So I'm feeling guilty now for starting the book so early and racing through it. I finished it last week, but I won't say anything about the end until you let me know that you've finished it.
I've been thinking lately about what makes a book young adult literature. At first this book didn't feel like YA lit because of the language and because Ed so matter of factly stated that he is "pathetic when it comes to sex" (21). Of course part of my wonderings also include the book To Kill a Mockingbird, which was written for adults but is so often read in 8th and 9th grade classes. The thought with that book seems to be that because it's written from a child's perspective that it's age appropriate for middle-schoolers and freshman, but teaching it to my 8th grade class last year was a nightmare. The text was way too complex for most of my students because it requires them to draw conclusions and make inferences just to follow the storyline, not to mention the complex issues raised about gender, race, and class.
All of this isn't to say that I Am the Messenger is as well written as To Kill a Mockingbird. But I wondered at first if Zuzak wrote this book for teenagers or if he wrote it and it got dumped in the YA pile. Now that I've finished it, I think he did because of the voice of Ed and the implied audience. I'm too lazy to figure out why I felt like the intended primary audience is teenagers, but that's who it felt like Ed was talking to.
I've also noticed that many YA books tend to have a didactic thread to them that seems to be absent in more recent adult literature that instead seems interested in exploring human nature rather than explaining it or teaching something. Often I find such didacticism heavy handed and annoying even if I agree with the message, especially in YA distopian novels that take place in a future time when we've destroyed our planet with pollution. The thing I enjoyed about this book is that throughout, I got the sense that Zuzak was sharing more than a story, that he wants his readers to take something away from this book, but what exactly that message is isn't overbearing. In fact I'm sure plenty of teenagers could read this book and see nothing more than a story, but it's a story that will challenge them enough to get them thinking.
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I was listening to a podcast the other day and a woman from the National Endowment for the Arts was being interviewed. She is in the literature department. Anyway, I guess she wrote a book and it was slotted as YA fiction even though she hadn't actually meant to write the book for that audience. She thought this happened because her protagonist was 13. Anyway, this led into a discussion of how books are often categorized because of the age of the narrator and that it is often a shame because so many adults don't even look twice at a book that has the YA sticker attached to it. At the same time, there are often adult themes in these books that may not be appropriate for the age group they are being marketed for. Anyway, it's an interesting conundrum. (I just wanted to use that word).
That's an interesting point about the age of the narrator. I also remember reading that Shannon Hale didn't write Goose Girl to be a YA novel but it was later categorized as one.
As a 19 year old it seems like Ed could be right in the middle of adult or young adult, especially since in the lit world YA seems to mean older teenager. But the more I think about it, the more I think that Zuzak always intended this book for YA because he wanted it to get them thinking about their own lives.
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