Why Do We Still Call Kidlit 'Simple'?
Essay #1
I’m noticing a trend in online spaces lately, namely that Young Adult and Middle Grade literature are called ‘simple’ or ‘simplistic’.
Kidlit, which encompasses picture books, chapter books, early reader books, MG, and YA, should be at a level that their intended target audiences can understand. Prose, word choice, and themes should reflect where younger readers are at and break ideas down in a way that is accessible. For instance, Once Upon a Sari by Zenia Wadhwani alludes to the Partition of India, opening the door for future education while celebrating sari. The kids who are ready for more mature books will probably naturally gravitate towards books above their age group. But the more I sit with that reasoning, the more the term ‘simple’ doesn’t actually make sense.
Middle Grade fantasy Farrah Noorzad and the Rings of Fate by Deeba Zargarpur has a lead who not only is the daughter of an unwed Muslim mother, but she only sees her father once a year and has to spend time with a half-brother she never even knew she had. That’s not an easy situation; perhaps it doesn’t explore the topic in the way an adult reader would prefer, but that doesn’t make it ‘simple.’ Yet, this is a very real situation some children grow up in.
Not Like Other Girls by Meredith Adamo and the upcoming Gita Desai is Not Here to Shut Up by Sonia Patel are both YA examinations of how we treat young women, the impact of sexual assault years down the road, and how we push our trauma away until we are safe enough to start dealing with it. To refer to either book as ‘simple’ would be to ignore how they deal with the complexities of being a teenage girl who is sexual and has been sexually assaulted or how the people around them believe they can take what they want without any repercussions. Gita Desai can get very uncomfortable in how it depicts CSA in part because it’s through the eyes of a young child while Not Like Other Girls features Jo realizing just how young she was when she was assaulted. Both are unmistakably YA novels from the voice, themes, and the age of the characters but there is no question that they are mature books that treat their readers with respect.
Beyond those two examples, we have Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, and a plethora of YA and Middle Grade books discussing police brutality, Queerphobia, xenophobia, ableism, Islamophobia, racism, immigration, classism, colonization, and more. Young people are hungry for books that explore the world around them and the ways in which we can improve or dismantle the systems that are failing our society. Many of our political movements are started or helmed by young people. Most American teens read Huckleberry Finn or The Great Gatsby in school specifically so political themes can be addressed, so of course there are books written for them that continue to explore those topics in more recent, relevant and no less complex ways.
So, OK, maybe instead of themes, ‘simple’ is meant to refer to prose and structure or characters. Allison Saft’s prose is lush and poetic while horror debut Lockjaw by Matteo L. Cerilli not only has gorgeous prose, but the narrative structure often changes the reader’s perceptions of events and other characters. Katniss in Hunger Games by Susanne Collins is not a typical hero; her main goal is ‘survival,’ not doing the right thing or defeating some great evil. She is fighting a system that is hurting her world because she was never given any other choice.
Meanwhile, several adult authors are often praised for having accessible prose so that people who left reading behind can return to it. Most books, including in adult, are at roughly an 8th grade reading level, which is not a bad thing at all as not everyone is going to have the same access to quality education. Some adult novels are fairly straight-forward battles of good and evil or have clear cut morals presented.
Prose in YA, MG, and adult can be poetic, lush, voice-y, or none of those things. It’s less of an age category classification and more of a style of an individual author and a scale of commercial versus literary. A Deadly Education by adult fantasy author Naomi Novik is a crossover appeal book that is a study in voice-driven narratives while YA author Laini Taylor is often praised for her lyrical prose. For the most part, YA is going to feel voice-y, because that is a standard of the age category, but not all voice-y books are YA and not all lyrical prose is found in adult.
Maybe it’s about the worldbuilding? Nightbirds by Kate J. Armstrong is essentially about sex work in a fantasy Prohibition setting. Matilde, Æsa, and Sayer sell their magic and transfer it temporarily via a kiss. There are characters who point out that the Nightbirds are selling themselves in the same way people discuss stripping or pornography. We have a YA fantasy openly making direct comparisons to sex work, having three characters who are in the business for different reasons and have different relationships with it, and explores not only the dangers sex workers can face, such as stalking, but also how potential partners can think about the business.
Worldbuilding in speculative fiction, across all age categories, comes in spectrums of soft and hard, high and low, thematic and vibe, secondary world and contemporary/historical. A large amount of YA fantasies have epic stakes while cozy fantasy is currently quite popular with adults. Middle Grade largely gravitates to portal fantasy, which mixes the secondary and contemporary settings. Space and science fantasy are popular in MG, YA, and adult. The nitty-gritty of secondary world economics might be more common in adult fantasy, but it isn’t required by any means.
No speculative author, at any level, is required to provide Tolkien-esque worldbuilding.
When I read YA, Middle Grade, and adult, I set my expectations accordingly that certain topics might get explored and others might not. A quote that I’m seeing more and more is that adult readers of kidlit are guests in that space, and I do agree. I love the emotional character work of YA and how Middle Grade helps kids in difficult situations start to put names to their feelings. In adult, I expect more lingering on logistics or to have darker renditions of themes and more nostalgia.
Kidlit, for decades, has allowed young readers to start building empathy for people outside of their sphere, to give them a frame of reference for future interactions. The main purpose of kidlit is the same purpose that adult fiction has: providing readers with catharsis or escapism or a learning opportunity or a way to pass the time. The names of these age categories have shifted a lot since I was a kid; ‘teen’ used to be a very small section and I don’t clearly remember a Middle Grade section pre-Percy Jackson. But, kidlit can and often does explore genocide, war, abuse, unconventional family situations, and is now starting to explore polyamory as a possible romantic option as well as Asexuality. Some of its prose is more explicit and does point things out themes more, but so does adult.
Many children grow up in environments that plenty of adults can only imagine, environments that need to be depicted so they can see themselves and start to process what happened to them or at least learn that they are not alone. Many adults look for more simple premises as a form of escapism during difficult times. I have read YA books that are deeply emotional and can feel brutal in their themes and I have read adult books that make me laugh or I’m gushing about how cute it was.
‘Well, it’s about quality-’ I think we can all agree that all readers, of any age, deserve quality books that respect them and I am seeing wonderful examples of this in kidlit. I don’t understand the argument that media for children is of poor quality unless it’s meant to be a critique of how companies don’t care about children’s media because what they really prioritize is profits. The suggestion that poor quality means it is made for young people is insulting young people and the creatives who make things for them, people who are passionate about stories.
I don’t think kidlit is ‘simple’ by any means. We need to think about why we suggest books intended for young people are any less layered than books for adults. We need to ask if we’re using ‘feels like YA/MG/kidlit’ to mean ‘this doesn’t meet my specific expectations/tastes’ or ‘this is bad’ and how that minimizes the trials and tribulations of young people or implies that they don’t deserve good books.