Young adult literature is often thought of as a great abyss
between the wonderfully exciting and engaging materials for
children and those for adults--just as young adults are often
ignored in planning library facilities and services. There is,
however, a wealth of fiction created especially for teens that
deals with the possibilities and problems of contemporary life
as experienced by this age group. These contemporary problem
novels reflect the troubled times in which young readers are
coming of age, but young people also need to laugh at themselves
and at their world and to escape that world in flights of fancy.
With greater freedom in both content and form, young adult
literature is moving into a closer connection with adult
literature, and fluent readers in this age group may read
primarily adult books. Societal changes and the mass media have,
in some ways, pushed young people to an earlier maturity, or at
least a facade of maturity. What might once have been thought
appropriate for a fourteen-year-old