While American youths spend more time watching television than they spend in school, adolescents do read. Adolescents like to read what everyone else is reading and they like good-looking book covers and prefer paperbacks to hardbacks. The genres of adolescent fiction are as varied as are those of children’s and adult literature, including historical fiction and adventure tales, coming-of-age stories, contemporary horror tales and socialissue stories that treat such topics as AIDS, divorce, disability and immigration. Some books are clearly tailored to an adolescent market, especially for younger readers, while others are introduced through education and peer groups in high school and college, by which time they will generally be reading “adult” books.

Adolescent fiction also addresses struggles adolescents face, such as coming of age, religion, divorce (Voight, A Solitary Blue), suicide (McRae, Going to the Dogs), loneliness (Bethancourt, The Me Inside of Me), eating disorders (Levenkron, The Best Little Girl in the World), death (Paulson, Hatchet), disease and disabilities (Mahy Memory; Adler, Eddie’s Blue-Winged Dragon), emotional problems (Riley, Crazy Quilt), abuse (Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees), alcoholism (Paulson, The Crossing) and sexuality (Dizeno, Why Me? The Story of Jenny). Discussions and concerns with racism and ethnicity often lead adolescents to classics such as Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Alice Walker’s Color Purple, Maxine Hong Kingston’s Woman Warrior, or Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street.

Historical fiction includes popular prehistory series such as Jean Auel’s The Clan of the Cave Bear, which captivates readers with adventure, survival and discovery themes.

Katherine Paterson has contributed other significant titles to adolescent historical fiction, including The Sign of the Chrysanthemum, set in twelfth-century Japan. Adolescents also enjoy westerns, including the series by Louis L’Amour and Janet Dailey’s Calder series, and read fiction set in the Second World War, Vietnam and the civil-rights eras. Paterson and Walter Dan Myers are familiar names to adolescent readers; Second World War themes are found in Paterson’s Jacob Have I Loved. Sook Nyul Choi’s Year of Impossible Goodbyes treats a North Korean family fleeing the communists, while Echoes of the White Giraffe follows this family’s life in a refugee camp. Myers’ Fallen Angels, Marsha Qualey’s Come in from the Cold and Bobbi Ann Mason’s In Country all deal with Vietnam.

Adolescents are drawn to romances, from the Christian historical romances of Bacher (Heartland Heritage series) and Thoene (Shilo Legacy Series) to more traditional femaleoriented novels. Meanwhile, science fiction and fantasy permit adolescent readers to explore new and old worlds in creative, divergent ways, whether through adventures with dragons or travels in space with aliens. Alternative worlds such as those found in Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time series and Roger Zelazny’s A Dark Traveling pique adolescent imagination. So does humorous science fiction by Gilden and Adams, while Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park attracts older adolescents as well as adults. Other popular fantasy genres of later adolescent reading include cyberpunk, aliens, utopias and dystopias. Graphic novels (Speigelman’s Maus, Maus II) and comics are also widespread, especially among males.

As comics may suggest, teens also have a great capacity for horror, mystery and crime fiction—and for following similar series of horror films. Popular crime and mystery writers include Stephen King, Mary Higgins Clark and Sue Grafton, who all have strong adult markets. Christian mystery writing for adolescents includes the Jennie McCrady Mysteries. The cinematic ties and high adventure novels of Tom Clancy and Robin Cook’s thrillers are also compelling, while teen novels of adventure and survival include works by Jean George and Gary Paulsen.