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In the latter part of the twentieth and earlier part of the twenty first centuries there has been an exponential growth in the significance of the notion of teenagers or young adults in terms of society and, thus, in market terms as well. This includes a burgeoning of literature written specifically for this audience and increasingly addressing themes explicitly to do with growing up in society. The teenage audience is, broadly speaking, from 11 – 16 years old. Books for this audience are, as I stated above, categorised as children’s literature, teenage literature, young adolescent literature, and young adult literature… I have been struck by Trites’ (2000) use of Young Adult Literature (YAL), writing from an American perspective, as one way to describe the genre which tends:

To interrogate social constructions, foregrounding the relationship between the society and the individual.(p.20)

60 Whilst some of the books considered in this research may also be about the self- discovery that Trites (2000) sees as the hallmark of YAL, others fall more broadly into a category considered as books considered suitable for the 11 – 16 year old age range. Suitability may include themes, content, style, potential for further learning or development in the judgment of the adult gatekeepers. Suitability may also include themes, topics or plots which are known to appeal to readers of the 11 – 16 age range; gatekeepers, already defined as those overseeing children’s reading matter, may not always approve wholeheartedly of these. This leads us then to consider a broader overview of the history of children’s literature, including literature particularly designated YAL but not focussing exclusively on this branch of the genre.

In recent years literature for the 11 – 16 year old reader has emerged as a specific genre in its own right. Whilst this genre is fully recognised by publishers and librarians, for example, it is not specifically acknowledged in curriculum documents in England. This relatively new way of identifying a type of literature links historically to the rise of the teenager as an acknowledged developmental stage between child and adult. The term teenager was originally coined in 1921 (Merriam Webster) in the United States of America, (USA), and had come into common usage by the mid-1940s on both sides of the Atlantic. Young Adult Literature (YAL) became used from the 1960s, probably beginning in the USA, as a term to encompass literature written for this teenage age group (Cart, 2008) at a time when the teenager was widely recognised as a social phenomenon with group interests and burgeoning purchasing power; teenagers also represented an increasing proportion of the overall population (Cart, 2008). Educationally 1972 saw the implementation of the Raising of the School Leaving Age (ROSLA) in England from 15 to 16 and with it a growth in comprehensive education. Literature taught in schools needed to appeal to a wider range of readers. In 1975 Bullock wrote extensively about how to encourage schoolchildren to engage with a wide range of literature, appropriate texts, and what approaches to use. Indeed he uses the words young adult (p.134) to describe this readership.

There is a tension also in how fiction for this age is defined. In recent years some books written specifically for the 11 – 16 (or even 18/19) year old age group has

61 acquired a particular soubriquet (Young Adult Literature (YAL), as I noted above (Cart, 2008), where Young Adult (YA) refers particularly to the 11 – 16 year old age group. I have already referred to Trites’ (2000) view of this genre of literature in terms of the Bildungsroman. Latterly, however, YAL has come to mean a genre with distinctive plot elements but which is also often designed to appeal to less able or enthusiastic readers within the 11 – 16 year old age group. Whilst the debate seems to be more vigorously addressed in the USA, this delineation and definition of YAL is equally relevant in the UK. Bucher and Manning (2005) note the importance of giving adolescents access to a variety of high quality literature which will both encourage reading for pleasure and also support the development of the skills of reading necessary for success in adult life. Herz and Gallo (2005) also note that quality YAL can be used to meet the needs of individuals who are not reading (p.109). They see YAL as a stepping stone to classics and they do not see YAL as simply for less skilled readers, although there is an acknowledgement that such books may be textually easier and often shorter in length. This desire to help young people enjoy literature whilst simultaneously helping them to become competent at synthesising the written word is a recurrent theme.

The idea of YAL is generally taken to have started with the publication of The Outsiders by S E Hinton (Herz and Gallo, 2005); this is seen to be the first novel explicitly written to address the contemporary lives and problems of teenagers. From that point YAL began to emerge as a discrete genre in the 1970 and 1980s; it has also become the subject of academic study. There have been numerous attempts to define the parameters of YAL (Trites, 2000; Herz and Gallo, 2005), but no authoritative definition has been agreed. It is generally agreed (Gallo (2005) et al:

 that the protagonist will be a teenager;

 that the narrative is often first person, through the eyes of the protagonist

 that adults will have a peripheral role;

 that there will be some conflict;

62 Whilst Trites (2000) sees the YAL as often addressing coming of age issues, the search for self, and Gallo (2005) refers to universal themes… the eternal questions of Who am I and where do I fit in? (p.11), others see the issues as more pragmatic relating to issues of the moment – teenage pregnancy, AIDS, sexual identity…