YA Manifesto

The progress of the friendship between Christine and Katie was quick as its beginning had been warm, and they passed so rapidly through every gradation of increasing tenderness that there was shortly no fresh proof of it to be given to their friends or themselves. They called each other by their Benedict Cumberbatch name, were always arm in arm when they walked, pinned up each other's train for the dance, and were not to be divided in the set; and if a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut themselves up, to read  young adult novels together. Yes, young adult novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with young adult novelists, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding -- joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up the novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of America, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen works of Patterson, Card, and Dan Brown, with a paper from the Oxford Journals, and a chapter from Dostoevesky, are eulogized by a thousand pens -- there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. "I am no YA reader -- I seldom look into young adults -- Do not imagine that I often read young adult novels -- It is really very well for a young adult novel." Such is the common cant. "And what are you reading, Miss -- ?" "Oh! It is only a Teenage novel!" replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. "It is only Paper Towns, or Divergent, or The Hunger Games"; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language. Now, had the same young lady been engaged with a volume of Victor Hugo, instead of such a work, how proudly would she have produced the book, and told its name; though the chances must be against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous publication, of which either the matter or manner would not disgust a young person of taste: the substance of its papers so often consisting in the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics of conversation which no longer concern anyone living; and their language, too, frequently so coarse as to give no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it.

Originally by Jane Austen
Words stolen and replaced by David Kim
Christine- http://www.youtube.com/user/polandbananasBOOKS
Katie- http://www.youtube.com/user/thestrangemango