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Paging Back: Defining “Contemporary” YA, How Much Sex is Okay in YA, and The Value of Teen Friendship

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We’ve tackled romance at STACKED in the not-too-distant past — Kimberly and I wrote a genre guide to YA romance back in September. And while not all of those books are contemporary, a large portion of them are, and it’s fairly easy to parse out those which are from those which aren’t. 

So instead of reworking a booklist that already exists or creating a duplicate to the great titles Tiffany shared in her post earlier today, I thought it’d be interesting to reshare a few contemporary YA posts from other series and features. I’ll pull an excerpt and link to those posts, so you can go back and catch up on prior conversations. 

First up, what is contemporary YA fiction? 

I wrote this piece last year, as I tried to parse out the differences between “contemporary,” “realistic,” and “historical” fiction. And even though I think I’ve nailed down a definition — at least one that I could work with within the context of a whole book about contemporary YA fiction — I think it’s a definition that’s fluid and still not easily nailed down.

“Obviously, this is a subjective line in the sand and it divides some books from others based on an arbitrary time frame. It’s something that other people might not hold in the same light I do, and it’s something that I think could be argued eight different ways and done so fairly each way. I don’t think there will ever be a moment when we as readers or people who think about books and reading choose to arbitrarily separate “realistic” from “contemporary” reads based on the change of years on a calendar. And we shouldn’t because, well, it’s kind of silly to do that. Rather, I think we do have to think critically about what is and isn’t contemporary to today’s readers. Veronica Mars isn’t contemporary to today’s teens. Neither is Buffy. And today’s teens — at least mine — consider Snow Patrol and Fall Out Boy to be classic rock. They know who Kurt Cobain is, but they don’t necessarily know what he is (and I think it’s fair that they know who he is because of the legacy surrounding him, since they have no idea who, say, REM is).

Is this musing a lot about a single term? It is. But it’s something I’ve thought a lot about and it’s something that has changed meaning in my time reading and reflecting upon what defines contemporary and realistic fiction. For me, realistic is the umbrella term; contemporary falls within that term.”

— from Defining Contemporary, Realistic, and Historical Fiction

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Let’s talk a little bit about sex in YA fiction, from a post by Blake Nelson as part of last year’s contemporary week: 

“Then, around 2000 when I started writing Young Adult books, without really thinking, I just kept including sex scenes.   I thought: well the world has evolved, YA is getting more sophisticated, the kids can handle it.   They probably appreciate someone telling the truth about such things.


But then TWILIGHT came and I realized that actually the pendulum was swinging the other way.   Kids actually preferred less sex.  Younger girls especially.  Does a 13 year old girl really want to hear the gory details of that stuff?  Some of them do, but a lot of them probably don’t.   Plus, in a world that was by 2000 so saturated in sex and sexual images and descriptions etc. the really interesting artistic choice might be to go the other way.  And talk about pure love, idealistic love, as opposed to the jaded sexual love that had been so popular as I was growing up.  In fact:  I had kind of preferred that myself, but the world around me had seemed to require sex in novels.”


— from More Love, Less Sex by Blake Nelson

~*~
To round out this short series of snippets from prior posts, I wanted to highlight the excellent post about friendship that Swati Avasthi wrote for us in early October of this year. I feel like this post, as well as Nelson’s above, make really interesting companions to Tiffany’s today, especially when it comes to the genre of contemporary realistic fiction more broadly.
“In a time of life when I had no idea who I was as a person, who I wanted to be growing up, and who I was as a girlfriend, I knew that one truth. I came of age as a friend. More than boyfriends, more than atheletics, more than even writing, the thing I was sure of was my friendships.

Friendship stories (as compared to romances) are underdone in YA. I don’t feel like I need a whole lot of evidence to prove that – there’s a whole section for paranormal romance in Barnes and Noble and nothing equivalent for friendships. And often when friendships are portrayed in YA, they are portrayed like I had thought of them as a teen – endless, important, fixed. I was loyal to a fault.

But friendships are much more complicated than that, especially when you are young, especially when you are in transition, which most teens are.” 

— from Swati Avasthi’s Friendship in Young Adult Fiction

Romance in Contemporary YA Fiction: Guest Post from Tiffany Schmidt (author of Send Me A Sign)

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Ready to talk about love in contemporary YA fiction? Today, Tiffany Schmidt talks about the aspects of romance in a novel that just work and she offers up a host of titles to satisfy readers looking for those very things. 

And don’t forget, you can enter to win an advanced copy of Tiffany’s Bright Before Sunrise right here at STACKED.

Tiffany Schmidt’s first crush was G.I. Joe. Her first hundred or so kisses were with the boy next door (she was a very affectionate toddler).  Tiffany now lives with her saintly husband, impish twin boys, and a pair of puggles in Pennsylvania. When she’s not writing, she’s frequently covered in toddler and puggle kisses–they’re both rather drooly, but absolutely priceless. SEND ME A SIGN was her debut novel, BRIGHT BEFORE SUNRISE will follow in February 2014, and the ONCE UPON A CRIME FAMILY series begins in 2015 with HOLD ME LIKE A BREATH. 








I love a good love story.



When I ask this question:



I look like this:

And when I read romance, I want to swoon. I’m primed to sigh, let my heart race, and stare dreamily at the pages.

But, wanting to swoon doesn’t mean I will. Swooning has to be earned. (Okay, I’m done with the gifs, I promise!)



Since I was asked to write this post, I’ve been trying to figure out the elements of an effective contemporary YA romance… and if you’re looking for a universal answer, sorry. Romance is personal. It’s as personal as a person can get. It’s why you crush on Person X and your best friend crushes on Person Y. (If you and your best friend are BOTH crushing on Person Z, let’s just hope Person Z is fictional so you can share!)



~*~



Tiffany’s List of Bookish Things That Make Her Swoon #1:  More than Attraction



For me, romance is about the give and take of personalities; it’s the way the characters push and influence each other in meaningful ways.



I’m not talking about why they want each other. Why do they need each other? What does each person in the relationship bring out in the other? Not in some epic “I need a boyfriend/girlfriend/significant other to complete me” way — this isn’t Jerry Maguire and I think we’ve all learned that Tom Couch-Jumper Cruise isn’t exactly a guru for relationship advice. But, what about combining the two halves of the relationship equation makes the whole greater than the parts? How do the characters challenge each other and what do they offer that the other one needs?



Good relationships: in fiction and in life, are about that balance of being complimentary and challenging. Being able to be both a safe haven, and a motivation. I love books that show this dynamic, including: Jordan Sonnenblick’s ZEN AND THE ART OF FAKING IT, Miranda Kenneally’s THINGS I CAN’T FORGET, Katie McGarry’s PUSHING THE LIMITS, and my own upcoming BRIGHT BEFORE SUNRISE.

~*~



Tiffany’s List of Bookish Things That Make Her Swoon #2 : Exes that aren’t Evil



Romantic interests shouldn’t be interchangeable sprockets. It shouldn’t just be: he/she is hot, ergo our kisses will be sparky and we should commence a Happily Ever After sequence.



I love when books explore the concept of not-right boyfriend/girlfriends. Not because the guy or girl is abusive or awful, but because it’s not the right time, not the right chemistry… not the right person. Break-ups because things aren’t wrong, but they’re not right can be heartbreaking. They’re realistic and make a sizzling next relationship appear all the more sizzling in comparison.



Some great books that nail this concept are: the hilarious forthcoming KISSING TED CALLAHAN (AND OTHER GUYS) by Amy Spalding, Jenny Han’s SUMMER series, E. Lockhart’s RUBY OLIVER series, and my SEND ME A SIGN.



~*~



Tiffany’s List of Bookish Things that Make Her Swoon #3: Yearning.



Yearning done well is like sitting in a room where cookies are baking. After being tormented by the aroma of melting chocolate and vanilla for the eleven extra-long minutes it takes for that dough to bake (and, if you’re smart, that extra minute or two so they cool down and don’t burn your tongue) the first bite is even more delicious.



If the author has caught me up in his or her character’s desire, then that first kiss is going to make me flush; that rejection is going to make me want to hug the rejected (and feed them cookies).



In fact, the want can be so much more appealing than the have. My high school years were full of crushes. Full of daydreams of: could he like me? Will he ever notice me? And semi-stalkerish tendencies to do things like have my best friends help me figure out the routes the different Hes took to their classes so I could create hallway opportunities for them to be dazzled by my ability to blush and smile… and, hopefully, fall for me. After which I’d spend way too much of my own classes writing notes analyzing the way he said “Hello.” Did his head tilt and raised eyebrows mean: A) I’m trying to look hot? (HE WANTS ME TO THINK HE LOOKS HOT!?!)  B) I’m confused. Do I know you? Maybe I want to. or C)Why is this crazy girl smiling at me?



Um, other people did this too, right?



Throw some obstacles between the book’s characters. Mutual yearning? Yes, please! Give me some almost-kisses, half-confessions, missed-signals, extended gazes, accidental touches. Feed me delicious yearning (or cookies) and I’ll fall in love with you.



For books that excel at this, I suggest Stephanie Perkin’s ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS, Emery Lord’s upcoming debut OPEN ROAD SUMMER, Polly Shulman’s ENTHUSIASM, and Bill Konigsberg’s funny and achingly real OPENLY STRAIGHT.

~*~

I spent wayyyy more of my teen years crushing than dating. (Based on what I shared above, I know this is a shocking revelation). And the What happens next? part of the romance equation was a mystery I badly wanted to solve.



Maybe this is why Tiffany’s List of Bookish Things that Make Her Swoon #4 is: Books that Transition Beyond the Yearning.



Early in my writing career someone told me: “No one wants to know what happens after the happily ever after. They may think they do, but they don’t.” I’m going to disagree. I loved having crushes. I love crushing along with heroes and heroines. BUT: If being IN a relationship isn’t more fun than the crush from afar — i.e. you like the IDEA of the person more than the REALITY — then you’re dating the wrong boy or girl.



I’d love to see more books where the characters get together earlier in the story. While the yearning portions of books are lovely and make us flip their pages, I’d love to see more stories where healthy romantic relationships are depicted. Where the curtain isn’t dropped with the suggestion of coupling up = happily ever after. Novels that take us past that point and depict a young couple working out some of their early insecurities and issues; that show us the romance and heartache of settling into a relationship. Like the moment when you’ve hung up on your boyfriend/girlfriend for the first time and you’re cradling your phone, praying they’ll know you want them to call back. Or you’ve slammed a door and you hope they’re waiting on the other side figuring out the perfect words to transform the emotions inside you from anger and hurt to comfort and passion.



Relationships are not a destination. They’re not an end-point. They’re always a journey. They should always be challenging and growing and evolving. Some great books that show this: FANGIRL by Rainbow Rowell, IF I STAY by Gayle Foreman, BOY MEETS BOY by David Levithan, INFINITE MOMENT OF US by Lauren Myracle, and the JESSICA DARLING series by Megan McCafferty.



~*~



Now that you have a sneak peak at some of the things I love about contemporary romance, leave a comment below and tell me what’s on your swoon list or what other romantic books I need to add to my To Be Read pile ASAP!

Kid Lit Con 2013: The Past, Present, and Future of Blogging

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This past weekend was the 7th annual KidLitCon, hosted by the Kidlitosphere, and it was held down in not-so-sunny-in-recent-weeks Austin, Texas. As you may or may not know, Kimberly and myself were part of the planning committee for the event this year, and we took on the tasks of finding locations for the events we had in mind. I think we were successful, since I believe the entirety of the conference was a success. I am glad I went, and I thought I’d recap what I did, as well as what I learned, in hopes of passing along some insight to others who may benefit.

Thursday

Because Austin is one of my favorite places and a former home of mine, I wanted to go down early and get some me-time in before the event. Leila, of Bookshelves of Doom, was one of my roommates, and she, too, came down early. We figured out our flights landed within minutes of one another, so we met up at the airport, took the bus downtown, and then we spent the afternoon with one another.

The first thing we did was grab a late lunch/early dinner at El Sol y La Luna. We stuffed ourselves on Mexican food and then headed on a nice walk down to Book People, where I proceeded to spend more money in a bookstore than I have in a very long time. I convinced Leila to spend some too, and then we hit up Amy’s for my favorite ice cream in the world. But by that point, both of us were ridiculously tired and a little cranky (early morning flights!) and we headed back to the hotel.

We spent the evening talking, which was so, so great. We hit on everything from work to blogging and books.

Friday


Since the first events weren’t until mid-day, Leila and I took the opportunity to go grab breakfast in the morning together. We’d found a place that looked good, but it actually didn’t exist anymore. So I suggested we see if The Driskill had a place to eat — and it did. It’s quite possible I had the best pecan waffle I’ve ever had. Bonus points to it being shaped like Texas.

The pre-con for KidLitCon was taking place at 1 at my old stomping grounds, the iSchool at the University of Texas. The event was open to all, and it was meant to let us get to know other bloggers, authors, and fans of kidlit.

Leila and I got there early, and shortly after, we met author Nikki Loftin. As more people began to show up, I helped get some things set up in the lounge where our meeting was. We’d devised part of the precon to be a chance to swap books and ARCs we’d had, and thanks to the generosity of Bloomsbury and First Second, we also had a couple of boxes of books and ARCs to bring ourselves. Local attendees kept bringing more and more books, and we kept going and seeing what was put out.

In short, book fans in the same room as books equals a lot of talk about books.

The precon was laid back, and it was a nice, low-pressure chance for those of us who knew one another to catch up, as well as a chance to meet new people without feeling overwhelmed.

After the event, we had a reservation at a local Mexican restaurant, where we all dined on plenty of chips, salsa, margaritas, and then delicious dinners. I got the chance to sit with Kimberly and her boyfriend/sometimes guest contributor to STACKED, Matthew, and we caught up with one another.

While a number of KidLitCon folks ended up going to the bar at our hotel after dinner, Leila and I both ended up back in our hotel room, spending hours and hours laying in bed talking. A mixture of exhaustion and needing introvert downtime made this a decision that I can’t say I necessarily regret. When Pam came back from the bar, we talked a little more, as well. Though not too much since we had to save some energy for the event.

Saturday


KidLitCon 2013!

It felt like we’d been planning this event forever, but in truth, it all sort of came together pretty quickly. We rented space and catering from St. David’s Episcopal Church and I cannot possibly say enough nice things about the venue, the ease of which it was to work with them, the food, and the support we had for our entire event from start to finish. If you’re ever in Austin and in need of a space, I would recommend them without a second of hesitation.

If I had to give three words that summed up the biggest themes talked about during the event, they would be diversity, authenticity, and burnout. Every session I went to — as well as the one I presented — covered these topics, and I’m going to try to hit upon them in each short writeup, though it’d be impossible not to see the threads coming together.

Our program opened with a wonderful keynote from well-known kid lit enthusiast, supporter, and author Cynthia Leitich Smith.

Her talk focused on blogging and how she’s come to help build and support the kid lit community through her own blogging, as well as through the sharing and uplifting of other bloggers, both those who are authors and those who aren’t. She talked about the value of having a mission and philosophy behind your blogging, stating that hers was to put something positive in the world, as well as to reject the notion that people like her — a Native woman, a person who adds to the diversity of the world — could and would do much more than be a single thing.

Some of her advice for bloggers who are feeling burned out or are looking for a means of expanding what it is they do include:

  • Considering your audience: what are their  interests and their expectations? What is it they’re taking away from visiting your blog specifically? How does this tie into what your mission and philosophy are?
  • Maintaining your content flow: you can pre-format things sometimes, and you can try to schedule your content strategically. 
  • Take breaks and plan for them to avoid burnout. As she said, it’s better to be regular than frequent sometimes. 
  • Use your platform: Highlight and talk about the things that matter to you as a blogger. You have the opportunity to talk about diversity and whatever it means to you. So do it. Your readers come to your blog for a reason — let this be something they take away. 
  • Diversity matters and it’s not one thing. Diversity means so many things. Think about what it means to you as a blogger and as a reader and talk about it when it’s done well as well as when it’s not done well. 
And in all things, be authentic to yourself, to your mission and philosophy, and to your readers. She noted, too, the value of windows and doors in writing and in reading. 
Cynthia’s speech was easily one of the most engaging and energizing I’ve seen in a long time. I was impressed, and it really got me thinking about those three things — burnout, authenticity, and diversity — in a way I hadn’t been before. You avoid the first by contributing to the third by acting with the second (it makes sense, I promise). During her talk, she had screen shots from many of our own blogs to hit on the various points she was making, and it was really effective in hitting those points home. 
Also, I had incredible respect for someone who can read 300 blogs a day. Not just impressive, but it’s a true sign of being involved with the community at large.
The next session I attended was all about blogger burnout, which was a discussion-style panel moderated by Sarah Stevenson and Jen Robinson. I thought the conversation was so worthwhile and invigorating, despite being about the very opposite. The talk honed in on the factors that cause bloggers to feel burned out and frustrated (it’s what anyone who blogs would expect — low commenting, wondering if anyone is actually reading what you write, feeling overwhelmed by life events, being overwhelmed by what to read and write about next, and all of that combined to feel perhaps your effort isn’t necessarily worth it) and then it offered ideas for getting back into the game. 
Some of the takeaways from the session include:
  • Changing your blogging from posting about books when you finish reading them to perhaps talking about them in the middle of your reading. You think about and engage with materials differently then while still talking about them. 
  • Develop new features, which can be on anything from what you’re passionate about outside of yourself to personal posts. 
  • Perhaps you can stop writing reviews at all. If you don’t love them — and we all know and all agree that book reviews receive the least traffic, least engagement, least sharing, and can be at times the least satisfying thing to write — then don’t do them. It takes the pressure off you as a blogger.
  • Give yourself the permission to say no. One of the points that came up that made me feel a little like a jerk was that we at STACKED have a no response policy. It’s in our review policy itself. If we’re pitched or approached about something and we’re not interested, we don’t respond. It takes the pressure off our inboxes and our time that we could be blogging or reading that would be spent sending responses. 
  • Make it easy to share things. If you want people to share your work, make it easy to do so. I know I am not good at commenting on blogs, but I read a lot, and my sense of appreciation for what people are writing comes through tweeting it out or including it in a link roundup. 
  • Do more lists and roundups by topic for new readers, as well as old ones. Share your old content in new ways. Sometimes you don’t have to have a brand new post every day, but instead, you can present your older material in a way that’s fresh and innovative. 
The best thing said the entire session was this: if you’re blogging your passion, it is special and worth doing. That alone is what makes it stand out. You add diversity to the blogging landscape simply by being a part of it. 
Lee Wind’s panel was the next one I attended, and it was entirely about diversity in kidlit. And let me say that Lee was one of the best speakers I’ve ever seen — he gave an excellent visual component, but more than that, he was so engaged and interactive with us as audience members. 
Like Cynthia hit on, Lee also hit on the idea of books as windows and as mirrors. That there is no such thing as “the other,” since we are ALL “the other” ourselves. We just need to recognize that journey in each of us. 
He presented some startling statistics about diversity within the kidlit world, which I’m positive most readers have seen at this point, but they’re still worth pointing out. For the years of 2011 and 2012, here are some numbers to note (and I believe the population here refers to the US population, but I’d like to be corrected if I’m wrong in my notes):
  • 1.1% of books featured Latino/as. They make up 24% of the population. 
  • 2.5% of books feature black people (African American or otherwise). They are 14% of the population. 
  • 1.8% of books feature Asians. They make up 4.6% of the population. 
  • .6% of books feature Native Americans. They make up .9% of the population.
  • .6% of books feature LGBTQ people. They make up 10% of the population.
And this is the kicker number for me, in light of today’s posts on mental illness: 8% of today’s youth, age 12-18, suffer with depressive issues. 
So Lee asks us how we can get diversity into our mission as bloggers? He offers these ideas:
  • Develop booklists and highlight the issues of diversity that matter to you.
  • Think about your site organization and highlight those things which you want to highlight.
  • Consider the keywords to and within your blog.
  • Conduct interviews and ask the hard questions — the more we press, the more we learn. 
  • Pay attention to where you shine your spotlight. You can talk about the tiniest things within a book and that becomes a means of talking diversity. No matter how small it seems, it does matter when you speak up for it. So do it. Pulling out small things is rewarding and it’s what makes blogging itself fun and worthwhile. 
Bloggers do three things: they aggregate content, they create content, and they communicate. Those three things can shine the spotlight on diversity. It’s the authenticity of the blogger that makes it even more resonant.
After Lee’s talk, it was time for Kimberly and myself to present on critical reviews and why critical reviews matter so much. 
We had a short outline and plans for our talk in the event our ultimate plan of having a group-led discussion failed. But it didn’t! 
I don’t want to go into too much detail about what we hit on because I feel like we’ve talked about it a lot here. But the big takeaways were that critical reviews matter because they’re engaging with the text on a deep and personal level. Because of that, they can get easy to become burned out on, and it’s especially true since most people don’t share or comment on our reviews — and we know they’re our lowest traffic sorts of posts. We choose to keep doing them, though, because we like them. 
Some of the questions which came up were about burnout (it happens all the time and there are ways to combat it), how we feel confident in our own writing to point out some of the things we do (wherein Kimberly talked about impostor syndrome and how sometimes you have to take it with blind faith and that yes, we do bounce things between one another to ensure we’re not being crazy), whether we’ve gotten blowback on posts (we have, and we shared a few anecdotes), and how it is we manage critical reviews (neither of us take notes while reading, but sometimes we’ll make notes to ourselves when we finish a book so we don’t forget to talk about something). The biggest takeaway I hope people got was that you find your voice the longer you write and that sometimes it’s okay to say no. 
Further, if you don’t feel like reviewing something, don’t. Let it go. It’s okay. The world won’t end, and people won’t hate you. It’s your blog and you should do only what it is you like doing and want to do. Being authentic to what it is you love is the thing that matters and it should be what pushes you forward. 
We’d mentioned a few blogs we thought did excellent critical reviews, and they are the following for those who are curious:
One of the attendees at our panel asked if we’d share some of our favorite personal critical reviews we’ve done in the past, and it’s something I think we’ll work on for a more in-depth post on the topic. We have enough prior posts we can round them up and share for those curious about the value of and purpose behind critical reviewing. 
I have the best co-blogger, and I am so glad we got the chance to present together. 
The blogging the middle grade panel followed ours, and while middle grade isn’t my reading strength, I was fascinated (and sort of bothered) by the conversation that ensued about gendered covers. The long and short of it is what I tweeted about after the session, and I’m just going to succinctly summarize them here:
  • If you tell a boy the book is a “girl book,” you are the one instilling the false notion of “boy books” and “girl books.”
  • Books do not have a gender. They exist for readers to find. And that’s it. 
  • Perhaps the biggest point is one that Matthew made: if you have a boy who doesn’t want to read a “girly” book, you have a conversation about why there is no such thing as a “girly” book and that there is nothing wrong with reading what interests you, period. 
No, the panel wasn’t about gender and middle grade. But some of the ensuing conversation tackled covers and gendering of covers/book recommendations, so I couldn’t help myself. It’s an issue that starts with the gatekeepers and trickles down, and so I think it’s important to keep that in mind when you are blogging. 
The final session of the day was a panel on the past, present, and future of blogging, moderated by Sarah Stevenson, with Lee Wind, Leila Roy, Sheila Ruth, and Jen Bigheart.  While I could go on and on about this session, I think the handful of takeaways say it all:
  • There are no gatekeepers to blogging. You can gain so much from it. And those who find it valuable and find passion in blogging will and do prosper. You are wholly responsible for your own reputation — and that is empowering.
  • Legitimacy is a constant concern, but if you do the work right, you’re legitimate. And most of legitimacy comes simply through being authentic. 
  • Book blogging isn’t dying, but it might be changing. That doesn’t mean blogging will disappear, but the means through which people share and engage may continue growing and evolving. This isn’t a bad thing — it only enriches the field more. 
When the day wrapped up at the church, we headed over to our closing dinner at Scholz Garten, where we enjoyed German food and delicious beer and dessert (well…I had dessert, at least). It was a nice way to end the event, as it was casual and we all wanted to sit as near to one another as possible to just connect. 
While other people headed to the bar after dinner, some of us were exhausted and instead found ourselves passed out in bed without even bothering to turn off the lights in the hotel room. It was amazing to see everything come together both from the side of an attendee and on the side of coordinating the event. Absolutely no disasters nor crises emerged, and even though KidLitCon was on the smaller side this year, it was no less valuable or fun. 
Final Thought. . .
Overall, KidLitCon left me feeling revived about blogging again. There is honestly nothing like being in a room with other bloggers who love the same things you do and who think about the same issues that you do. That so many of us are feeling burned out and tired from blogging — it was nice to share a camaraderie that wasn’t about giving up but instead about finding new ways to build your excitement again. And without doubt, I’m excited again. 
This event is always so valuable to me not just as a blogger, but as a person. Because there’s really nothing more enjoyable than spending a couple of days with people who love the same things you do and who can talk with you on your level about those very things. 

Contemporary YA Books Featuring Mental Illness

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Mental illness and mental well-being are topics that keep emerging in contemporary YA, and they keep being explored in worthwhile — even life-changing — ways. This list features very recent contemporary YA titles that have tackled mental illness in some capacity. 

All of these titles were published in the last two years, though many, many more titles have come before and many more will come after. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but rather one meant to show a range of experiences. Some of the descriptions aren’t entirely insightful as to what the mental illness tackled is, and sometimes that’s purposeful (The Stone Girl, for example, highlights the eating disorder but there is most definitely a mental illness coexisting with it). 

If you have other favorite contemporary realistic YA titles that tackle mental illness and mental well-being from any period of time, feel free to leave the title and author in the comments. And yes, you may borrow and share this list as you see fit. 

Descriptions are from WorldCat, unless otherwise noted. 

Wild Awake by Hilary T. Smith: The discovery of a startling family secret leads seventeen-year-old Kiri Byrd from a protected and naive life into a summer of mental illness, first love, and profound self-discovery. 

Opposite of Hallelujah by Anna Jarzab: For eight of her sixteen years Carolina Mitchell’s older sister Hannah has been a nun in a convent, almost completely out of touch with her family–so when she suddenly abandons her vocation and comes home, nobody knows quite how to handle the situation, or guesses what explosive secrets she is hiding.

Something Like Normal by Trish Doller: When Travis returns home from Afghanistan, his parents are splitting up, his brother has stolen his girlfriend and car, and he has nightmares of his best friend getting killed but when he runs into Harper, a girl who has despised him since middle school, life actually starts looking up.



Charm & Strange by Stephanie Kuehn: A lonely teenager exiled to a remote Vermont boarding school in the wake of a family tragedy must either surrender his sanity to the wild wolves inside his mind or learn that surviving means more than not dying. 

Crash and Burn by Michael Hassan: Steven “Crash” Crashinsky relates his sordid ten-year relationship with David “Burn” Burnett, the boy he stopped from taking their high school hostage at gunpoint.

Drowning Instinct by Ilsa J. Bick: An emotionally damaged sixteen-year-old girl begins a relationship with a deeply troubled older man.

Crazy by Amy Reed: Connor and Izzy, two teens who met at a summer art camp in the Pacific Northwest where they were counsellors, share a series of emails in which they confide in one another, eventally causing Connor to become worried when he realizes that Izzy’s emotional highs and lows are too extreme.
Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets by Evan Roskos: A sixteen-year-old boy wrestling with depression and anxiety tries to cope by writing poems, reciting Walt Whitman, hugging trees, and figuring out why his sister has been kicked out of the house.
Zoe Letting Go by Nora Price: Zoe goes to a facility to help cure her anorexia as she comes to terms with the loss of her friend and her own identity. 

Bruised by Sarah Skilton: When she freezes during a hold-up at the local diner, sixteen-year-old Imogen, a black belt in Tae Kwan Do, has to rebuild her life, including her relationship with her family and with the boy who was with her during the shoot-out.

Perfect Escape by Jennifer Brown: Seventeen-year-old Kendra, living in the shadow of her brother’s obsessive-compulsive disorder, takes a life-changing road trip with him.

This is Not A Drill by Beck McDowell: Two teens try to save a class of first-graders from a gun-wielding soldier suffering from PTSD. When high school seniors Emery and Jake are taken hostage in the classroom where they tutor, they must work together to calm both the terrified children and the psychotic gunman threatening them–a task made even more difficult by their recent break-up. Brian Stutts, a soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in Iraq, uses deadly force when he’s denied access to his son because of a custody battle. The children’s fate is in the hands of the two teens, each recovering from great loss, who now must reestablish trust in a relationship damaged by betrayal. Told through Emery and Jake’s alternating viewpoints, this gripping novel features characters teens will identify with and explores the often-hidden damages of war. 

Chasing Shadows by Swati Avasthi: Chasing Shadows is a searing look at the impact of one random act of violence. Before: Corey, Holly, and Savitri are one unit– fast, strong, inseparable. Together they turn Chicago concrete and asphalt into a freerunner’s jungle gym, ricocheting off walls, scaling buildings, leaping from rooftop to rooftop. But acting like a superhero doesn’t make you bulletproof. After: Holly and Savitri are coming unglued. Holly says she’s chasing Corey’s killer, chasing revenge. Savitri fears Holly’s just running wild– and leaving her behind. Friends should stand by each other in times of crisis. But can you hold on too tight? Too long? In this intense novel, told in two voices, and incorporating comic-style art sections, Swati Avasthi creates a gripping portrait of two girls teetering on the edge of grief and insanity. Two girls who will find out just how many ways there are to lose a friend– and how many ways to be lost. 
The Girls of No Return by Erin Saldin: A troubled sixteen-year-old girl attending a wilderness school in the Idaho mountains must finally face the consequences of her complicated friendships with two of the other girls at the school.
OCD Love Story by Corey Ann Haydu: In an instant, Bea felt almost normal with Beck, and as if she could fall in love again, but things change when the psychotherapist who has been helping her deal with past romantic relationships puts her in a group with Beck–a group for teens with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Cracked by K. M. Walton: When Bull Mastrick and Victor Konig wind up in the same psychiatric ward at age sixteen, each recalls and relates in group therapy the bullying relationship they have had since kindergarten, but also facts about themselves and their families that reveal they have much in common.
Freaks Like Us by Susan Vaught: A mentally ill teenager who rides the “short bus” to school investigates the sudden disappearance of his best friend.
Lexapros and Cons by Aaron Karo: Realizing that his OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) is out of control, seventeen-year-old Chuck Taylor, who wants to win his best friend back and impress a new girl at school, tries to break some hardcore habits, face his demons–and get messy.
Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick: A day in the life of a suicidal teen boy saying good-bye to the four people who matter most to him.
Pretty Girl-13 by Liz Coley: Sixteen-year-old Angie finds herself in her neighborhood with no recollection of her abduction or the three years that have passed since, until alternate personalities start telling her their stories through letters and recordings.
The Stone Girl by Alyssa Sheinmel: Seventeen-year-old Sethie, a senior at New York City’s Franklin White girl’s school, has outstanding grades, a boyfriend, and a new best friend but constantly struggles to lose weight.

Mental Illness in Contemporary YA: Guest Post from Hilary T. Smith (author of Wild Awake)

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Let’s kick off contemporary week with Hilary T. Smith’s post about the importance of good, solid, realistic fiction about mental illness.

Hilary Smith is the author of the novel WILD AWAKE and of this semi-defunct blog. She lives in Portland, OR, where she is studying North Indian classical music and doing her best to keep the neighbors from having her spaceship van towed.

Burn the Pamphlet, Wrestle With the Bear: Mental Health Narratives and YA Literature

Our cultural scripts for mental illness are pretty uninspiring. The suicide pamphlet in the school nurse’s office advises you to Get Help and Speak to a Counselor, where “help” is often a code word for “life-long medication,” and the counselor might be the wise healer of your dreams, or might be a not-very-wise adult who hands you another stupid pamphlet and sends you on your way. If you weren’t so busy being outlandishly sad or paranoid or hyper, you would be tempted to shout: “People! I am going through what may prove to be one of the most potent and devastating experiences of my life, and you want me to read a fucking pamphlet?”





In a cool culture, they’d send you into the forest to wrestle a grizzly bear, or everyone in your village would surround you in an all-night evil-spirit-dispelling drum circle dance, or they would give you a nice old Pippi Longstocking house on a leafy street where you could live in a way that worked for your brain and didn’t bother anyone.





Anyone who has been on the receiving end of the suicide pamphlet (or the OCD pamphlet or the psychosis pamphlet) can tell you that when it comes to talking about mental illness, our culture has a terrifyingly limited vocabulary. We tiptoe. We oversimplify. We squawk the same Top Ten Tips over and over like parrots in a cage.
The conversation about mental illness has become completely jammed up by this squawking, and it’s going to take a lot of smart, inquisitive, and imaginative people to unjam it.





This is where YA comes in. Many of those potential conversation-changing people are kids and teens right now. One of the exciting things that YA literature can do is provoke teens to question different elements of their culture—whether you’re talking about politics, gender stuff, or reality TV. Why should mental health be excluded from that kind of questioning?





One thing I love about YA right now is that so many books have moved past the “issue-addressing” narratives of previous decades and are delving into the messiness and complexity of experiences like mental illness not as “issues” to be “resolved” but as part of a larger story. What is the difference between an “issue novel” and a novel-novel, and why is this difference important?





In an issue novel, the Problem is shown to be a certain situation or behavior (teen drinking! disordered eating! manic escapades!) which is shown to cause Conflicts that result in Consequences. The conflicts and consequences surrounding this single situation or behavior are the main drivers of plot and character; the story is over when the situation has been defused and/or the behavior modified. A novel-novel might also involve a problematic situation or behavior which creates conflicts and consequences, but the Problem is shown to be something greater than that choice or behavior. The Problem might be free will, or social justice, or alienation, or finding one’s place in the world—but whatever it is, it takes place in a much larger context in which the “problematic situation or behavior” forms a small piece. With that in mind, the plot might not hinge on the situation or behavior or at all—it might simply be taken as part of the background.





If The Catcher In The Rye was an issue novel, we might see Holden Caulfield receiving counseling for the death of his brother, getting help for his drinking habit, making up with his parents, and going back to school.





If Wonder When You’ll Miss Me was an issue novel, the story would most almost certaintly revolve around the protagonist “coming to terms” with her highschool tormentor instead of hitting him in the head with an axe and running away to join the circus with her imaginary twin.





In Dante and Aristotle Discover the Secrets of the Universe, the teenaged characters drive into the desert to smoke pot. In a lesser version of the story, the pot smoking would be discovered and addressed and Made Into An Issue; luckily for the reader, Benamin Alire Saenz allows it to simply be a beautiful and believable part of the story.





So how do we write YA novels involving mental illness without turning them into issue novels? First, ask yourself if a given behavior or situation really needs to be treated as an “issue” at all (with all the capital-r Resolutions that this entails). Is mental illness really the main source of conflict in the story? Or can mental illness be part of a story about love, or freedom, or intergalactic space wars? Do you need to “Resolve” it in a dramatic way? Or can you treat it like Dante and Aristotle’s illicit toking in the desert?





As a YA writer, you are quite literally affecting the range of stories teen can access about mental illness. Are you going to hand them another pamphlet, or send them to wrestle with the bear?
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Hilary has offered up a signed copy of Wild Awake to one winner. Enter below and I’ll draw a name at the end of the month.