Thoughts On--"Young Adult Literature: Growing Up in Theory" and "Point of Departure"

Karen Coats' article: Young Adult Literature: Growing Up in Theory, in providing a brief examination of the genre (what essentially amounts to a concise historiography), intelligently argues that Young Adult Literature deserves recognition in the literary discourse as a 'destination' all its own--rather than suffer "as an in-between phenomenon that is useful only for pedagogical applications" Does she succeeds? ...I think so, and rather convincingly. She achieves this in a number of ways, but perhaps most successfully in the manner in which she describes the history of Young Adult Literature to be one which is particularly deep and rich, and also significantly complicated. Her inspection of the controversies and difficulties of the genre are particularly convincing: how should the genre be defined/can it be defined? While these ambiguities can be conceived as weaknesses or pitfalls (those which should not exist in full fledged disciplines and which should exclude YA Literature from this category) I chose to interpret these as evidence of the contrary; I think it proves that YA Literature is complex and even dynamic, trademarks of all disciplines and active literary genres.

Markus Zusak's Point of Departure, where should I begin... I thought it to be very complimentary to Coats' article. More personal in nature, it imparts an opinion which seeks to bring creditability and a certain level of respect and stature to Young Adult Literature and its writers--"YA novels sit comfortably next to all great works of fiction". He makes this assessment highlighting the many difficulties YA writers face, citing the disservice that being classified a YA author, and the challenge of catering to the diverse YA audience.