Looking back over the last two decades, there’s only one book series that has truly defined it. Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling captured even the attention of adults with her magical series, but it’s really those of us who were children or adults when the books came out who have felt it the most. Harry was our idol. We wanted to befriend him, or be him. We waited in ridiculous midnight lines to get the books before anyone else could, and when those ended, we had the movies to look forward to. After going to see the last movie this week, I was left with just one thought: what now?
Where does children’s and young adult fiction go from here? It’s a complicated answer. The big question hinges on the divide between Harry Potter and Twilight. Now obviously a lot of people really like both series, but looking at bookshelves these days, there’s a clear split. Twilight and its massive popularity among teen girls sparked a huge flood of vampire books. As those got saturated, the flood waters turned to angels, sirens, werewolves, even trolls. High fantasy poked its head out a little, but horror with a big thread of romance won out. Vampire Diaries. Mortal Instruments. Firelight. Now dystopian is huge, but it just seems to be taking over where horror left off. Teens are looking for something dark. Wild. Adventurous. They want blood, danger, and obsessive, passionate romance. Everything has to push the limits of reality and drive every emotion to its painful extreme. The lead characters are strong heroines surrounded by dark bad boys and broken families and worlds.
Even Harry Potter got a little dark towards the end, but overall, it was something lighter and more whimsical than the dark YA stuff we’re seeing. Harry and his friends lived in a world with silly names, crazy creatures, spells that could make you tapdance and grow feathers. Romance existed, but it never overshadowed the wild magical adventures or epic good-and-evil plot. So where are all the Potter copycats? They’ve been left behind in children’s fiction: Spiderwick, Percy Jackson, Eragon. These heroes are boys with vast destinies in worlds of mythology and legend. Magic is a force for good but always tinged with the opposing evil.
So what is it that has made teenage girls in dark worlds the queens of teen lit, and kept high fantasy and its magic and chosen boys back in childhood? More girls seem to keep reading into their teen years than boys. Girls are also more willing to read about a male hero than boys are to read about a female one. There are exceptions obviously. Many boys devour today’s teen lit. But the trends are clear. Perhaps horror is too dark for young readers, and authors choose male heroes to catch the most readers. However why hasn’t high fantasy made the same impact in the teen world as horror has? Where are all the wizards? Why did Harry Potter bridge the child-adult gap while no one else can? And when did the romantic subplot and female lead become a necessity? Can high fantasy fit in to this new stormy landscape?
To the last question: maybe. High fantasy is just plain hard. Building a huge new fantasy world, even wrapped up on Earth, takes a lot of imagination and a lot of time. Not all authors want to tackle that. It’s much easier to pick a fantasy creature, stick it in human’s clothing in a normal high school, and make it fall in love with a normal girl. That’s not saying there aren’t a lot of well developed supernaturals out there, but you aren’t seeing the big developed worlds anymore. As for the wizards, maybe magic is just too easy for today’s teens. High fantasy lends itself to big epic battles between the forces of good and evil, with plenty of magic thrown in. However today’s teens are looking for an evil that’s more human. The supernatural creatures are more like broken people, with their own fears, motivations, and complications. The dystopian empires are run by real faces with real political goals.
And maybe that’s one thing Harry Potter really did right. Voldemort was no faceless evil without a past; he had a name, a history, a broken childhood that we saw more and more with each book. We met his Death Eaters and knew their stories. We knew what they fought for, and it wasn’t just power. There was good and evil, but it wasn’t ever black and white. If high fantasy has a hope of breaking into the teen market where it’s been dormant for so long, it needs to modernize. Find a more human evil. Tap into something darker and more emotional. Playful, whimsical fantasy will always have its place in children’s lit, but teens need something that makes sense in a real world filled with tragedy and growing pains. There will never be another Harry Potter, but with Rowling’s example and a new face, wizards, dragons, and magic can still live on.
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