Young Adult Literature
YAL is created especially for teens/young adults, hoping to give them a more mature understanding of self and the world.
The stories tend to focus on the experience of an individual, usually a teenage protagonist, allowing similarly aged readers to relate and empathise. It does not always provide the answers, but rather portrays a young person in search of them. It is usually fast paced, and generally hopeful and optimistic. YAL can cover a wide range of genres and sometimes contains global themes such as suicide, abuse, teenage pregnancy, cancer, sexual assault and so forth.
Some of the YAL titles we carry in the school library include, but are not limited to:
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- The Hate U Give
- 13 Reasons Why
- The Heartstopper Series
- Fault in our Stars
- Sisters of the War: Two Remarkable True Stories of Survival and Hope in Syria
- Murder She Wrote: By the time you read this I’ll be gone
- Loveless
- Noughts and Crosses
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
The benefits of wider reading for pleasure are now well understood and include the following:
● Reading for pleasure has many non-literacy benefits and can increase empathy, improve relationships with others, reduce the symptoms of depression and improve wellbeing throughout life (The Reading Agency 2015). https://www.booktrust.org.uk/what-we-do/impact-and-research
● Young people who regularly read fiction books or novels scored around 26 points higher on the PISA reading test than those who did not read that type of book. The difference is large - according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) it represents the equivalent of an additional 10 months of schooling.
We also work closely with the following organisations:
https://readforgood.org/ and https://yotocarnegies.co.uk/ to aid in developing every pupil’s love of reading, opening their eyes to a diverse range of topics and emotions, and life skills linked to their GCSEs, Further Education, emotional development and beyond.
