Young Adult Fiction
“They’re not just beautiful stories, they’re also useful ones.”
I was reading the June issue of Cosmopolitan and came across this article by John Green: There's No Age Limit to Loving Teen Drama.
Green's words touched me:
It's not like we stop needing the comfort and help that a good story can bring when we graduate from high school. I am still looking for answers to questions about the meaning of life. I am still trying to fathom the wondrous strangeness of love. I am still trying to make my way through life despite heartache and loss. So yes, when I set out to write a novel about two young people living with cancer who fall in love with a book and then with each other, I was writing it for teenagers. But I was also writing it for my adult self — the one who wanted to know whether love really is stronger than death and who wanted to find hope and joy and humor amid hard times. Those desires know no age.
I'm 37—and yes—I love a good YA story. Give me a YA novel anytime. John Green and I share the same birth year (1977) and I was born a month after him. His birthday is August 24. Just like John Green, I've been a passionate adult reader of YA fiction, but not for as long as him (a decade!). For me, it's more like seven years—when I read Twilight by Stephanie Meyer in 2007—and so reignited my love for fiction. I've always been a reader but the books I read as an adult were business books, self-help, self-development, etc.
The desire for love, hope and future indeed knows no age. We are never too old to read a good YA story.
