Under The Influence

I've been surfing the blogosphere today and have run across some really interesting posts regarding how the online adult YA community is influencing the books teens read, and not necessarily in a good way. If you haven't read Hannah Moskowitz's blog post on the subject, I suggest you do. It raises a lot of tough questions.

I understand where Hannah is coming from. Since most YA writers are not teens themselves, and I don't know of any teen agents, there is an inevitable adult influence on YA. Maybe that influence is drifting dangerously close to shoving things down teens' throats that they never would have decided to read on their own because it's just not interesting to them.

I love reading YA, but I also enjoy adult fiction, and honestly, if I didn't know I was reading YA, sometimes I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two until I'm well into the book. Of course, there's that whole "new adult" category, but we'll leave that discussion for another day.

I know my teenage son is old enough to decide what he wants to read, but does that mean that if I get my hands on a terrific YA novel I think he would like, I shouldn't suggest it to him? Of course, that very same novel was probably recommended to me on a blog or website piloted by an adult. So am I part of the problem? Are you?