In Marilyn Chandler McEntyre’s written article, Friends in Need: Illness and Friendship in Adolescent Fiction, the author goes into detail about how there are so many different genres of young adult novels that lead into specific situations regarding illnesses, love, loss, and emotional themes that…
As young adult literature becomes increasingly popular, the genre expands and changes along with the change in readers. Melanie D. Koss and William H. Teale examine what trends and characteristics are present in YA literature by conducting studies using over 50 books and sharing their…
In a 2009 article “What’s Happening in YA Literature? Trends in Books for Adolescents,” Melanie Koss and William Teale identified current trends within the Young Adult genre of literature. One of the more significant points that they identified pertains to a shift in subject matter…
A wonderfully clichéd way to begin this analysis of YA literature is to ask the most basic question: What is YA? Jen Doll’s article, aptly titled “What Does Young Adult Mean?” answers this question with spot-on accuracy, concluding that it has no technical definition. Despite…
In Mike Cadden’s article, “The Irony of Narration in the Young Adult Novel”, he examines the common trend of first-person narration throughout young adult novels. He picks up on the preferred technique for this genre of literature and how these types of novels are so…
In Alleen Pace Nilsen’s article “Love and the Teenage Reader,” written in 1976, she discusses the connection an author creates with their target audience through their literature. She specifically writes about “young love”(Nilsen, 90) in young adult novels, and how during her time the…
In Cat Yampbell’s article “Judging a book by its Cover: Publishing Trends in Young Adult Literature,” one of the authors main points is how young adult novels have to have eye-catching covers because in society today “the cover is the key-the cover sells the book”…
In Melanie Koss and William Teale’s “What’s Happening in YA Literature? Trends in Books for Adolescents” the authors conduct many studies about what makes YA reading so popular. When analyzing popular subject matter, they found that overtime, YA books have been called “problem novels”—“novels with…
Upon reading David Cappella’s “Kicking It Up Beyond the Casual: Fresh Perspectives in Young Adult Literature,” one of the article’s main points that caught my interest was how he argues “we should not be surprised”[1] that YAL continues to grow in popularity. Cappella explains in his…
In Susan Santoli’s article, “Promoting Young Adult Literature: The Other “Real” Literature”, she presents evidence towards the benefits of assigning students young adult literature in place of classic works, which she refers to as “Real” Literature”[1]. One of Santoli’s main points that really stuck with…