Hear, hear! So true.

More thoughts, stemming from the article: Politicians use children as a scare tactic: This will endanger our children! We must pass this legislation/attack this behavior/condemn this group for the children! And voters--probably a few of the people who spoke dismissively about YA lit in the article included--buy into the argument.

But when talking about one of the most powerful formative influences on children, namely, what they read? Oh, that stuff's not worthy of a writer's best work or a reader's careful attention.

That thwacking sound I hear is thousands of sensible people headdesking. I wish it were millions.

But when talking about one of the most powerful formative influences on children, namely, what they read? Oh, that stuff's not worthy of a writer's best work or a reader's careful attention.

Yeah, that's definitely one of the reasons, for kids and teens both.

I think a lot of it comes down to seeing kids and teens as a worthy audience--as real full human beings who are every bit as deserving of good books as any other real full human being. (Or maybe even more so, as you say.)

Gawd, sometimes I think we hate our children, except on the rare occasions when we can use them as a club to beat someone else with.

Obviously, I need more coffee. *g*

Agh! That article made me want to punch the author. And I'm usually such a peaceful person. The literary world bubbles with so much snobbery I sometimes want to scream. :)

I pretty much wanted to smack everybody quoted except Sherman Alexie. Go, dude!

The author was merely reflecting the snobbery of others in the "literary" world, not buying into it. You can wish the bias wasn't there, bury your head in the sand, but it still exists as unfair as it is. The letter at the end, I thought, made it clear what Rabb's true feelings were about YA.

I don't know that it is burying one's head in the sand so much as--different writers interact with different other writers and run into different degrees of this snobbery. (Justine Larbalestier addresses this well here, I think.)

I just finished reading the article and this was my take on it, as well. To me, it seemed a thoughtful, thought-provoking exploration of the attitudes the author encountered when her novel was designated YA. I got the impression that any bias against YAs that she might have held prior to this decision was shaken and that this was one of the spurs to writing the article, as was a sense of discomfort with the prejudice she encountered.

Um, hello! I'm a real person, and that was a really obnoxious and disrespectful thing to say.

(My comment above was intended for pshamphire.)

Margo, you are quite right, and I apologize for the comment. You are right that it was an inappropriate comment and that I forgot that I was referring to a real person.

Thanks! Apology accepted.

True dat. Everyday I ask myself if I'm worthy enough to write YA.

Are the authors quoted here really dissing YA? Or struggling with the condescension that children's writers have faced, and that they're facing for the first time. It's a genre in flux, with blurring boundaries, and some of these authors are caught in no-man's-land of not knowing who they're writing for. Of course this is tough for them, with how they think of themselves as writers.

They're already being sneered at by "adult" writers; we should make them feel welcome.

That was a lot more how I saw the article too.

As well as the agent.

I know Janni doesn't agree (re her observations at my place), but I didn't see condescension as much as the agent attempting to deflect something she knew the author, who had presented her book as "a literary novel for adults," might find distressing.

But then, again, I don't have a dog in this hunt, writing, at least for now, adult, non-fiction.

Love, C.

But what's there to deflect? That's what I don't get? I could see the agent presenting it as a bit of a surprise, but distressing? Where does the idea that it even might be distressing come from?

I just can't think of any lens through which one might see selling one's book as YA--whatever its intended genre--as distressing, unless one already has some not-quite-admirable attitudes about the genre.

Edited at 2008-07-21 12:22 am (UTC)

That's because you write intentionally to the audience you want to write for and always have wanted to write for.

When a writer has sold a book, and then is told that the book is going to be marketed in another category all together, this is a shock to the system. Particularly if it is a category about which the author knows nothing, or, yes even if the author did know.

It's like this very traditional thing that happens in the music biz. They love your sound, your band, everything about you and they sign you. Then it's, well, we want you to use all different musicians, throw away all your material, and yes, you think you're doing heavy metal, but we know you really appeal to the country audience. Say what?

Yes, this happens all the time, and many a great band and talent were destroyed this way.

Love, C.

Well, yes and no. I went through a period where I had to figure out that my work was a better fit for YA and middle grade than for adults, who I originally thought were my audience, too, and I really don't recall going through any of this. It was more like, Huh. That's interesting.

Now, being asked to throw away your material--change your voice--would be a very different matter. But the author makes no mention of being told to change her voice or write a different sort of book in the article--I got the impression that she still published the same book, just that it was packaged differently than she expected. Which may be startling, but isn't bad news unless that packaging is inappropriate, which it doesn't seem to have been.

It reads to me like they're ... struggling to get over their own condescension, maybe? Only not even realizing it is condescension, somehow?

We should make them feel welcome, I agree. But they should also, I don't know ... be pleased and honored to be here? Happy to have broken into a difficult field and written a book that might appeal to its readers?

She gets there by the end, and that's a good thing. But I guess I--maybe unfairly--want to shout, "But was it really so hard a conclusion to come to?!"

I mean, if someone decided one of my books was going to be an adult book, I hope I wouldn't see it as "bad news"; and I hope my attitude would be something along the lines of, "I didn't intend to write for adults, but I'm thrilled to be here and hope you all like my book." (Which does seem to be Sherman Alexie's attitude.)

Edited at 2008-07-21 01:31 pm (UTC)

Okay, reading it over in the cold light of morning, it really does seem the writer had from the start less of an attitude--and maybe was more confused--about YA than her agent did. That good news/bad news thing really overshadowed the rest of the article for me, on the first couple readings.

Although there does seem to be this whole core of adult writers who feel marginalized by writing SF, who are only talking to other adult writers about it, which increases the sense of marginalization, too--and that's entirely who she interviews, as if there's something of a separation in her mind still--but maybe given the focus of the article that makes at least some sense.

I'm not sure it's fair to label Margo Rabb as a "writer who has just discovered YA." Prior to CURES FOR HEARTBREAK, she published several middle grade novels.

I think what she describes in her essay is more the outing of prejudice among "literary" types. Writers can get into their heads that they've written a certain "kind" of book and it can be jarring when someone else tells them they've written a different "kind" of book. More than anything, I think Rabb is exploring that sensation. It's not that, to make herself feel better, she's finally accepting YA. It's brave to confront your own prejudices (although, again, I'm not convinced she had a prejudice against YA as much as she saw her book differently).

If she's written YA, I'm surprised she was so surprised--and also surprised the NYTimes editor didn't see the MG books as worth including in her bio--but that's a whole other issue.

But yeah, on reread the real attitude seems to come from her agent more than her--by the cold light of morning, I can see that good news/bad news thing overshadowed the whole rest of the article for me, which did not quite have the tone that that opening implied. (I still do think her agent was being pretty clueless there, though.

Edited at 2008-07-21 01:47 pm (UTC)

Thought I should throw in my perspective here! The article is only 1400 words, so a lot of information did get left out. I am also the author of a YA series called Missing Persons (there's a link on my website), so this essay really is about this particular book. I wrote Cures for Heartbreak as short stories originally, and many were published in magazines for adults. My surprise at it selling as YA was that as a writer, if I had I intended for this book to be YA, I would've approached the material differently during the eight years I was writing it. It would've been a different book. It has a lot of bad language and sex, and a reflective tone that I assumed would disqualify it from consideration as YA.

I think my surprise and confusion at its sale is being misinterpreted as disappointment, which isn't true.

My agent's "bad news" comment was also in reference to the rejections it received from adult houses, and for the editor in chief not supporting the adult editors who wanted to make offers.

Hope this clarifies things.

Thanks for the clarification! Yeah, I guess without the larger context the agent comments did read to me as bad news about the sale itself, so I'm glad that's not the case! :-)

What frustrates me is the "no self-respecting adult is ever going to walk into the YA section to find a book" comments.

I'm 25 years old, and maybe I don't get classified as an adult yet (though I think holding a job, a marriage and a house suggest otherwise) but I am constantly in the YA section. And I am not the only one of my peers who looks for teen fiction, sometimes over adult fiction. And they don't have my excuse of working in kidlit.

YA is hot right now. That is just a fact of life. Forget about whether people writing articles and people in the literary world want to condescend to look down from their high horses and acknowledge that YA has merit. (Not talking about you per se, margorabb--this isn't the first time I've seen this sentiment, only the most recent.)

The fact is, with adults having Harry Potter parties and men in suits with blackberries reading Twilight on the Metronorth, YA just is popular. With grownups. With teenagers. With people overall.

You can argue about the merits of the genre (would you call it a genre? more an age group) all you want, but the fact remains: YA is hot, and it's here now, and people in the real world are eating it up.

Hey Penmage, glad you specified you're not just talking to Margo, but remember the "no self-respecting adult" part was a quote in the essay [which you mis-quoted]: Meg Rosoff, an American-born author who lives in London, said, “There isn’t an adult who’s going to trot into the children’s section to look for adult literature.”

I'm 26 and often trot over to the Y.A. section of my local library and bookstore. And I'll never stop, so I'm glad to see other adults reading Y.A. AND pointing out that Harry Potter and Twilight have helped to make Y.A. better respected and accepted.

BUT have you ever been made to feel uncomfortable trotting over the Y.A. section or for reading these books?

This essay was specially helpful because it's discussing ATTITUDES out there in publishing and in readers. Who likes to be pigeonholed? We need to stop thinking of Y.A. as a genre in and of itself (and work towards not over relying on genres in general) because Y.A. is an age classification and not a STYLE of writing (or a statement on writing ability). There's tons of different styles and subject matters, etc. within Y.A. You don't see an "Elderly" reading section in the bookstore, though there are subject matters that may interest elderly folks more than others. So why do we do this to our adolescents?

To help them find stuff they're interested in reading. To market. Period.

But it's become a way of classifying the WRITERS who happen to write a book that's put into the Y.A. section and that's not cool. Let's remember how disrespected science-fiction/fantasy writers have historically been and the achievements they've made toward recognition and realize our Y.A. books aren't "easy" or inferior to adult books. I think that's part of the point Margo was trying to make (in my interpretation, at least).

Thanks Margo, for writing this essa

I have never felt uncomfortable in the YA section. I don't know--maybe it's because I never stopped looking for new books in the kids section of the library, or the fact that I worked in first a children's bookstore and then in children's publishing. But I honestly have never, ever felt uncomfortable or embarrassed or ashamed of reading middle grade or YA fiction. (Sometimes if I was reading trashy teen fiction I might have felt a little embarrassed, but only as embarrassed as I feel to be caught reading trashy adult fiction. And I'm working on weaning myself off that feeling too. I read what I want to read.)

But I'm a bit of an anomaly--like janni, I am immersed in the children's publishing world. It's my job, and it became my job because I love it, so it's only natural I would feel this way.

But the thing is, those men on the metronorth don't hide their Twilight behind corporate-looking bookcovers. Many of my friends read kidlit on a regular basis, with no shame at all.

There is no question in my mind that there is a bias in the book world against children's fiction. We are regarded as the inferior younger sibling of the publishing world--but only by those who don't know. Only by the adult world.

I don't think that attitude is ok at all--it drives me crazy. But I do think that once people are inside the YA world, it becomes increasingly clear that YA is just as strong, important and exciting as adult fiction.

It's a matter of how you see yourself. You're only the inferior younger sibling if you decide that you are.

Your comments are all spot on the money.

However, I hope you're not trying to imply that Margo's NY Times piece implied she'd decided that YA was the "inferior younger sibling" because it was my understanding that she was talking AS a YA author to a predominately adult fiction-minded publishing/marketing world.

I've also read YA all my life. Actually, I read more of it now than I did when I was a YA myself. :) But I've been treated like I shouldn't be hogging kids' books from kids or like I don't belong browsing in that section. It happens. And in a probably more important extension -

IT HAPPENS TO WRITERS.

Writers get a cold shoulder in a lot of venues when they say they are writing YA or are told they are writing YA (and really, who likes being TOLD what they're writing, no matter what the genre?). It's hard to not be taken seriously as a writer just because of what and who toward you want to write (there's some grammatical gymnastics...). Margo and lots of others are fighting the good fight, but YA writers still get snubbed (MONEY wise, respect wise, etc).

You have a really positive attitude toward YA. Margo does too. I also do. But writers are still having to deal with an oppressive stigma related to writing YA. I think Margo was just trying to tweak some noses and say, "yeah really, why is there a stigma here?"

We all love YA, isn't that great? :)

It is great that we all love YA. :-)

I guess I'm one of those who, like penmage, has been lucky enough not to face any particular stigma for writing YA. Very occasional comments, sure (but then, any sort of writing gets occasional odd comments, it goes with the territory), but that's pretty much it--I've never felt inferior for writing YA and middle grade. When I realized that was actually what I was writing, though I hadn't realized it, it was more--empowering than otherwise, because I'd found this wonderful place with wonderful books where maybe one day some of my books might fit, too, when many of them never did quite fit in other genres.

So as articles keep coming out saying "Hey! You know what? I just learned writing YA is actually okay!" they do come across a little oddly to me, and I have to remind myself that for whatever reason (because it really isn't intuitive to me, because I never stopped reading YA either) YA really is an alien country for many writers and readers both, and they're truly just learning it. (I now know that margoraab actually had written YA before, a useful clarification, but that really didn't come through for me in the article.) Given said articles, I have to become better about accepting that that stigma is there--but I've never felt a lesser writer for writing YA (and younger, because I've written more kids' books than teen ones).

I like being classified as a YA writer. It is what I am, right up there with the fact that I'm a fantasy writer. The few times someone's tried to tell me I'm not really a children's or YA writer--usually because they, as an adult, liked my work and want this to mean my work really isn't really "children's" or "YA"--it's made me really uncomfortable. I'm proud of writing YA, and it's weird to me whenever anyone thinks I wouldn't be, maybe because it is kind of uncommon.

And the YA section of the bookstore feels like home to me. :-)