Catcher in the Rye began as a short story in The New Yorker, not a place to find teen reading. It was never presented by the author or the publisher as a YA novel, but as a major work of adult literature. Not until after it was easily available in cheap paperback editions (Signet first published it in 1953, two years after the hardback) did it catch on a teen favorite.
Books actually aimed at youth read very differently. We were assigned Johnny Tremain, which won the Newbery Medal for 1943, and The Yearling in 8th grade, both with younger heroes than Holden Caulfield and absolutely no adult thoughts or situations. The Yearling won the Pulitzer Prize in 1939, showing that the separation was not yet acute.
The separation between mainstream literature and genre was and stayed that way. Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, absolutely a young adult science-fiction book, won the Newbery in 1963. How was this even possible? It was published by the ultra-tony literary house Farrar, Strauss and Cudahy. Well, sorta. They started an arm’s-length subsidiary, Ariel Books, to publish children’s literature. So the book passed the smell test. Wrinkle would stand alone in Newbery territory for many years after that.
My Catcher in the Rye example is of a book that’s now understood to be YA literature. Maybe it’s a poor example. I wasn’t trying to debate the boundaries or history of the genre, just that in my understanding its separation from Children’s Literature was recent. That understanding was challenged above.
I didn’t think A Wrinkle in Time was particularly YA, though the protagonist is a high school student. I would have called it children’s literature. But while I still enjoy YA literature and some children’s literature as an adult reader (and to Chronos’s point, have always read plenty of books with female protagonists), I’m not an expert am prepared to concede all the finer points of classification.
As I said above times have changed since the 1960s. Rowling forced the world to take notice in 1997.
The Hugos are of course fan awards. They get to do whatever they feel like until others rise and block them. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire won the Hugo in 2001. As a friend of mine put it that night: “Harry Fucking Potter!” Gaimen won in 2009. It won’t happen again. The Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book is not officially a Hugo but it’s been handed out alongside since 2018.
The professionals had already added The Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction in 2005. YA pretty much took over the genre publishing world after Rowling. It had existed since the 1950s. Libraries offered a guaranteed audience when major publishers like Doubleday printed editions of low thousands for new Asimov books. (He sold much better in Doubleday’s Book Club for $1.00 but the royalties were also much lower.) YA books were not taken seriously but provided good money before lines of paperback f&sf became commonplace in the 1960s. Most top writers, except Andre Norton, simply stopped writing YA when paperback money boomed.
The situation didn’t change much until Pottermania. That was like a tsunami and an earthquake and a volcano and a meteor strike combined on publishing. Exaggeration just understates. We’re a quarter century into a brand new world.
Why did A Wrinkle in Time win the Newbery? Because it’s a brilliant book. I thought that when I read it in 1962 when it was published and I think so now.
I loved the book when it came out. But was it really the only good genre YA book to be published in the decades before and after 1962? I very much doubt that.
Many science fiction and fantasy books have been winners and honor books since 1962 for the Newbery. Lloyd Alexander’s books, Ursula Le Guin’s books, Susan Cooper’s books, others of Madeleine L’Engle’s books, Gail Carson Levine’s books, and Kelly Barnhill’s books. A Wrinkle in Time was when science fiction and fantasy broke into recognition by the Newbery people. It has sort of faded out again recently. Name some other science fiction and fantasy young adult books that should have been included in the Newbery winners and honor books.
The Tripod series certainly is. My mother read them when she was a kid and gave them to me to read when I was 7. The premise is basically “What if the Martians won the War of the Worlds?” and is told from the POV of a 12-year-old in a pre-industrial society where young people are “capped” by the alien masters at age 13 with a cranial implant that inhibits their free will and their ability to think creatively, and follows him and a few of his friends as they join a resistance movement that seeks to free humanity from its conquerors. It would absolutely make a great film trilogy today.
It appears to me that not all of John Christopher’s novels were intended for young adults. The only one I have on my shelf is The Long Winter. It doesn’t seem to be aimed at young adults. Incidentally, his legal name was Samuel Youd:
I missed Alexander. But Cooper won in 1976 and Barnhill in 2016, much later and also “recently.” I looked specifically at winners, not the short list they call honors.
I maintain that great as it was, L’Engle won because the imprint made it kosher despite its slimy relatives. Atheneum, LeGuin’s publisher and as tony a press as the literary crowd could desire, replaced Ariel as the publisher of acceptable honors fantasy. But that was in the 1970s and the world had utterly changed.
Library where I lived didn’t have a YA section – just adult’s and kids’. Arthur Ransome, Enid Blyton, John Christopher and Lucy Boston were all represented.
Do you have any proof that the Newbery judges are that much influenced by how “tony” the publishers are? Yes, actual proof, not you saying, “Well, everyone knows that.” Which publishers are represented in the list of winners and honor books and which aren’t?
As others have noted, his Tripods trilogy certainly was intended for a young adult audience. I read them when I was around 12 years old, as well; the first book was featured on an educational TV program, Cover to Cover, which used to run during school hours on PBS stations (and was shown by teachers to their students during class) – the show featured excerpts from a range of different YA books, and that’s where I heard about Christopher’s book.
I’m using my reasoned judgement from more than 50 years of closely watching publishing. I’ve got to get something out of that, even if it’s just to yell my opinions at the internet.