One of the reasons I like writing novels about young people is that the genre recognizes the validity of human growth. Stories about young people are generally about human beings in the process of development. At the very minimum, the goal of this development is what we call “maturity.” When we examine what “maturity” means to us, we find values and behaviors that most of us agree constitute a mature person. Most of us believe that care for our life and the life of others is one such value. A movement from dependence on our parents toward independence and self-sufficiency would be another.
A character’s arc of growth aptly describes what takes place in the pages of a young adult novel. When I give a novel to my editor, this is one of the things she looks for. This movement toward growth and the assumption that growth is not only possible but necessary is what distinguishes young adult fiction from much of adult fiction. It’s not that growth does not happen in adult fiction, it’s just that growth is not as integral to adult literature as it is to the stories about young people. In stories about adults, there seems to be more recalcitrance on the part of authors to accept that growth, the need to keep developing, is part of the human condition. It is as if, once we reach maturity, however it is that we define it, there is nothing more to grow into. Once we become self-sufficient and responsible for ourselves and those who depend on us, what else is there? The notion of human growth in adult literature often gets reduced to the attainment and preservation of security, power and esteem.
The literature about young people openly acknowledges the existence of an interior search for growth that need not stop when the young person reaches adulthood. The jump from the narrow, self-centered concerns of the child to the person who is responsible for the care of self and others represents a journey from selfishness to selflessness that can continue until the end of our days. The journey with its source of boundless energy need not stop with the attainment of shallow goals.
I write about young people because I believe that our happiness lies in the awareness of our life as a journey, a longing to keep growing into greater love, and our willingness to step into it daily, with our pains and hopes. In young adult literature this life-long journey of growth is accepted as true, as in fact, it is.
