Dear Sarah Foot,

Twitter’s great, isn’t it? When I miss something important that’s happened in the world, Twitter is always there to scream it in my face that it’s happened. And when the Daily Mail published your article on YA fiction and I missed it, Twitter screamed until it got a sore throat, and then croaked until it needed to breathe again.



I went into it with an open mind, but let’s be honest, when one of the bullet points in the standfirst states you were left “reeling” after reading We Were Liars by E Lockhart, my job became instantly more difficult.



I’ve seen opinions like this, accusing YA of being full of doom and gloom, many times before. Lynn Reid Banks recently wrote a letter to the Guardian criticising the choice of David Almond’s A Song for Ella Grey as winner of the Guardian children’s fiction prize 2015 because of all the “lesbian love, swearing, drinking”in it. In my response, I pointed out that if children’s books were a country, they would have had the 26th largest economy in the world by GDP in 2014. But I fear that you’ve presupposed an opinion about YA fiction based on the themes in the tiny fraction you’ve read, one which is giving an entirely false perspective and means you take up a position towards the genre that is completely unfair.

I take several positions against the arguments you make, but all of them really boil down to the same idea.

Let’s take an author like Juno Dawson. She’s an incredibly successful author, who recently came out as transgender. Like many others in the book community, I’m thrilled for Juno and her decision to transition. Like many others, I greatly appreciate Juno’s works because she is a fantastic writer. Her books cover many different themes. Look at All Of The Above, and it’s a melting pot of themes like sexuality, mental health, suicide, friendships... The list goes on. You’ve already said that you don’t believe teens should be “feather-bedded” from these issues, as you put it. Juno herself has already said on Twitter that if 1% of the population are transgender, then the other 99% need to live with the 1%. But I think there’s a much greater idea we need to look at here, and it’s the fact that not only do we need to live with those who are transgender, but simply living with the minority doesn’t really form an inclusive majority. In order to truly create a society of tolerance, the 99% has to understand the 1%, because when one community feels persecuted in society, everyone feels the effects.

So then you go ahead and question our abilities to read these books, saying, “I wonder how many teenagers have the emotional skills to handle such dreadful questions”. In fact, I’d argue that teenagers most definitely do have the emotional skills to read these books, and I think by assuming that we’re too fragile to read these books is actually quite condescending and offensive. Teenagers are reading these books out of choice. No school has ever forced a book on me, I’m reading them because I want to. I wouldn’t pick up a book if I didn’t think I was going to be able to handle reading it.

Teenagers like me are at a crucial stage in our lives. We’re at the point where we’re building our emotional skills, but also forming lifelong opinions about the world. We might start developing our political affiliations, but we’re also beginning to discover who we are, in terms of gender identity, sexual orientation, we’re developing our beliefs about the world and fiction is one of the places I learn the most about the world. I believe one book you indirectly reference is The Art Of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson, a book featuring a transgender main character. It’s a book that represents the trans community in a beautiful way which contradicts the negative opinions we hear far too often. At a time when I’m forming my opinions about the world, I would always prefer to have a book to help me in forming these opinions - framing theissues for me in terms of story and character - than be exposed to the negativity and, frankly, utter rubbish written about the trans community elsewhere. YA fiction is helping teenagers form our opinions and the basis for what we believe, and I for one appreciate them for that.

But these books aren’t just helping us form opinions, they’re also saving lives.

I don’t know you personally, but I’m going to guess that you can think of one thing that really helps you when you don’t feel good. Perhaps it’s chocolate, a helping hand that pulls you back to a place of calm after a rough day, or maybe you run yourself a bath with a bath bomb to make your bathroom smell like elderflower and turn your bath a pretty colour. For some, however, the hand that pulls you up can be a book, and you clearly already know this; you made a point of saying that if a book helps a teen feel less alone, then that must be a good thing. But it’s worth remembering that this happy YA that you long for, that you wanted to find for your son, already exists. For some, it’s actually the same books you reference for being too dark for young people. It sounds weird, so picture this situation.

Imagine that you are a transgender teen. You recently announced that you were transgender to your family and friends and, sadly, it was not taken well. People at school are now bullying you and life in general isn’t treating you well, but then you walk into a bookshop and pick up a book featuring a trans character. The trans character is in your situation, but pulls through it. It isn’t pleasant, but on the other side, a better, happier life awaits.

If you were that teen, chances are that book will reach you and make you realise that a better life awaits you. It does get better. And this is a situation many face, be it if you are transgender or have a mental health condition, or are disabled, or even just struggling to make friends at a new school: whatever challenge may face you, fiction helps. Yes, as you say, “it’s not just those questioning their sexual identity who know what it is to struggle”, but fiction isn’t fixated on this one group of people. And we’re all able to put ourselves in other people’s shoes, or use their struggles as a metaphor for our own, whatever that may be.

While reading your piece, I found one sentiment that struck me as rather strange.

You said, “I am left wondering if we are in serious danger of cutting our children off from that more positive side of life. As I bemoaned the bleakness of the reading matter, my son explained it to me: ‘You see, dark’s the new thing’. Certainly, Waterstones’ children’s book buyer Florentyna Martin said of her shortlist that it proves today’s children do not just enjoy books for the escapism they offer, but for how they can illuminate life in all its shades of light and dark’. I fear, however, that it’s the darkness that is dominating.”

Fiction has a responsibility to reflect the world we live in, and I think most of what you said really boils down to this crucial fact. You have a duty as a writer to reflect the world we live in. (Even authors of fantasy and dystopian fiction will often find themselves saying something about the world we live in, one way or another.) And the world, like it or not, is not filled with sunshine. There is suffering. There is famine. There is poverty. There is hate. There is war. The darkness is largely all consuming in the real world, a world which teenagers live in. We rely on finding pockets of happiness to keep us going. It’s the status quo we’ve all become accustomed to.

Yes, fiction must also play its role to be one of these pockets of happiness, but whether you find a book sad or not is a matter of personal opinion. You may read The Year Of The Rat by Clare Furniss and decide it’s an awfully sad book that shouldn’t be touched by anyone under the age of 18. But Clare’s book could bring someone a moment of happiness. It could reach out to someone who’s struggling, perhaps with grief themselves, and become that book that makes them happy. Whether a book is sad or not is a matter of personal opinion, and not for me, you or anyone else than the individual to decide themselves.

I have a lot of issues with one thing in particular that you’ve said. In your article, you threw doubt on the quality of current YA fiction, saying, “And I wonder how many of today’s teenagers will return to modern ‘young adult’ novels. Not many, I suspect”.

Many of the books that are being written for a teenage audience today are fast becoming modern classics. Look at titles like The Book Thief and The Curious Incident of The Dog In The Night-Time. Many of these are going to be books we take nostalgically with us into old age, and show our grandchildren. I would also urge you to consult a 2012 statistic which found that 55% of YA readers were in fact adults.

Essentially, YA really is what we as readers make of it. Maybe some of us prefer dark books, or maybe some of us prefer happier titles. YA contains both. To some extent, I do understand what you’re saying; maybe in terms of quantity, darker titles outnumber happier titles at the current moment. But books are for us to personally decide upon. Maybe a book I found dark you find happy, and maybe with another it’ll be vice versa. But that’s for us to make up our own minds about. And teenagers are more than capable of doing that for ourselves. YA is a great place to be, and I’m proud to be part of a fearless community with books that aren’t scared to confront the big topics and push boundaries.

Do you think YA fiction is too gloomy or “issue-based”? Send us your thoughts to childrens.books@theguardian.com.