I wholeheartedly support books which are not all about romance. I like those from time to time, but enough is enough! Awesome alternate history adventures would be a refreshing change :D
I've recently been reading a lot of YA books--thanks in large part to the elevator having been broken at the main library from February to July--and what I've been finding is that, with few exceptions (Tamora Pierce and Laurie Halse Anderson come to mind), most YA books fall into two categories:
1) The stories about boys, who actually do things, solve problems, and get to be interesting;
2) The stories about girls, who have many problems that are unsolvable and must simply be accepted and lived with. Also, the biggest issue in fictional girls' lives seems to be the lack of a boyfriend.
Seriously, I saw crap like this when I was growing up. But there was an excuse then; most of the books for teens when I was in high school were written in the 1940s to 1960s. Most of the newer YA books were written in the late 1990s and early-to-mid 2000s. You'd think that the world would have moved on a little, fictionally, in forty to sixty years!
Last night, I started writing something about a girl in an alternate history/urban fantasy world. And you know something? I like her! And I like her world. (I don't know her name yet, but I like her.)
Yeah, even when I was in elementary and middle school in the 1990s, I couldn't find much decent YA at all, let alone decent YA with a female protagonist - and a female protagonist who didn't much care about getting a boyfriend at the moment was about as common as unicorns. Part of my problem might have been that I was mostly getting books from used book stores and libraries with not-so-new collections, because somehow I missed out all Tamora Pierce books but one. So I ended up with a lot of "boy books" and adult sf/f. How hard can this be, honestly? Especially since there were a few, like The Girl With Silver Eyes from 1980, that showed it could be done. (No romance whatsoever, iirc. But I haven't read it since '96 or so.)
Some newer ones, like the Gallagher Girls series and The Agency: A Spy in the House (haven't gotten my hands on that one yet), have teenage girls being spies and getting involved in criminal conspiracies and such... but at least in Gallagher Girls, getting a boyfriend or accepting that you just can't endanger cute civilians like that is a major element. Which, fine. Dating is something a lot of teenagers think about, so some books will naturally cover it. But I don't recall the boy spies spending so much time on it! (One exception is Perry Moore's Hero, where the main character is keeping two big secrets from his dad: he has superpowers and has joined a team, and he's gay. And there is a mysterious and sexy but possibly untrustworthy guy around.) And you can't really argue that teenage boys are less interested in their preferred sex at that age, so what gives? Where are the girls who just do spy stuff without having to spend half their time handling the distraction of the cute-but-untrustworthy guy they've been forced to work with?
Where are the girls who just do spy stuff without having to spend half their time handling the distraction of the cute-but-untrustworthy guy they've been forced to work with?
That baffles me too. A lot of the guys in YA have girlfriends or boyfriends, but romance and sex aren't their whole focus. They have other stuff to do. But so many authors just focus on nothing but for teenaged girls. It's as if they really believe Byron's line about romance being a woman's whole existence. (It sure as hell wasn't mine when I was a teenager.)
I've recently been reading a lot of YA books--thanks in large part to the elevator having been broken at the main library from February to July--and what I've been finding is that, with few exceptions (Tamora Pierce and Laurie Halse Anderson come to mind), most YA books fall into two categories:
1) The stories about boys, who actually do things, solve problems, and get to be interesting;
2) The stories about girls, who have many problems that are unsolvable and must simply be accepted and lived with. Also, the biggest issue in fictional girls' lives seems to be the lack of a boyfriend.
Seriously, I saw crap like this when I was growing up. But there was an excuse then; most of the books for teens when I was in high school were written in the 1940s to 1960s. Most of the newer YA books were written in the late 1990s and early-to-mid 2000s. You'd think that the world would have moved on a little, fictionally, in forty to sixty years!
Last night, I started writing something about a girl in an alternate history/urban fantasy world. And you know something? I like her! And I like her world. (I don't know her name yet, but I like her.)
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Some newer ones, like the Gallagher Girls series and The Agency: A Spy in the House (haven't gotten my hands on that one yet), have teenage girls being spies and getting involved in criminal conspiracies and such... but at least in Gallagher Girls, getting a boyfriend or accepting that you just can't endanger cute civilians like that is a major element. Which, fine. Dating is something a lot of teenagers think about, so some books will naturally cover it. But I don't recall the boy spies spending so much time on it! (One exception is Perry Moore's Hero, where the main character is keeping two big secrets from his dad: he has superpowers and has joined a team, and he's gay. And there is a mysterious and sexy but possibly untrustworthy guy around.) And you can't really argue that teenage boys are less interested in their preferred sex at that age, so what gives? Where are the girls who just do spy stuff without having to spend half their time handling the distraction of the cute-but-untrustworthy guy they've been forced to work with?
So I like the sound of your YA story a lot :D
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That baffles me too. A lot of the guys in YA have girlfriends or boyfriends, but romance and sex aren't their whole focus. They have other stuff to do. But so many authors just focus on nothing but for teenaged girls. It's as if they really believe Byron's line about romance being a woman's whole existence. (It sure as hell wasn't mine when I was a teenager.)
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