Religion is the New (YA) Black, Part 2

by Donna Freitas, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 9/28/2005

Who am I? What should I do? How do I make good choices? When my choices turn out to be less than ideal, how do I handle the repercussions? Can I learn from them? Can I become a better person because of them?

This type of questioning is ubiquitous across a lifetime, but never more so, it seems, than during the teenage and young adult years. This kind of inquiry is also central to a person's spiritual path and religious identity. Our choices, our actions, our behavior—all express our sense of self and how we derive meaning from our experiences.

This type of spiritual discovery is also the hot topic among recent and upcoming YA novels—whether indirectly through relevant themes (like sexual exploration) or more explicitly, as in the case of books such as In the Shadow of the Ark by Anne Provoost (Arthur A. Levine Books, 2004), which re-imagines the story of Noah's Ark from a young girl's perspective, and The Garden by Elsie V. Aidinoff (HarperTempest, 2004), a re-telling of the fall from Eve's point of view.

On the topic of romance and spiritual identity, Tanya Lee Stone, former editor at Macmillan and author of nearly 80 children's books, points to Jennifer Jacobson's Stained (Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books, 2005) as a recent title that "explores spiritual issues in a provocative way, taking an intimate look at how sexuality and religion and our sense of selves can all be connected."Stone describes her own forthcoming A Bad Boy Can Be Good For a Girl (Wendy Lamb Books/Random House, Jan. 2006) also as a story that "looks at the relationship between sexuality and a person's pathway to discovering who they are and who they want to be."

Beth Wright, member of the 2006 YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) BBYA (Best Books for Young Adults) Committee suggests John Green's first novel, Looking for Alaska (Dutton, 2005) as an excellent example of how religion—specifically a world religions course—is pivotal to protagonist Miles Halter as he deals with a tragedy at his boarding school. "The framework of the religion class allows the author to show the universality of the issues Miles and his friends face, as well as the ability of teenagers to grapple with weighty philosophical ideas like radical hope and the reality of human suffering," Wright explained.

From the exploration of basic spiritual questions, to challenging the place of women and girls in world religions and sacred texts, with each new season YA novels find new and more creative ways to encourage teens to reflect on the role of religion and spirituality in their lives and in the larger world.