As a twenty-year-old English major, I’m not ashamed to admit that I still love young adult fiction. I started reading it when I was way too young and now I’m probably reading it when I’m too old. But I’m not going to stop.
Like a lot of other people, I love fiction. Fantasy, science-fiction, historical fiction, coming of age stories, mysteries, thrillers, you name it and I’ve probably read it or something like it. I read because real life gets boring and stressful and hard, but reading allows me to escape from all of that. Books let me enter other worlds that are distant or impossible. They let me have powers or characteristics I once thought unimaginable. They give me the chance to encounter the best and worst possible scenarios each time I simply pick up a book and read a few pages. And, most importantly, while fiction novels are always made up by definition, the best fiction helps me to understand and view the world in new and exciting ways.
So, as you’ve already guessed it, my favorite books are of the young adult fiction variety. Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading them for so much of my life or because I don’t necessarily want to grow up, but these books are the ones that have impacted me the most throughout my life. J.K. Rowling, Lemony Snicket, Stephanie Perkins, Marcus Zuzak, A.S. King, John Green, Philip Pullman, Sarah Dessen, and Maggie Stiefvater are just to name a few of my favorite authors.
I like YA books because there is a greater sense of emotion, a jumbling of heartbreak, longing, joy, ecstasy, loneliness, despair, anger, all mixed into a few hundred pages. There is wonder but also a loss of innocence; and there is always an attempt by the characters to try and make sense of themselves and the broken world that they live in. And these are all things I can relate to. While of course the world is a cynical, depressing place a lot of the time, I’m not yet willing to let these notions overcome and entirely seep into my favorite forms of escape, books. Instead, I want to read fiction that is truthful and hopeful and questioning all at the same time.
Young Adult author John Green wrote in Cosmopolitan, “It's not like we stop needing the comfort and help that a good story can bring when we graduate from high school. I am still looking for answers to questions about the meaning of life. I am still trying to fathom the wondrous strangeness of love. I am still trying to make my way through life despite heartache and loss.” And even though I’m no longer a teenager and the characters are often years younger than me, I’m going to keep reading YA books for the same reasons that John Green is still writing them: they speak to me and I am still learning from them.
