Books are not pulpits; which is to say, they can be, but it is not a necessary function for the purposes of narrative flow. The fact that they contain subjective opinion as a matter of course is not the same thing as preaching. I see little point in arguing that all YA books should be trying to teach the same thing - choice - via the same methods - multiple perspectives - if the end result is a collection of stories which, through their structural similarities, effectively deny potential audiences both those things. All stories exist as part of a library. The alternate perspectives in narrative come, not because each author decides that their primary purpose is to preach and educate more than to entertain, but because each author has different ideas about the world, and a reader may choose to read first one, and then another, and then another. A single novel does not have to bear the burden for elaborating every argument concerning its particular story, unless it chooses to; that is what comparison with other works is for. Unless you are contending that all YA books are effectively the same, which is patently untrue: or, if it is true, we are back to the same general sort of truth which applies to all fiction, and not some specific epiphany localised around an age-bracketed readership.

Consider the well-documented fact that the older children become, the more likely they are to read ‘up’ - that is, to read books aimed at older audiences - than to read ‘down’. An 11-year-old may well read at a 16-year-old level, but it is much less likely that a 16-year-old will read books at an 11-year-old level. What this means, as I’m sure you remember from your own teenage years, is that young adults will read both YA books and adult works. In that context, to suggest that the moral burden is somehow greater on the YA authors than on the adult writers simply because of where the story was initially aimed seems flawed. Surely, the idea is to write a good story, and whether we define ‘good’ as meaning ‘moral’, ‘exciting’, ‘well-written’, ‘challenging’, ‘fabulous’, or all of the above, or something else entirely, is up to the individual reader to decide.

You wrote that:

“Although the central characters (and, quite often, the narrators) are figures of adolescence, complete with youthful folly and a limited worldview, their creators are not. The author, with the awareness of multiple worldviews and a greater scope of human experience, writes in order to create the perception of an alliance between protagonist and reader, presenting a limited experience, constructed almost purely as the means to an end.”

This is hugely problematic. On the one hand, yes: this is sometimes true, depending on your definition of the word ‘limited’. On the other, it is not a notion exclusive to YA. An adult might write about young protagonists for an adult audience; the same pretence, the same “means to an end”, is still being applied, but persumably without the patina of scepticism. Similarly, an adult male might write a female character, or an author who has never been to Africa write about Africa, or a modern fantasist write about being a 14th century nobleman. Consider that the experiences and characters contained in any novel are ‘limited’ to narrative relevance, or the bias of the author. You say this as if it were a bad thing, capable of being fixed, when in fact, it is just how stories work. Were I to take that statement more literally, I’d be frankly insulted at the notion that, by virtue of being written for young adults, teenager protagonists in YA writing are automatically ‘limited’ characters - 2D, lesser offerings than if the author had written the same character for an adult audience. As you say, they are written by adults: the implication is that we are dumbing down our worldviews for youthful consumption, that you will always find more depth in adult works; that somehow, despite what you perceive to be the greater moral duty of YA authors to inform their intended audience about the politics of a wider world, we will always fall flat *because* we are writing for young adults, and therefore have elected to write more ‘limited’ characters instead of choosing broader, more adult subjects. Which is false.

You are advocating for your own brand of political correctness in how YA narratives should address sensitive issues like homosexuality. While I appreciate the desire to tread carefully and intelligently in this context, it nonetheless boils down, when you are picking on a particular book - Selvadurai’s, in this case - to a desire that he have written a different kind of story. This is not the same as identifying weak writing, or arguing that the book itself is not as good as some others touching on similar subjects. It is not even a pure contention that the position he holds, however well-executed in the story, is one you find morally dubious. It is saying that, because you disagree with the author’s moral conjecture and/or find it insufficient, the book is a potential Danger To The Children - or, to use your words, “perpetuates a stereotype among adolescents which could be harmful”. Consider that your earlier point was that YA books have a moral duty to put forward all perspectives equally so that the reader might choose. Does this scenario, then, not include those perspectives which you find morally dubious? Is this ‘harmful’ stereotype not worthy of being aired? Should all characters try and buck the established stereotypes, thereby creating new ones which, by virtue of being preferred by you, are automatically more moral, better suited to teaching?

Obviously, you’ve hit a nerve with me. I’m an adult who writes YA novels, and who reads YA novels without finding them the slightest bit limited, even and especially when compared to their adult counterparts. When you’ve talked about ideology here, what I see is a desire that YA books teach your personal values to teenagers, and not the values of their authors: that bias is OK, provied you agree with it, but that in all other instances, the author must try and present multiple perspectives by way of compensating for their differing agenda. When you have talked about the primary purpose of YA, nowhere have you really mentioned the importance of telling a good story, or considered the idea that a different audience might take away different things from a book than you, or that they might not be picking up every new paperback with the thought that the writer is a demagogue to be tacitly absorbed without thought or internal contention. You have been running this argument as though YA readers are sponges or blank slates, lifted out of youth only by the helping hands of adult authors, whose duty it is to guide them on the right path. This is not so, and if you remember disagreeing with a book or pondering a character between the ages of 12 and 19, you’ll see what I’m driving at.

Read through the blog of any well-known YA author, and you’ll see that even though YA is an accepted ‘genre’ as such, there are still many different thoughts circulating as to what makes a book YA rather than adult, or whether those distinctions really apply, or in what context. It is certainly not defined in the absolute as “a genre which endorses a positive transition into adulthood through personal growth”, as this doesn’t even describe all YA novels, and it certainly describes some adult ones into the bargain. YA writing does not, en masse, favour “one worldview”. To say otherwise is to do millions of stories, and their authors, a gross disservice.

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