Should adult fans of YA literature be a target for mockery? No matter what your age, there is no place like Hogwarts–don’t apologize for your love of Edward Cullen or Hermione Granger.
Perhaps inspired by GalleyCat readers’ long list of the Best YA Books for Adults, the New York Times published an essay by Pamela Paul about this very topic.
Paul’s post-birth activity after the arrival of her third child was to relax with Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. Scholastic editorial director, David Leviathan (the publisher behind this particular series) said that half the Facebook fans for the Hunger Games page are grown-ups. His theory? “The Harry Potter generation has grown up.”
Paul explained in the essay: “[H]istorian Amanda Foreman, a 42-year-old mother of five and author of Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire, was honeymooning when she first read Harry. When I asked Foreman about her young adult reading habit, she could hardly contain her enthusiasm. … ‘[G]ood Y.A. is like good television. There’s a freshness there; it’s engaging. Y.A. authors aren’t writing about middle-aged anomie or Âdisappointed people.'”