Kenneth L. Donelson

Every once in a while, a book proves to be definitive. I do not mean that it is necessarily comprehensive nor wearisomely detailed nor even complete or unassailable. I am using the word definitive in its root sense: these books define their own genre. This is particularly true, for good or not, in the area of textbooks. In the English language arts, for example, there was Warriners, the Dick and Jane readers, the Harbrace handbook, James McCrimmon’s Writing with a Purpose (for freshman composition at the college level), the America Reads (Scott Foresman) and Adventures in Literature (Harcourt) series in high-school literature anthologies, and perhaps a few others. They set the pace, maintain a prominent spot for generations, come out in numerous editions, and sometimes dominate the field so that competitors come and go — often quickly go.

Literature for Today’s Young Adults by Ken Donelson and Aileen Pace Nilsen (or by Aileen Pace Nilsen and Ken Donelson, in some editions) fulfills this role for adolescent literature, and does it well — or, as they insist in their preface — young adult literature. (“We say ‘young adult’ rather than ‘adolescent’ because many people, particularly students, find the word ‘adolescent’ condescending.” ) Never mind that most books designated by publishers as “young adult” are read almost exclusively by middle-school students, and their teachers and librarians, and middle-school students are definitely not young adults. They are not usually read by older teenagers, especially those who are, indeed, beginning to assume adult roles (part-time jobs, degrees of independence from parents, mobility through driving and even ownership of automobiles, sexual activity, sometimes even pregnancy, and individual decision-making). Never mind, “young adult” (YA) literature is a euphemism here to stay. In Donelson and Nilsen’s defense they mean by the term “any book freely chosen for reading by a person between the ages of twelve and twenty.” They intentionally include popular adult literature attractive to teenage readers, especially romances, adventures, westerns, mysteries, science fiction, historical fiction, war stories, stories of the supernatural, and the like. Even so, the emphasis, throughout their text, especially in their attention to particular authors and their numerous booklists, is still on what publishers designate as “young adult” novels, written for and about adolescents. ’Nuff said.

I am reviewing the first edition of this book (Scott-Foresman, 1980), partly because it defined the genre, and did so commendably, but mostly because it is in some ways (in my opinion) superior to its successors, especially in Part Two, which explores the history of teenagers’ reading, beginning in the nineteenth century (before such a terms as teenager even existed). They recall such predecessors of adolescent literature as dime novels, series writers, stories of the American “bad boy,” domestic novels for girls, and the seminal works of Louisa May Alcott and Horatio Alger. For prospective teachers and librarians, I think all these chapters are important, but the critical ones deal with the rise of the “junior novel” up until 1966 and the defining of the modern problem novel for “young adults” with The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton in 1967. The works of “outstanding writers for young adults” in the 1940s and 1950s, such as Maureen Daly (Seventeenth Summer), John Tunis (sports stories like The Iron Duke and The Kid from Tompkinsville), Esther Forbes (Johnny Tremain), Henry Gregor Felsen (Hot Rod and Crash Club), Robert Heinlein (science fiction for young readers, like Farmer in the Sky), Paul Annixter (Swiftwater) and the like — such works may seem dated now because of the taboos writers were forced to observe in those days. J. D. Salinger, in spite of years of censorship, broke that mold, with The Catcher in the Rye (1951). Catcher, Donelson and Nilsen maintain, “is many things, literary, profane, sensitive, cynical. For many young adults it is the most honest and human story they know about someone they recognize — even in themselves — a young man caught between childhood and maturity and unsure which way to go.” These words, remember, were published in 1980. Since then, the teenage problem novel has become so prevalent, and so free of taboos that Catcher probably no longer retains quite such an undisputed place in the hearts and minds of young readers.

Soon after 17-year-old Susie Hinton’s ground-breaking effort issued in “the New Realism,” others came along to start the avalanche of such accounts of the transition years; for example, Paul Zindel, The Pigman; M. E. Kerr, Dinky Hocker Shots Smack; Judy Blume, Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret; Alice Childress, A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ But a Sandwich; Paula Danziger, The Cat Ate My Gymsuit; Rosa Guy, The Friends; Nat Hentoff, I’m Really Dragged But Nothing Gets Me Down; Kristin Hunter, The Soul Brothers and Sister Lu; Walter Dean Myers, Fast Sam, Cool Clyde, and Stuff; Norma Klein, Mom, the Wolfman, and Me; and probably the masterpieces of them all, Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War, I Am the Cheese and After the First Death. What a raft of memories those titles alone bring up for those of us helping to guide young readers in the 1970s. Problems identified by Donelson and Nilsen that had begun to be addressed frequently and honestly in these novels included parent/child relationships, body and self, sex and gender roles, and friends and society, with a long list of recommended books in each category. In the generation since, YA novels have become even more candid, sometimes raw in their sensitivity and forthrightness.

Of all of those early ones, Robert Cormier’s probably are the ones to genuinely deserve the term “young adult.” Like the very first “junior novels,” such as Rose Wilder Lane’s Let the Hurricane Roar (later retitled by Hollywood, The Young Pioneers) and Tunis’s Iron Duke, Cormier’s Chocolate War was not originally written for an adolescent market, but as a novel for adults dealing realistically with the experiences of the young. Neither Tunis nor Cormier was ever totally comfortable with the juvenile genre to which their works were assigned, though both of them in their own day submitted to their publishers’ demands and produced one example after another. Both of them have works still in print, some even fairly widely read.

In their important introductory chapter, Donelson and Nilsen attempt to refute some common “myths” about such literature that were prevalent in 1980. It would be interesting now to determine which of these myths persist and which have been laid to rest:

1. Teenagers today cannot read.
2. YA literature is simplified to accommodate low reading skills.
3. Teenage books are all the same.
4. Teenage books avoid taboo topics and feature white, middle-class protagonists.
5. Teenage books are didactic or preachy.
6. Teenage books are anti-adult, especially anti-parent.
7. Girls read about girls and boys; boys read only about boys.
8. If teenagers see the movie, they won’t read the book.
9. YA literature is less enduring than adult literature.), Henry Gregor Felsen (Hot Rod and Crash Club), Robert Heinlein (science fiction for young readers, like Farmer in the Sky), Paul Annixter (Swiftwater) and the like — such works may seem dated now because of the taboos writers were forced to observe in those days. J. D. Salinger, in spite of years of censorship, broke that mold, with The Catcher in the Rye (1951). Catcher, Donelson and Nilsen maintain, “is many things, literary, profane, sensitive, cynical. For many young adults it is the most honest and human story they know about someone they recognize — even in themselves — a young man caught between childhood and maturity and unsure which way to go.” These words, remember, were published in 1980. Since then, the teenage problem novel has become so prevalent, and so free of taboos that Catcher probably no longer retains quite such an undisputed place in the hearts and minds of young readers.

Soon after 17-year-old Susie Hinton’s ground-breaking effort issued in “the New Realism,” others came along to start the avalanche of such accounts of the transition years; for example, Paul Zindel, The Pigman; M. E. Kerr, Dinky Hocker Shots Smack; Judy Blume, Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret; Alice Childress, A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ But a Sandwich; Paula Danziger, The Cat Ate My Gymsuit; Rosa Guy, The Friends; Nat Hentoff, I’m Really Dragged But Nothing Gets Me Down; Kristin Hunter, The Soul Brothers and Sister Lu; Walter Dean Myers, Fast Sam, Cool Clyde, and Stuff; Norma Klein, Mom, the Wolfman, and Me; and probably the masterpieces of them all, Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War, I Am the Cheese and After the First Death. What a raft of memories those titles alone bring up for those of us helping to guide young readers in the 1970s. Problems identified by Donelson and Nilsen that had begun to be addressed frequently and honestly in these novels included parent/child relationships, body and self, sex and gender roles, and friends and society, with a long list of recommended books in each category. In the generation since, YA novels have become even more candid, sometimes raw in their sensitivity and forthrightness.

Of all of those early ones, Robert Cormier’s probably are the ones to genuinely deserve the term “young adult.” Like the very first “junior novels,” such as Rose Wilder Lane’s Let the Hurricane Roar (later retitled by Hollywood, The Young Pioneers) and Tunis’s Iron Duke, Cormier’s Chocolate War was not originally written for an adolescent market, but as a novel for adults dealing realistically with the experiences of the young. Neither Tunis nor Cormier was ever totally comfortable with the juvenile genre to which their works were assigned, though both of them in their own day submitted to their publishers’ demands and produced one example after another. Both of them have works still in print, some even fairly widely read.

In their important introductory chapter, Donelson and Nilsen attempt to refute some common “myths” about such literature that were prevalent in 1980. It would be interesting now to determine which of these myths persist and which have been laid to rest:

1. Teenagers today cannot read.
2. YA literature is simplified to accommodate low reading skills.
3. Teenage books are all the same.
4. Teenage books avoid taboo topics and feature white, middle-class protagonists.
5. Teenage books are didactic or preachy.
6. Teenage books are anti-adult, especially anti-parent.
7. Girls read about girls and boys; boys read only about boys.
8. If teenagers see the movie, they won’t read the book.
9. YA literature is less enduring than adult literature.… (mere)