When I was in 11th grade, my AP English teacher stood before my class of 30-odd kids, and announced to us, as if relaying a message sent from the heavens, that she did not approve of Young Adult literature. Nope. None was to enter her classroom.

This smug proclamation, treating thousands of perfectly good books as a terrible monolith to be barred from the gates of Real Books, is a pretty accurate summary of how many adults have treated anything fun that they do not feel caters to them personally.

Now look: I am (technically) a grown woman (well, legally at least) who has been reading at college-level since I was 12 years old. And yes, I still read Young Adult literature.

Young Adult books have had the unfortunate luck of being branded as a pejorative. Some say that the language is too simple, that the characters are unrealistic, that the plots are ridiculous, that they follow cookie-cutter patterns. Others claim the books to be inherently sexist for recurring portrayals of teen girls, that there is not enough diversity in representation of characters, that not authors who make it onto the bestseller list are not diverse enough as a whole.

While I will gladly be the first to admit that many of these things are true for many Young Adult books - and could easily drop series or titles that fit the bill for each descriptor - I will also be the first to admit that they are true for any large swath of books. The truth is, a lot of books are just terrible, YA or otherwise. And trust me; I’ve read a lot of bad books in my lifetime.

YA doesn’t even represent a singular genre. Books written with a target audience of young adults often represent sci-fi, fantasy, realistic fiction, historical fiction, romance, and literary fiction - often, they encompass all of these things, and also more. There are terrible tropes associated with romance novels that don’t magically cease to exist once the novel becomes branded as adult. Where a book is placed on a shelf doesn’t add or subtract any value to its literary merit.

So why do books written for teens get so much more flak than their adult or even middle-grade counterparts? Why are these more often written off than those for adults? Is it part of some recurring myth that anything enjoyed by teens - and teen girls especially - cannot be worthwhile in the larger scheme of literature?

I am nothing if not an ardent critic of, well, everything. And I truly believe that for every YA book that I find abhorrent, there are two that I absolutely love, three that I enjoy, and four that I can at least stomach to read.

Of those books that I do absolutely love, though, the most notable (books like "Six of Crows", "Strange the Dreamer", "The Hate U Give", "The Raven Boys") tell important lessons. Some are about racism, others about human trafficking. Even if a book doesn’t have a lesson, though, they still tell a great narrative with fantastic characters. And that isn’t to be discounted, either.

Maybe the trick isn’t to read what’s most popular by standards of what’s selling.

If you’re truly looking for a good story, find book blogs. Search out harsher critics. Hell, you can even ask me if you want to. (I’ll respond to any comments that I see.) But making blanket statements that dismiss whole libraries worth is going to cause you to miss out on a lot of fantastic stories.