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" Over the past week, the Internet has been aflame with an argument over Young Adult books. Ruth Graham, writing at Slate, was the initial bomb thrower. Using the release of the movie based on the megahit YA novel The Fault in Our Stars by John Green as a peg, she admonished readers, &amp;quot;Adults should feel embarrassed about reading literature written for children,&amp;quot; because the books are insufficiently sophisticated and complex. Disclosure: I used to edit Ruth at Slate and think she&amp;#039;s just great, though I (and tons of others, who vigorously pushed back against her) disagree with her on this particular point. I mostly disagree with her because, as she admits, the definition of YA is so fuzzy. As Jen Doll wrote at The Wire a few years back, the term &amp;quot;YA&amp;quot; wasn&amp;#039;t even in common usage until the &amp;#039;60s. One of the most famous YA books, Catcher in the Rye, was not written with teenagers in mind, a historian and critic tells Doll. When I was a teenager, I loved all books about young women coming of age, and I&amp;#039;m glad YA was not so heavily marketed as such because I was a snotty contrarian and probably wouldn&amp;#039;t have wanted to read books that were specifically geared towards me. Related: The 10 Best Books About Motherhood With that in mind, here are 10 wonderful books about teenage girls and growing up. You can call them YA or you can just call them excellent. As always this list is not the last word in coming-of-age books, so leave your favorites in the comments.  1. Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore Though Moore is best known for her short stories (&amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re Ugly, Too&amp;quot; is a national treasure), Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? is a tender and lovely coming-of-age story about two 15-year-old best friends. Berie and her beautiful best friend Sils spend the summer of 1972 working at a local theme park called Storyland in Upstate New York. The story is framed by grown-up Berie taking stock of her adult life, but Moore&amp;#039;s winsome tale about what she calls &amp;quot;that anteroom of girlhood&amp;quot; stays with you. Related: 10 Best Biographies of Literary Women  2. Allegra Maud Goldman by Edith Konecky We follow the eponymous heroine of this novel from ages 3\u201313 as she grows up in Depression-era Brooklyn and the Catskills. Allegra is a proto-feminist, sassy little Jewish girl who says what she thinks and often gets in trouble for it. It&amp;#039;s a wonderful historical snapshot, and it will also teach you how to curse creatively in Yiddish. (Haven&amp;#039;t you always wanted to say, &amp;quot;Go shit in the ocean,&amp;quot; in another language?).  3. Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld I read Prep right after I graduated from a fancy New England college and suddenly so many things about my fellow students made sense: Lilly Pulitzer dresses, racquet sports, headbands. Sittenfeld&amp;#039;s novel about a middle-class outsider named Lee Fiora, who goes to a fictional New England boarding school, is wonderfully and keenly observed. The New York Times book review was so bowled over by Sittenfeld&amp;#039;s eye for detail that they wondered if she &amp;quot;didn&amp;#039;t wear a wire under her hockey kilt&amp;quot; when she was at Groton.  4. Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block Weetzie Bat is about Weetzie, a teenage girl who lives in a dreamscape version of 1980s Los Angeles. Weetzie has a bleached blond flat top and a gay best friend named Dirk. Weetzie is granted three wishes by a genie and she wishes for boyfriends for herself and Dirk, and a for place to live. Though the book falls into the magical realism genre, it deals with real &amp;#039;80s problems like the AIDS crisis and abortion.  5. Summer Sisters by Judy Blume You really can&amp;#039;t have a coming-of-age roundup without mentioning Judy Blume. Though this is one of Blume&amp;#039;s allegedly &amp;quot;adult&amp;quot; novels (like the amazing Smart Women, which is about &amp;#039;80s divorcees in Boulder who wear a lot of turquoise), it&amp;#039;s still about girls growing up. Caitlin and Vix spend every summer of their adolescence together in Martha&amp;#039;s Vineyard, living with Caitlin&amp;#039;s family. Virginities are lost. Boyfriends are swapped. Feelings are hurt. Heteroflexibility is embraced. Two thumbs up for fun.  6. Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison Allison&amp;#039;s heart-wrenching, plainspoken book tells the story of Bone Boatwright&amp;#039;s youth. Bone is the illegitimate daughter of a 15-year-old mother in the &amp;#039;50s in South Carolina. Though all of the women in the book are strong characters, they make a lot of bad choices when it comes to men. Bone&amp;#039;s stepfather sexually abuses her, and he has an awful anger problem that causes the family&amp;#039;s fate to rise and fall. In this semi-autobiographical story, Allison portrays the difficult lives of the working poor with dignity and grace.  7. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel Also known as the coiner of &amp;quot;The Bechdel Test,&amp;quot; Alison Bechdel is a bestselling graphic memoirist who wrote this autobiography about growing up gay with a closeted gay father. The title comes from her dad&amp;#039;s part-time occupation: He helps run his family&amp;#039;s funeral home. When Bechdel comes out as a college student, she and her father have a back and forth about literature and life that is one of the highlights of this beautifully rendered and erudite story.  8. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez This lively novel is about four sisters whose family immigrates to the United States from the Dominican Republic in the &amp;#039;60s. Yolanda, Carla, Sandra, and Sofia are trying to assimilate to American culture as they are also trying to assimilate to the world of adolescence. Garcia has a sharp understanding of how family dynamics and parental pressure shape sibling relationships, and each sister comes across as a vibrant, fascinating, individual woman.  9. White Oleander by Janet Fitch Teenage Astrid Magnussen lives a rootless, bohemian life with her mother, Ingrid, a neglectful but charismatic poet. Ingrid is accused of murdering her lover, and Astrid is sent to a series of foster homes. The book follows Astrid through her late teens as she is shuffled from home to home, and she eventually has a reckoning with Ingrid, which is the searing emotional climax of the novel.  10. Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid This novel follows the titular Annie from ages 10 to 17 in Antigua. Annie has a close and contentious relationship with her mother, which is finely wrought. The heroine is precocious and proud of her own intellect, but also quite depressive. The later parts of the book describe Annie regressing to a nearly infantile state when in the depths of a terrifying depressive episode. Photo credit: Amazon Via ELLE "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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