Are there any examples of YA novels that take place in a fantasy or sci fi setting that are remotely realistic?
I mean, they all seem to end with a bunch of 14 year olds defeating an evil dystopian regime and reinventing the USA circa the year the book was published, and having the entire population be completely OK with this.
Is it even possible to set a YA book in a setting like that and not have the protagonist save the entire world? The immaturity of the genre practically demands it.
"Young Adult"
the monstrosity that should never have been.
I mean, the kicker is that these brainwashed teenagers seem to have the entire works of Thomas Paine et al inscribed on the inside of their skull. How do they /know/ to reinstitute a lost form of society?
Did Soviet dystopian books have their 14 year olds reinstituting Marxism? It's just mind-boggling how reactionary and politically fundamentalist these books for teenagers are.
But but I don't understand the world, life is so hard! Everything should be about me me me.. I'm the only one who identifies with Katniss.
The only good YA that I know is The Bartimaeus Sequence. Which sort of qualifies.
This looks to be up there with His Dark Materials.
But I suppose I have late teenage books in mind. A 16 or 17 year old is usually at peak edginess: hormones raging, intelligence more or less fully developed, feeling confined and restricted by a technocratic society that requires a lengthy education for admittance to adulthood. The more aesthetic and dreamy period of puberty is over, and they just want to ruin everyone's shit.
The more I think about it, the more sure I am that there's no substitute for edge. But how to do teen edge in a way that isn't ridiculous or cringeworthy?
Eh, it has its place as transition literature for when you're around 12-15 and too old for Harry Potter but too young for anything "serious." Though I don't understand how people can say with a straight face that they "like to read" when they still read that shit past high school.
...I guess having repeatedly mentioned 14 year olds makes me sound self-contradictory, but I had the 16-17 bracket in mind all along, and phrased things thoughtlessly.
Teen edge is by its very nature ridiculous and cringeworthy. The only way around is to avoid it and transit from childhood to adult themes directly (which is best illustrated by The Moomins)
the answer to your second sentence is to be found in your first sentence.
The Mortal Engines Quartet by Philip Reeve
The Giver
Is it? I mean, the movie Rebel without a Cause has the right amount of what I call teen edge, but it's not cringeworthy. There's a definite overlay of adult perspective in that, though. YA is completely YA in its point of view.
Difficulty: literary/respectable YA takes place in a realist depiction of contemporary society, like Catcher in the Rye, through a warped perspective that requires an adult understanding of what the protag is really seeing and misinterpreting.
But I want to do a non-realist setting, and those get very ridiculous very quickly, especially with warped perspective of a reality that has never existed.
I've been working on one, but the problem I'm finding is that I'm not sure the plot has enough of a hook for the audience without vampires, dystopia, high magic, etc.
>tfw never read a single children book or YA book after elementary school
I never even finished the Harry Potter books. Read the 4th one in 4th grade and that was it.
wow man, cool
will you sign my fedora?
>he made a post just for me
Sure thing sweety
>But I want to do a non-realist setting, and those get very ridiculous very quickly, especially with warped perspective of a reality that has never existed.
Continuing this thought, I think the problem with the usual dystopian YA is that no distinction is made between the warped perspective of a teenager and the actual reality of the setting. It's like an expressionist nightmare that is never revealed to have been a nightmare.
A 14 year old woodcutter understands an entire dystopian society and system of government right from the start, and saves the world because everything is tailored to her prejudices and perspective: no maturing or change is actually required.
The horribly pragmatic term for this is "high concept."
Bitches, please.
Bump
Harry Potter
Hunger Games
Fault in their Stars
Game of Thrones
Harry Potter
The Hobbit
Lord of the Ring
The Road
The Great Gatsby
The Man in the High Castle
The High Rise
The Road to Wigan Pier
The Harry Potter collection complete series anthology one volume edition
The Bible
The Qu'ran
The Symposium
The A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The The Crying of Lot 49
>YA is completely YA in its point of view.
That's the issue with it and why it's inferior to children's literature.