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One of my favorite annual traditions is to look back at the YA books that were hits in the past. There’s still a belief by many, including YA fans, that YA as a category began sometime in the 2000s. That’s far from true. Though there are plenty of debates to be had about the first “true” YA books—perhaps it’s The Outsiders or Seventeenth Summer or even the career novels of the 1930s and ’40s—young adult literature has been around for a good long time.
Young adult literature is not the same, of course, as middle grade literature. Though many times the two categories overlapped or were collapsed in the past, they reach different audiences and have their own distinct voices and perspectives. But as you’ll see in this retrospective, several of the books noted as popular YA books of the past would, were they published today, be more readily slotted as middle grade. Your perspective is not wrong, though, if you think that YA of the past more frequently had younger teen characters than it does today. There are plenty of “younger” YA titles in today’s YA world, but they are not marketed as strongly as those that feature older characters (who are often more appealing to adult consumers—the people who have more access to money to purchase the books).
That said, it’s fascinating to look back at some of the biggest titles of decades gone by. What were the trends of those eras? Who were some of the breakout authors? Are there common themes or genres that stood out? I’ve pulled a little bit from bestseller lists, from award lists, and from other information available about the books of the time.
You will likely not be surprised to note that the vast majority of the most popular YA books of the past were not as inclusive as YA is today. I’ve also done my best to highlight diverse titles because it is untrue that books by and about people of color simply did not exist in older YA. They did, but they did not get the attention or championing that their more white peer titles did.
2015–10 Years Ago
Did you read any of these books when they hit shelves in 2015? Perhaps you read them as the hype train began or you held off and picked them up after they proved themselves. Maybe you grabbed them thinking they’d win a big award, or you were encouraged to pick them up once they earned a nice medal. There’s no judgment in any of these scenarios. We all read for different reasons.
2005–20 Years Ago
It hurts a little bit to think about how many books that have been bedrocks of modern YA are turning 20 this year, y’all. Apologies for the passage of time. A couple of notes about 2005. This was the year that middle grade giant The Lightning Thief was published and the year that The Book Thief by Markus Zusak was published—in Australia. It would not be released in the US until March 2006.
