got the most page views of any other article I've written, I've read 7 new YA books in the past week, all of the publishing jobs I've applied to are YA focused, and the speaker for this April's writer's conference is none other than Veronica Roth, author of the dystopian YA Divergence. Yet, I am constantly asked to explain my choice of literature on airplanes and El cars. Why is it so hard to accept that a grown person can love YA?

This prejudice people seem to have is truly ridiculous. It's as if we've forgotten all the wonderful books of our childhood. Can you really tell me that A Wrinkle in Time, Catcher in the Rye, The Giver, and Harry Potter are not on par with, maybe even better than some of the books written for adults. I loved these books because they were complex, compelling, thought provoking, well written, and good.

Why, now that I've crossed the threshold into adulthood, are they any less so? The answer is: they're not. The only thing that's changed as I've gotten older is me and the people that surround me. As we grow up there is this intense pressure to leave behind the "childish" things we loved when we were younger, to grow up, to mature. Because YA is one of these childhood loves, it is automatically marked as "childish," or somehow unworthy of our new grown up interest.

While some of my interests have changed (I, thankfully, no longer care about who the popular kids are or how to navigate high school hallways) a lot of them have not. I still love dynamic characters, high concept plot lines and quickly paced stories. I still love dystopias, love stories, sci fi and adventures. All of these can be found in YA. Additionally, YA is often a shorter, quicker read, perfect for plane rides and my tightly scheduled college life. The real question is why aren't MORE people reading YA?

As more books are bridging the gap between the YA and adult worlds - Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Twilight, The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Didn't Have To - I have greater and greater hope for the acceptance of my reading habits. I look forward to the day when I can sit with a YA proudly displayed in my lap and not be asked why.