When You Were Everything

The Young Adult genre focuses on conflicts and issues that are particularly relevant to adolescents, and the featured protagonists are often dealing with fundamental questions of identity, interests, and morality that often beset readers of a similar age. The first book that was intended exclusively for a teenage readership was Seventeenth Summer, which was written by Maureen Daly in 1942. Other early contributions to the genre include S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders (1967) and the so-called “single-problem novels” of authors like Judy Blume and Robert Cormier, who dominated the YA arena in the 1970s and 1980s. The genre began to incorporate more aspects of fantasy and horror in the 1990s, and series such as R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps and Fear Street series became wildly popular. However, the true heyday of YA literature arrived with the release of the internationally successful Harry Potter series, by J. K. Rowling, which combines fantastical elements with relatable interpersonal conflicts and charts a young boy’s progression into the beginnings of adulthood (Strickland, Ashley. “A Brief History of Young Adult Literature.” CNN). Ultimately, YA stories focus on the stresses of inhabiting multiple worlds, for the protagonists are often caught between childhood and adulthood as they struggle to navigate the conflicting expectations of their family, their schoolwork, and their friends.