We all know that young adult books aren't just meant for young adults. I'll be reading them until the day I die because they have so much to offer and they are just too good to ignore.
However.
I can't be the only one who has noticed that the young protagonists in these stories don't always match the age assigned to them. Don't you ever feel like you're reading about a thirty-year-old in a teenage body? Especially in scifi and fantasy, these are high stakes stories that require quick thinking, rational decision making, and a good amount of selflessness. Even most adults struggle with these in the regular world, yet we're reading about seventeen and sixteen-year-olds who always seem to pull it together in plenty of time to save the day. Granted, a lot of these characters grow up in much more gritty and savage environments that force them to grow up quickly and resourcefully. Many of them are masters in weaponry and warfare before the rest of us could even pass algebra. The teenagers we were or are and the others we've known are probably pretty different from the heroes and heroines we read about.


So. It's an observation, but is it a problem? Does is matter that books in YA can sometimes fail to reflect the real personalities of its target audience? They build lives for characters in which love is real the first time, you know who you are by the time you're sixteen, and the sex is always perfect. I'm not implying that real teenagers are nothing more than a bunch of degenerates. Believe me, I think they're more valuable to society than anyone gives them credit for.
But.
Even if a character is facing battle fields or evil wizards or quests through alternate dimensions, they are still going to hit the universal obstacles we all endured when we were teenagers. Puberty. Hormones. Pimples. Crushes. Body Shaming. Self Doubt. These are all things that tripped us up as we trudged through those high school halls, so why do so many YA heroes and heroines get to skip right past the awkward first dates and sudden growth spurts? How do they look at the world and just know what the right answer is? And how-seriously, tell me how-do they get to lose their virginities under stars and waterfalls and sunsets to the person who they will without a doubt love for all eternity? I know there are plenty of reasons why nobody wants to spend time reading about teenage woes in the middle of a war, but we can't just ignore them. We can't just slap an age on a character and refuse to adapt them to the characteristics of such an important detail. Teenage brains aren't even fully developed yet, so it's almost unfair to create these adult characters and expect them to properly represent the age group they are supposed to portray.


But here's the thing. We really, really don't want the angst. It's a pretty universal conclusion that the whole brooding, pissed off teenager does qualify as a marketable protagonist. We know the extents to which authors must go to bend for the business of publishing, and they have to create characters that readers will flock towards and cheer for throughout the trilogies and film adaptions. They also want to produce a story that will attract a wide range of readers outside of the YA community.
So is there some sort of balance? Maybe a compromise?
Maybe you don't even see this as a problem.
For me, as a reader, I find it a bit deceptive and even a bit lazy to neglect the teenage mind when writing teenage characters. People in this age group are complex, complicated, and fascinating if you pay the right kind of attention to them. It is entirely possible to present believable young adult characters who don't have to mold to that insufferable stereotype.
A perfect example of this is Cassie Sullivan from Rick Yancey's The 5th Wave. She manages to bridge the gap between real life teenager and YA heroine while roping us into a story in which she breaks our hearts, makes us laugh and more often than not causes us all to say 'same'. Yancey took the expected sarcastic nature of teenagers and mixed it with Cassie's own personal brand of wit and snark. Through her, he addresses what it's like to have to fend for yourself when all you've know is the guidance of your parents. He displays the awkward, tense, confusing way she falls in love for the first time while also taking her through her own process of self evaluation. She learns and grows throughout in order to adapt to the apocalyptic environment, but she still retains the youth that so many other young protagonists seem to lack.


And while not every YA teenager is going to show his or her personality through sarcasm, there are plenty of other ways to display youth. One of the main components of YA novels in the love story, which is can often times be oversimplified by authors treating their protagonists like adults. Love is an intricate concept that takes the years of life experience to begin to understand. It is not something that automatically makes sense just because the swoon factor calls for it, and teenage relationships are not as straight forward as some YA novels would suggest.
Along with falling in love, these characters face countless situations in which they must consider the abstract ideas of right and wrong, death and life, grief and failure, and more. The teenage brain is in a process of adapting to these abstract ideas, so the very thought of them handling all of these situations in the same way an adult would is simply unrealistic.
And maybe the core problem here is that's it's just not fair to them. Teenagers offer a unique perspective on the world, and they should be able to see themselves properly represented in the books they love. And for the adult readers, we should be able to find common ground with them as we reconnect with our time in that age group. Forever young at heart, right? We shouldn't create a standard where actual, realistic teenagers aren't worthy of a reader following. We should not only display, but celebrate the facets of their developing minds.