The Springtime of Youth

It’s out there. Do you feel it? It’s spring, glorious spring. Rebirth, renewal, first flowers, first birds — all those good things are in the air.

Oh, I know some of you may be reading this from places like San Diego or Palm Springs, and you’re probably snickering insufferably. Well you’ll just have to use your imagination (in much the same way I do when I, from Minnesota, imagine that there are places like San Diego and that people are allowed to live there) to conjure up the feeling of surprise and renewal spring brings, even though it happens every year. Really, even in San Diego, is there anyone who says, “Yeah, spring. Whatever. I did that last year … ?” I think not.

Actually, we should all use our imagination (even those of us who live in places like, say, Winnipeg or Bangor, where the arrival of spring must be celebrated with wild parties in the street), now that spring is here. We should shake them out of brooding, wintry habits where everything is dirty, used and dull, and into a more spacious springtime attitude where all is new and interesting.

Maybe this is just a personal association, but I think spring is the rightful season of children’s fiction. Yes, yes, all the big awards come out in the fall, and the holidays are when publishers sell the most books, and people are always talking about cold winter nights and curling up by a fire with a good book, but never mind that. Youth, especially the teen years, is the eternal springtime of fiction. At no other time in your reading life is everything as new and full of potential as it is when you’re young. You can read anything and it will be the first time — it will be new and it will be yours to discover.

This is why people who write books for a younger market are brave souls. At some level, everyone writing for that demographic knows that most of their audience will probably outgrow them in, at most, four years. Imagine if every couple years Stephen King’s loyal fans decided they were too old for him and an entirely new gang of readers were hot on their heels, ready to kick literary tires and ask “who are you, old man, and why should I read your books?” Now that’s scary.

These writers also know that they must tell stories that have been told a thousand times before, but they must tell them in ways that are entirely new, without the taint of age or the assumptions of experience. After all, is there anything worse — more un-springlike — than young adult books that say, “there, there, everyone else has done this before, so don’t get so excited?” We want our new experiences valued for their originality not dismissed for their commonality. Like spring. No one likes spring because it comes every year; we like it because it’s always a bit of a surprise.

The best authors writing for younger readers and teens are the ones who know just how daunting their task is. Whenever they write, they are keenly aware of the forever-new quality of their audience and of their solemn obligation to write books that present universal experiences in an entirely unique way for an audience that’s disinclined to think that adults know anything. And you thought writing a book for adults was a challenge?

If the challenges are great, so are the opportunities. If you write for children, and especially for teens, you have an opportunity like no other writer to create the book that, for the first time, perfectly captures an experience for a reader: first love, first heartbreak, first death, first almost anything you can imagine. It’s the opportunity to write the book that makes someone shout, “Yes! I felt that way, too!” for the first time. If you’re up to the challenge, I can’t imagine the rewards get much better for an author.

This spring, Llewellyn is pleased to help some brave teen authors, Linda Joy Singleton and Claudia Jones, step up and take the challenge of telling age-old stories in new and exciting ways. I realize quite a few of you reading this column are post-teens. So am I. Fortunately, teen books also hold something very valuable for us: a bit of spring.