A Glaring Omission

A librarian recently sent me an e-mail saying that she’s been pitching the idea of a YA nonfiction collection, but her supervisor keeps turning her down. This little tale of the intrepid librarian and the resistant administrator is worth examining since it points to a problem that also exists in the ever-growing world of YA book awards. As someone who helped create the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in young adult literature, pushed to reinstate the National Book Award’s (NBA) “Young People’s Literature” category, and convinced the Los Angeles Times to add a prize for young adult fiction, I know what we have accomplished. But there’s still one glaring omission: an award devoted exclusively to young adult nonfiction.

Yes, Betsy Partridge’s latest biography, John Lennon: All I Want Is the Truth (Viking, 2005), won a Printz Honor citation last year, but that’s the exception. Most of the time, the Printz committee rewards fiction. As for the NBA’s panel for young people’s literature, there’s usually only one nonfiction author on it and thus only one nonfiction finalist each year—but none have ever won. And, yes, while the Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award was established by the Association for Library Service to Children to honor exemplary books for readers through age 14, many of the winners are skewed toward the higher end of that spectrum. But all of this is blurring and nudging. The simple truth is, no young adult nonfiction award exists. That lamentable fact points to several key issues related to YA nonfiction.

For starters, it’s easy to ignore this corner of the literary world. The goal of those who serve on award committees is to find books for pleasure reading. That doesn’t mean pleasant books, but it does mean books that are seen as a rewarding reading experience. In other words, they’re books you would want to read—not books that you have to read. True, the Sibert is an annual award for the most distinguished informational books. But as the award evolved, the committees recognized that they also needed to recognize outstanding art direction and design. So they’re not just looking for utility but for grace and beauty. Sure, design is about access and usefulness. But I suspect it’s also related to, well, pleasure. And that suggests another troubling problem.

How do we judge the quality of YA nonfiction? I always used to hear this complaint about YA fiction: “When I was a child, I went from middle grade to Jane Eyre.” Why should we keep kids in a teenage literary ghetto when they’re capable of reading adult fiction? Today, there’s sophisticated content in books that are aimed at teens. But it’s less clear in nonfiction. Good teen readers are certainly able to read popular adult nonfiction. And motivated teens are probably already reading adult nonfiction about topics they care about.

Another problem involves what may be the most prevalent form of YA nonfiction published today—self-help books about dating, body image, sex, etc. Though highly valuable to teens, these largely utilitarian titles rarely attract the interest of award committees, especially those fixated on pleasure reading.

Which brings me to the final problem with YA nonfiction: there isn’t much of it, especially if you exclude the self-help titles. I’ve heard countless people on award committees say they wrangle over the definition of excellence. Why should YA nonfiction be any different? In the end, it’s really a colossal case of what comes first, the chicken or the egg. If we treat young adult nonfiction as a genre that encourages excellence, we’ll get a lot more excellent YA nonfiction titles. It’s as simple as that.