TOP 20 NZ BOOKS FOR YA READERS
A recent boom in YA publishing means young adult readers have access to far grittier, ‘more truthful’ local stories than ever before. looks at the publishing trend.
Eleanor Black
When Ted Dawes’ now infamous novel Into the River was withdrawn from bookshelves briefly last year, it did more to highlight the strength of local books for young adults – and to encourage their greedy consumption – than those who objected to it could have imagined.
The so-called ‘‘problems’’ with Dawes’ book (that it unflinchingly tackles teenaged sex, illicit drugs and racism) are also its strengths. As anyone who is acquainted with young adults can attest, they are well aware of what’s going on around them, and they are hungry for information about serious issues that they can process in their own time and in their own way.
YA literature is an ideal entree into gritty subjects, say its proponents, because it is pitched at the young reader’s level and breaks down complex topics into manageable pieces. And if a reader gets to a bit they find scary or uncomfortable, they can shut the book and come back it to when they are ready.
‘‘Yes, they might be deeply affected by the work, but it is, in the end, just a book. A story,’’ says children’s writer Kyle Mewburn, president of the New Zealand Society of Authors. ‘‘And at the end of the journey they will have, almost inevitably, deepened their empathy and grown as human beings.’’
Lucky for voracious young readers, we are experiencing something of a boom in YA publishing right now, as evidenced by the breadth and quality of the finalists in this year’s New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, and the wealth of meaty local books being released each year.
Kiwi teens have access to homegrown stories with recognisable settings and characters that sensitively explore mental illness, suicide, self-harm, date rape, alcohol abuse, drug use, domestic violence and bullying, and are relevant to them in a way that the toothless teen tales of years gone by are not.
‘‘Publishers are a lot braver now than they were 20 or 30 years ago,’’ says Wellington writer Fleur Beale, whose series of books about girls living in a closed religious community is much loved by young readers, school librarians and teachers. When she wrote the first, I Am Not Esther, her agent initially struggled to sell it to publishers. Her third, Being Magdalene, is one of the finalists in the book awards.
Inspiration came from the school where Beale and her husband taught. A boy they knew was forced out of his conservative religious family because he wanted to continue going to the school, I Am Not Esther, Fleur Beale Short Stories, Patricia Grace Short Stories, Witi Ihimaera Pounamu, Pounamu, Witi Ihimaera The Bone Tiki, David Hair Slide The Corner, Fleur Beale Short Stories, Katherine Mansfield The Whale Rider, Witi Ihimaera Selected Short Stories, Owen Marshall See Ya, Simon, David Hill Coming Back, David Hill I Am Rebecca, Fleur Beale Potiki, Patricia Grace Hunter, Joy Cowley The Bakehouse, Joy Cowley Mister Pip, Lloyd Jones The Fat Man, Maurice Gee Into the River, Ted Dawe Bulibasha, Witi Ihimaera Violence 101, Denis Wright (From the New Zealand Schools Reading Survey, NZ Book Council) contrary to their wishes, so he could train to be a doctor.
‘‘I thought about that for 15