Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme, hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books & Dani @ Literary Lion, where they discuss certain topics, share their opinions, and spread the love by visiting each others’ posts.
Happy Friday, friends!
This week’s prompt: Predicting Trends (suggested by M.T. Wilson @ The Last Book on the Left)
This post was a hard one for me to to respond to because I honestly haven’t been paying attention to trends very much. There are really only a few that I have noticed when I think back to the books I read when I was a teenager. Which for reference, was about 17 years ago (2004-2007). Young adult books have changed so much since then! I was a die hard Twilight fan. Team Jacob all the way! Thinking about it know I totally cringe, but that was the best that we had at the time (besides Harry Potter)! Btw, I came across this funny Key & Peele skit for my fellow Twilight fans while writing this post.
Anyways, on to what I love about the YA literature in more current times.
I wouldn’t call it a trend but more of an evolution…the amount of diversity that can be found in YA characters has expanded to a very wide range. This includes: race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, gender, physical abilities, beliefs, body shapes. These types of characters are more evident in compemporary fiction but have been making more headway into fantasy and historical fiction recently. I don’t read much YA non-fiction, but there are more and more non-fiction books written and/or adapted for teens.
What I would like to see more of:
There are not many books that have teen pregnancy or teen parents. Even though teen pregnancy rates have continued to decrease over time, it’s still an underrepresented area in YA litarature. I loved Elizabeth Acevedo’s book, With Fire on High and they way she portrayed a teenage mom who has to navigate school with the responsibilities of being a parent. Even better would be to see some teen father characters. Which leads me to my next thing…there is still a lack of male authors and books with male protagonist characters in YA fiction. There has been progress made in this