"Young Adult"

I was interested to read in the Review section of yesterday's Guardian of the significant fall in sales of Young Adult fiction in the last twelve months, put down to saturation of the market and a feeling that many of the books classed as such have become "too worthy". I neither read nor write Young Adult fiction so perhaps my views are uninformed. However, I interview quite a few writers on The Writer's Room who work in the area; frequently they speak of the paramount need to make their subject matter relevant to their reader's lives and they often cite issues such as mental health, relationships, substance misuse.

It's certainly a long time since I was a "young adult" but not all that long since my children came into that category. Thinking back to the books they really enjoyed at that stage, fantasy and magical realism seemed to figure large - books that took them out of their everyday lives, not ones that majored on them. I do appreciate that life can be very challenging indeed for today's young people and that anything that can help them navigate their way through their problems is more than valid. But reading should be enjoyable and relaxing too, and if fiction has become too "worthy" I can quite understand the resultant drop in sales.

Talking of my own young adulthood - a real blast from the past yesterday when, as I was clearing out the debris from the back of a wardrobe, I came across a coat hanger from more than fifty years ago.  It had "Gill Garrett, LVIM" inked on it and I couldn't think why. It was only when I turned it over and saw "Don Pedro" on the back that I remembered hanging my costume on it in the dressing room (ie. the school gym) for the bi-annual Shakespeare play; I was Don Pedro, the Prince of Aragon, in Much Ado About Nothing, in 1966, under the expert direction of Miss Johnson. I can't say that my schooldays were the happiest years of my life, but I wouldn't have missed those plays and Miss Johnson's input for the world. She was a teacher  par excellence, introducing us to all sorts of theatre, coaching us in different acting techniques, making lessons fun - and giving many of us a lifelong love of drama. It was only when I read her obituary a few years ago that I realised that in retirement she had lived quite close to me; I would have loved to visit her and to thank her for that great gift I feel she gave us all those years ago.