Open Letter to Cousin
Dear Camden,
You’ve always talked to me about Harry Potter, and how you’re reading it. There’s so much more I’d love to tell you about books, besides just the series that everyone else knows. But I just don’t know how to recommend books to you, despite my vast collection and amount of time I spend reading. You are starting to enter your teen years, which means that middle-grade or basic chapter books won’t cut it anymore. I remember books such as Cinder by Marissa Meyer, Deep Blue by Jennifer Donnelly, and Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard being such powerful books to me when I was in middle school, much like where you are. All of them are Young Adult books, but all of them are advertised towards young girls.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with them being advertised towards young girls. They fit that label pretty well. The problem lies with how people respond to that advertisement. Most young boys such as yourself wouldn’t want to be seen carrying a book that looks like the ones I mentioned. Mermaids, fairy tales, even the very idea of royalty are treated as subjects that only girls enjoy. The average person doesn’t look at a Young Adult book and recognize its ability to be highly educational or a basis for thought-provoking discussion. Most Young Adult books couldn’t qualify for the status of a “classic”. They’re all grouped under the category of basic, simple, and childish. Have you ever purposely shopped in the Young Adult aisle at the bookstore? Probably not, since the general idea is that you won’t find books you’ll enjoy there. But you did enjoy Harry Potter, so why is that series treated so differently from the rest? Once again it comes down to how the books are advertised. I wish I could uproot the very idea that books are meant for one gender. It’s so wrong, and so harmful. Thousands of people go about their lives because they think they don’t like reading, when the problem has always been that they can’t find the books they enjoy. The books are trapped under how they’re advertised as.
This is a common theme in our society, with making what teen girls view as enjoyable seem basic, simple, and easy to rip apart with a few generalizations. From rom-coms to shopping for clothes, everything is torn apart and ridiculed. I’ve had friends refuse to read Young Adult books for this very reason. Think about it this way: you go to a bookstore, and pick up a book. On the cover is the face of a girl, her hair cut short with a white stripe in it, one of her eyes glowing. It’s titled Aurora Rising, and the catchphrase on the cover says “A girl out of time”. How likely would it be for you to pick it up and start reading? The name Aurora could be referencing the princess, from Sleeping Beauty. This looks like the story of a princess with magical powers. Could you imagine anyone besides teenaged girls reading this book? There are certainly some people who are comfortable enough with who they are to not care how the book appears and just read it anyway, but they aren’t the majority. If you decided to read the synopsis, you’d see that the story is about a character named Tyler who is stuck with the worst crew from Aurora Academy, and how they become a working team through discovering a girl who had been in a cryo-chamber for over 100 years and protecting her from those who want her dead. If you had even looked at who wrote it, you’d see that there are two authors, and one of them is a man. This is a book that could be enjoyed by so many, but the cover and the way it’s been advertised is a huge hindrance to its success.
Not only that, but even most adults don’t want to go near Young Adult books. The general idea is they don’t deal with serious topics, they don’t have the complexities of adult fiction novels. They are simple books, meant as entertainment, and not as a way to open up thoughts and have discussions. This is a completely incorrect assumption. Some books don’t go deep, but so many more delve into topics that are incredibly deep. The Diabolic is the first book in a trilogy about a genetically engineered bodyguard and if she is truly human. It has discussions about humanity, emotions, sacrifice, even religion as a political weapon. Before She Ignites is about a girl who thought she had political power, but soon discovered she was a figurehead. After a failed attempt to gain back power, she was put in jail. Most of the book is a discussion of what it’s like for her there, and how her anxiety shapes her experience. These are not shallow topics. They help make these situations easier to understand, and their readers are able to have discussions pertaining to those topics. I’ve grown so much because these books have helped inform my opinions.
Even as I write this letter, I am realizing I still hold the bias I’m arguing against. I don’t want to talk about romance books or even fantasy when I’m recommending books to boys, instead bringing up good examples of the more gender-neutral science fiction genre. I’ve been convinced by the way people react to Young Adult books that boys want nothing to do with romance or even magic, and instead want science and complex morally gray characters. It’s such an archaic way of thinking, and yet I still think this way. I don’t recommend a lot of books to my friends who are guys. I constantly find myself telling them about sci-fi or mystery books, books that have a more gender-neutral way of being advertised. But you’d never find someone saying Hunger Games is a novel for only girls, or even only teenagers. Books like Wicked Saints, a high fantasy about a girl who is hunted for her magic, or Crown of Feathers, a book about a group of characters joining a rebellion and becoming phoenix riders, are not like Hunger Games. They seem to have a gendered bias towards girls, when it doesn’t fit them at all. For both those books, most of their main characters are boys. So why do I still associate their stories with femininity?
It’s due to both how Young Adult books are seen as only for teen girls and how they aren’t taken seriously that you don’t see as many readers of Young Adult, besides the teen girls. I couldn’t number the amount of girls I know who have read at least three Young Adult series. But when it comes to boys, I don’t know of any. Most don’t pick up a book after elementary school, and when they do, they pick up the ones that are most popular, like Maze Runner or Eragon. While they’re both good series, they don’t compare to the rest of Young Adult, and can be disappointing to people looking to find a new favorite. I could go on a tangent of how the genre is impossible to navigate, but that’s another discussion altogether.
Young Adult is a critical genre. It’s what can keep someone reading when they aren’t ready to move on to adult books, and it can spark up conversations that can change the world. Just think of how many times Hunger Games has been referenced since it became popular. But if it’s continuously locked behind the way it’s perceived by most people, it can be harmful. If Young Adult was a more gender-neutral genre, it would grow so much faster and there would be so many more young readers.
Love your older cousin,
Caitlin
