What's Up in YA

A Blast From YA Past: The Hits of 10, 20, 30+ Years Ago

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Kelly Jensen

Editor

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She's the editor/author of (DON'T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen.

One of my favorite annual traditions is to look back at the YA books that were hits in the past. There’s still a belief by many, including YA fans, that YA as a category began sometime in the 2000s. That’s far from true. Though there are plenty of debates to be had about the first “true” YA books—perhaps it’s The Outsiders or Seventeenth Summer or even the career novels of the 1930s and ’40s—young adult literature has been around for a good long time.

Young adult literature is not the same, of course, as middle grade literature. Though many times the two categories overlapped or were collapsed in the past, they reach different audiences and have their own distinct voices and perspectives. But as you’ll see in this retrospective, several of the books noted as popular YA books of the past would, were they published today, be more readily slotted as middle grade. Your perspective is not wrong, though, if you think that YA of the past more frequently had younger teen characters than it does today. There are plenty of “younger” YA titles in today’s YA world, but they are not marketed as strongly as those that feature older characters (who are often more appealing to adult consumers—the people who have more access to money to purchase the books).

That said, it’s fascinating to look back at some of the biggest titles of decades gone by. What were the trends of those eras? Who were some of the breakout authors? Are there common themes or genres that stood out? I’ve pulled a little bit from bestseller lists, from award lists, and from other information available about the books of the time.

You will likely not be surprised to note that the vast majority of the most popular YA books of the past were not as inclusive as YA is today. I’ve also done my best to highlight diverse titles because it is untrue that books by and about people of color simply did not exist in older YA. They did, but they did not get the attention or championing that their more white peer titles did.

2015–10 Years Ago

Did you read any of these books when they hit shelves in 2015? Perhaps you read them as the hype train began or you held off and picked them up after they proved themselves. Maybe you grabbed them thinking they’d win a big award, or you were encouraged to pick them up once they earned a nice medal. There’s no judgment in any of these scenarios. We all read for different reasons.

2005–20 Years Ago

It hurts a little bit to think about how many books that have been bedrocks of modern YA are turning 20 this year, y’all. Apologies for the passage of time. A couple of notes about 2005. This was the year that middle grade giant The Lightning Thief was published and the year that The Book Thief by Markus Zusak was published—in Australia. It would not be released in the US until March 2006.

1995–30 Years Ago

If 2005 were a rich year in the world of YA, then 1995 was one of the drier years for YA. That doesn’t mean there weren’t big or important books, but there simply weren’t as many. It doesn’t help that there were also not many major awards for YA books at this time, as the Printz—arguably the biggest YA-specific award—did not launch until 2000. One award that was around and thriving? The Coretta Scott King Awards. It’s no surprise that the award winners from decades ago are not only still relevant but are still publishing to a wide audience today.

1985–40 Years Ago

The line between YA and middle grade is blurrier the further back in time we go. Middle grade and YA were frequently lumped together as junior novels (or similar terminology indicating they were novels for children who were beyond early readers). It also doesn’t help that the award fields and scholarly work around these two categories of literature were not as robust in this era. Again: not a ding on anything, since these are all matters of growth and evolution. If you’re familiar with older titles or long-time writers in either YA or middle grade, it’s easy to see the differences between the two categories. I’ve stuck to titles from 40 years ago that are tried and true YA titles and thus, some may be on the less popular/less familiar side of youth literature of the time.

1975–50 Years Ago

As mentioned in the introduction, YA stretches back further than 50 years. But for the sake of this piece, we’ll keep this retrospective to a tidy 50 years. Maybe one of my favorite things about looking back at YA is getting the opportunity to visit or revisit some of the names of legendary authors in the field whose reputations have led to newer awards and honors being named after them. One example? Virginia Hamilton, whose 1974 M.C. Higgins The Great won the 1975 Newbery Medal for excellence in children’s literature.

YA Book News

Let’s return to 2025 for a moment and catch up on the latest in YA news for today.