The past few years of young adult fiction have been extremely lacking. With the Harry Potter series perhaps being the last important literary young adult novel or series to be published, the literature for our teens since then has just not been up to par.

While The Hunger Games series and the Divergent series were both hits, they were released at least four years ago; Mockingjay came out in 2010, and Allegiant came out in 2013. Even then, both popular series did not get nearly as much popularity as, say The Lord of the Rings--the last book of which was released in 1955, and still has a major fanbase. They also do not compete with the Harry Potter series, the last book being released in 2007; a book series that continues to affect pop culture, and according to Time magazine, has had over 450 million books printed.

So the question that remains: Is poor quality of recent young adult novels and series the reason that teens seem to have a decline in the amount they read?

While some may argue that the rise of technology has caused this decline, poor quality should not be overlooked as a contributing factor. It is an author's duty to not only write for themselves, but for their audience. Writing for the next paycheck may pay some of the bills, but it doesn't really garner a great audience. My charge to writers is: be bold, be creative.

Another question that comes to mind is: Have we just run out of things to write?

In my opinion, you can never run out of things to write, because even if you use the same subject, genre, or motifs, it will come from you, from your heart, and thus the perspective on those things will always be different in their own way. The Hunger Games was criticized for being a lot like The Lord of the Flies, and, while they are similar, they look at corruption and conflict in different ways and from different perspectives.

As long as we can accept these other perspectives that we carry within ourselves, then whether you are the reader or the author, literature should be able to grow, not just in your life, but in life in general.

So my call to you is this: If you're an author--be daring, explore, look into the depths of your perspective on a subject and write it out; if you're a reader--reflect on the story and make it your own, let it affect your way of thinking, reward the author for going out on a limb. For both author and reader--do not let anyone else stop you from achieving greatness, and literature, whether we like to pretend it does or not, can help you along your journey to greatness. You do not have to agree with everything you read, but at least you read it and expressed (even if only to yourself) an opinion about it.

Source: http://entertainment.time.com/2013/07/31/because-i...