new york times book review young adults

The 100 Best YA Books of All Time

With a panel of celebrated authors—Elizabeth Acevedo, Kacen Callender, Jenny Han, Jason Reynolds, Adam Silvera, Angie Thomas and Nicola Yoon—TIME presents the most compelling, enlightening and influential young-adult books, in chronological order beginning in the 1800s

Jason Reynolds: YA Books Make Us Feel Safe to Be Who We Really Are

Little Women

By louisa may alcott.

Anne of Green Gables

By l. m. montgomery.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

By betty smith.

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

By anne frank.

The Catcher in the Rye

By j.d. salinger.

Lord of the Flies

By william golding.

To Kill a Mockingbird

By harper lee.

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

By e.l. konigsburg.

A Wizard of Earthsea

By ursula k. le guin.

I'll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip

By john donovan.

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.

By judy blume.

A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich

By alice childress.

Tuck Everlasting

By natalie babbitt.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

By mildred d. taylor.

A Swiftly Tilting Planet

By madeleine l'engle.

The Westing Game

By ellen raskin.

by Cynthia Voigt

The House on Mango Street

By sandra cisneros.

Weetzie Bat

By francesca lia block.

by Lois Lowry

Ella Enchanted

By gail carson levine.

by Louis Sachar

If You Come Softly

By jacqueline woodson.

Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging

By louise rennison.

by Walter Dean Myers

by Laurie Halse Anderson

by Jerry Spinelli

The Princess Diaries

By meg cabot.

A Step from Heaven

Rainbow Boys

By alex sanchez.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

By ann brashares.

Before We Were Free

By julia alvarez.

by M.T. Anderson

by Marjane Satrapi

How I Live Now

By meg rosoff.

Code Talker

By joseph bruchac.

by Gabrielle Zevin

The Book Thief

By markus zusak.

The Lightning Thief

By rick riordan.

American Born Chinese

By gene luen yang.

by Sharon Draper

by Coe Booth

by Kristin Cashore

The Hunger Games

By suzanne collins.

Ship Breaker

By paolo bacigalupi.

Akata Witch

By nnedi okorafor.

Daughter of Smoke & Bone

By laini taylor.

by Marie Lu

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

By benjamin alire sáenz.

Code Name Verity

By elizabeth wein.

by David Levithan

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

By jesse andrews.

The Fault in Our Stars

By john green.

If You Could Be Mine

By sara farizan.

March: Book One

By john lewis and andrew aydin, illustrated by nate powell.

Brown Girl Dreaming

I'll Give You the Sun

By jandy nelson.

by John Corey Whaley

The Crossover

By kwame alexander.

To All the Boys I've Loved Before

By jenny han.

An Ember in the Ashes

By sabaa tahir.

by Julie Murphy

Everything, Everything

By nicola yoon.

March: Book Two

More Happy Than Not

By adam silvera.

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

By becky albertalli.

Six of Crows

By leigh bardugo.

Salt to the Sea

By ruta sepetys.

by Neal Shusterman

The Sun Is Also a Star

We Are the Ants

By shaun david hutchinson.

When the Moon Was Ours

By anna-marie mclemore.

by Tiffany D. Jackson

American Street

By ibi zoboi.

Dear Martin

By nic stone.

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

By erika l. sánchez.

Long Way Down

By jason reynolds.

by Dashka Slater

The Hate U Give

By angie thomas.

The Marrow Thieves

By cherie dimaline.

We Are Okay

By nina lacour.

When Dimple Met Rishi

By sandhya menon.

A Very Large Expanse of Sea

By tahereh mafi.

Children of Blood and Bone

By tomi adeyemi.

Darius the Great Is Not Okay

By adib khorram.

The Astonishing Color of After

By emily x.r. pan.

by Elizabeth Acevedo

Frankly in Love

By david yoon.

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me

By mariko tamaki, illustrated by rosemary valero-o’connell.

Like a Love Story

By abdi nazemian.

by Akwaeke Emezi

With the Fire on High

The Black Flamingo

By dean atta.

Felix Ever After

By kacen callender.

by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

The Henna Wars

By adiba jaigirdar.

We Are Not Free

By traci chee.

You Should See Me In a Crown

By leah johnson.

Firekeeper's Daughter

By angeline boulley.

What Do 10 Years of the New York Times Young Adult Bestseller Lists Say About YA?

Kelly Jensen

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She's the editor/author of (DON'T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen .

View All posts by Kelly Jensen

Prior to December 6, 2012, there was no standalone New York Times Best Seller list for young adult novels. At that time, young adult books were merged with other chapter books, creating a list that was a mix of young adult and middle grade titles. This change made it possible to better differentiate among the books for young readers — middle grade and young adult — and it opened up the possibility for more titles within each category to hit the list. The New York Times Best Seller list for Young Adults began by including sales totals that included hardcover, paperback, and ebooks.

Like other NYT Bestseller lists, the Young Adult lists have evolved over their ten years in existence. August 2015 marked the biggest shift since the lists development. Now, rather than a single list that captured sales of all formats of a book, the lists would separate out the Young Adult Bestsellers in paperback and hardcover; ebook sales were separated out; and series books would appear on a separate list that also included middle grade titles. This change made sense , as paperback titles dominated the bestseller list; it was much easier and cheaper to sell boatloads of copies of titles in paperback than in hardcover. This helped open up the lists to more titles and more accurately reflected what was selling and how.

But those changes did not last too long. In October 2017, the lists changed again. August of that year saw the end of the YA ebook list — a list wherein titles that were put on mega sale in that format were able to earn the designation of “ New York Times Bestseller.” October brought the shift of the YA paperback bestseller list to a monthly roundup, keeping its YA hardcover as the prime list, published weekly. This year was particularly interesting for the New York Times YA Best Seller list, as it showed how easily the list could be manipulated with the right amount of time, money, and effort.

In 2013, I pulled together a look at the list and the demographics represented. The first post of two has, unfortunately, been lost to server migrations. The second post, though, is still available . The list at the time had been very white and very male dominated. This was when paperback and hardcover were combined and when ebook sales were a fraction of a fraction of sales.

This critical look at representation came at the height of book blogging, and it came at the same time the YA community engaged in large-scale discussions about representation…and the lack thereof. We Need Diverse Books launched in 2014, setting off significant changes in the industry. Those changes, still ongoing and still evolving, were certainly reflected in the New York Times Best Seller lists for Young Adults.

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Now that the list has celebrated its tenth birthday, what has changed? What can we learn or observe from a decade of tracking the bestselling literature in a category?

Data Limitations and Notes

First and foremost: we have no idea how the lists are tabulated. It is ostensibly sales, but sales from where remains a question. There are reporting institutions, but not all bookstores report sales to the NYT. What is listed represents some metric of sales, and yet, it might not actually represent true sales of any title. This is especially true for smaller publishers, who can see significant sales of their titles but they may never be picked up by the Times .

All of the information below is pulled from the Young Adult Hardcover lists only. Because the lists have shifted over the years, including and excluding paperbacks and series books, it made the most sense to stick to one standard. The lists pre-2015 will have all formats, but following those lists, the titles explored were only those on the hardcover list.

The biggest limitation in this look at ten years of the New York Times Young Adult Best Sellers list is, perhaps, the most frustrating. Full lists of data from 2012 to 2015 are not included. Despite several methods of searching, deep dives into paper’s archives, searches in archived paper databases, and asking for help on social media, the full ten title lists are nowhere to be found . Instead, all of the data for Young Adult NYT Best Sellers from 2012 to 2015 include only the top five titles; they were all archived in an Open Data archive, and thus, they represent only half of the titles which hit the list in the early years.

Despite that limitation, there is still a lot to be learned and considered with the data.

The work of compiling, sorting, and categorizing the books on ten years’ worth of lists took a lot of time, and there was certainly an element of subjectivity involved. I’ve been blogging about YA books and the YA book world for over 15 years, and my knowledge of this category is broad and deep. That said, there will be mistakes, and there will be categorization choices you don’t agree with. I welcome you to do your own work and share your findings if something doesn’t sit right with you.

The data used begins December 6, 2012, the first day of a separate YA list. The final data used is December 25, 2022.

That all articulated, let’s dive in.

The NYT YA Bestseller List By The Numbers

Total number of books on the new york times ya bestseller list.

Remember that there are three years’ of data that only include half of the lists, so these numbers reflect the available data and not the titles which are missing.

• A total of 4,446 YA books have graced the lists
• 522 unique YA books have hit the list

Gender Breakdown: Who Is Hitting the List?

Determining the gender breakdown of the New York Times Young Adult Best Sellers list is tricky. It requires defining gender to begin with, which we know is fluid as opposed to rigid. To make determinations on gender, I went by the pronouns used by each of the authors. This is not deterministic of gender, but it is the easiest tool to create a breakdown by gender for comparison sake.

There were three broad categories of gender assessed: those using he/him pronouns were put in the “male” bucket; those using she/her pronouns were put in the “female” bucket; those using they/them or any neo-pronouns were put into the “nonbinary/genderqueer” bucket.

An additional hiccup in this data is that two authors are utilizing pseudonyms that could account for multiple authors of any number of genders. We know that Pittacus Lore is a fictitious name for authors working in the James Frey packager, and we know that A.W. Jantha, the author attributed to the book Hocus Pocus and the All New Sequel , is also a pseudonym. I’ve put books like that under the “??” bucket for gender.

Author gender was counted each time they had a book on the list. Again: three years’ of data only include half of the full list. These numbers below represent singular authors on the list, so books where only one author is named.

• 2,941 were female authors by themselves
• 874 were male authors by themselves
• 144 authors were included in the nonbinary/genderqueer category
• 36 pseudonyms were used, constituting the “??” gender

But solo authors weren’t the only ones making the list. There were many author duos, author/illustrator collaborations, and other combinations of people working on a book that hit the list. I categorized the genders of these authors based on how they were listed on the book title. In some cases, this meant that alphabetically, a female author came before her male coauthor; in other cases, the male author came first because he was the primary author and the female coauthor or illustrator was secondary.

Again: this is per time the title appeared on the list. There were not, for example, 48 different groups of four men who wrote a YA bestseller together; in that instance, it represents a single group of four showing up 48 times. It may be the case there were several different female writing duos included in the count for that category, though.

• 29 women collaborated with other women on their YA bestsellers
• 1 trio of women created a bestseller
• 12 groups of four women collaborated on work together
• 3 groups of six women collaborated on a book together
• 139 collaborations happened between women and men (that is, the female author was listed first)
• 76 men collaborated with women (that is, the male author was listed first)
• 1 male author worked with 2 female collaborators
• 141 men collaborated with other male authors
• 48 male quad writing groups were represented

Some firsts:

• The first female author on the YA Best Seller list is Veronica Roth for Divergent , which reached #2 on the very first list, December 6, 2012. Insurgent was on the same list at #4.
• The first openly nonbinary author to grace the list was Marike Nijkamp with This Is Where It Ends , March 20, 2016.

Diversity in the Young Adult New York Times Bestsellers List

Same caveat here applies in that the first three years do not include the entire lists, so data here may be undercounting.

Each author’s identity was determined by their own bios. If they included their ethnic or racial background as one that was not white, they were included here. It is and has to be imperfect, but it is as close as can be accurate. Again, this number indicates instances, not unique numbers. So one author could be included in this count 50 or 100 times.

A hitch in this is as follows: these numbers represent individual BOOKS, not individual authors. In some cases, this means books written by an author duo composed of one Black author and one white author was popped into the bucket of “diverse books.” A book by six Black authors was a singular title, as opposed to six separate titles.

• 1,347 diverse books were represented on the list

In isolation, what does this number even mean? 1,347 books out of 4,446 were diverse. This comes out to about 30% of the total titles were by authors of color. Not too bad, given that the U.S. population itself is roughly 40% people of color .

More interesting, though, is the TREND in diverse books.

• 2012: 2 diverse books
• 2013: 2 diverse books
• 2014: 1 diverse book
• 2015: 20 diverse books
• 2016: 52 diverse books
• 2017: 165 diverse books
• 2018: 182 diverse books
• 2019: 228 diverse books
• 2020: 258 diverse books
• 2021: 244 diverse books
• 2022: 193 diverse books

In 2017, we saw the publication of Angie Thomas’s phenomenal The Hate U Give , which remained on and off the bestseller list up until the last year. We saw diverse books hit their peak in representation on the list in 2020, and they have been slipping back down again in the last two years. In 2020, diverse books represented almost half of the total books on the list.

Does the dip in diverse books in the last two years represent anything? It’s hard to say. The big players on the YA Best Sellers list in the last two years have been books by Karen McManus, Holly Jackson, and franchise tie-ins to Hocus Pocus , The Nightmare Before Christmas , and Star Wars , the vast majority of which are by white authors.

This is an area to keep an eye on. Is the marketing of books by authors of color softening? Is a lack of adaptations by these authors contributing to the slip in numbers? We know that both play a role in ensuring the list accurately represents not only the books being published but also in the readers being served.

Recall that series books move from the hardcover bestseller list to the series list. This dip could be representative of books making the leap in lists.

• The first author of color to hit the New York Times Young Adult Best Sellers list: Gabby Douglas, for her memoir Grace, Gold, and Glory .
• Don’t want to count a celebrity memoir? Keeping in mind that the data from early lists is missing, the next author of color to land on the list is Prodigy by Marie Lu, on February 17, 2013.

Queer Books on the YA Bestsellers List of the New York Times

How do you quantify queerness of books? Is it the author’s identity, suggesting that whatever a queer author writes comes from a queer perspective? If so, then what happens when the author’s sexuality evolves? Is one more “real” than the other? (The answer is no.)

If it’s content of the book, this, too, gets tricky. Queer books have queer-themed content, but does that mean it needs to be a main character who is queer? Or is it just a mention of something related to the LGBTQ+ community? A side character?

The answer is there is no good answer.

Malinda Lo has been at the forefront of tracking queer YA since the beginning of her career. I cannot recommend enough that you spend some time with her data, as she’s thought through these questions and offered insights into the patterns and trends in queer YA books.

For the sake of this data collection, “queer” is defined as a major theme or a major character in the story. This could be indicated by personal knowledge of the book, or by a search for how frequently the book is categorized as LGBTQ+ on bookish social media. This may be an under, as opposed to over, count, and I think that is important to consider. Books where queerness is not overt — books like The Perks of Being a Wallflower , which many consider now to have a big queer theme — are not included because they were not seen as such in 2012.

The number here is based on books, not on authors, and it is inclusive of repeat titles, rather than unique titles.

• 268 queer books have appeared on the YA bestseller list.

That is roughly 5% of the lists, representing what major polls have suggested as about the rate of U.S. individuals identifying as queer. Of course, the core audience of YA books — young people — identify at higher rates, so this number is tiny in comparison.

How does this look by year?

• 2012: 0 queer books
• 2013: 0 queer books
• 2014: 0 queer books
• 2015: 2 queer books
• 2016: 10 queer books
• 2017: 4 queer books
• 2018: 35 queer books
• 2019: 19 queer books
• 2020: 18 queer books
• 2021: 34 queer books
• 2022: 143 queer books

The growth here is extremely promising to see.

And some firsts to know. Again, remember the data for three years is incomplete, so this is based off accessible information:

• David Levithan was the first openly queer author with a book on the list ( Another Day , which landed March 20, 2015)
• Not counting Another Day , which does not center the queer experience, the first queer YA book on the list was Carry On by Rainbow Rowell on October 25, 2015.

Nonfiction on the YA Best Seller List

Despite campaigns for the New York Times to consider YA nonfiction separate from fiction, the lists continue to count nonfiction against fiction. What this means is most nonfiction never has a shot at the list. The titles that do land there are those with a celebrity name attached or that are by big name YA authors. I’ve included, for example, poetry as nonfiction, so Ain’t Burned All The Bright by Jason Reynolds and Jason Griffin is included here.

• 197 titles over ten years were nonfiction

YA nonfiction is diverse, wide-ranging, and often heavily ignored by major industry resources. These numbers show just that.

Fun Trends in YA Seen via the NYT Best Seller List

We’ve now looked at some of the biggest categories and topics that have emerged on the New York Times Best Selling Young Adult Books list. How about some fun or off-beat stuff, too?

• The Hate U Give is the most frequently occurring book title, followed by One Of Us Is Lying, The Fault In Our Stars , Looking for Alaska , and Five Feet Apart.
• The year with the most royalty related book titles — think Court, Queen, Sword — was 2016.
• But in 2017, those titles shifted to a celestial theme: Moon, Stars, Night, Sun.

Finally, for a little more fun, here’s a WordCloud visualizing the most popular words in YA book titles from the last 10 years of the New York Times YA Best Seller list.

If there’s one thing to take away from this, let it be that the louder we advocate for inclusive literature — books by and about BIPOC and queer people — the more money we put into ensuring their success…those successes pay off.

But in a culture where these books are on the line, where radical book banners want to eradicate these books and the people behind them and represented in them, we need to do a lot more than simply buy them. We need to show up on the front lines and demand intellectual freedom for ALL.

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New York Times Best Sellers for Young Adult Books

This is the current New York Times Best Sellers list for YA hardcover books. Nearly half the books on the list are new this week including the latest in Christopher Paolini's wildly popular epic fantasy series The Inheritance Cycle.

Forbidden love is in the air when Paedyn, an Ordinary, and Kai, an Elite, become romantically involved.

Hardcover , 2023

Murtagh: The World of Eragon

Murtagh and his dragon, Thorn, must find and outwit a mysterious witch.

Nightbane (the Lightlark Saga Book 2): Volume 2

In this sequel to "Lightlark," Isla must chose between her two powerful lovers.

The Way I Am Now

Eden and Josh decide to give their relationship another chance despite the emotional baggage they both carry.

Divine Rivals

Two young rival journalists find love through a magical connection.

What the River Knows

Inez Olivera sets sail to investigate the mysterious deaths of her parents in 1884 Egypt.

Five Survive

Six friends on a spring break road trip in an R.V. are the target of a sniper.

Hardcover , 2022

A Study in Drowning

Dark forces try to thwart Preston and Effy's efforts to unravel the mysteries of author Emrys Myrddin's Hiraeth Manor.

The Hunting Moon

Winnie Wednesday is the only one who knows of the new threat to Hemlock Falls, the Whisperer.

Curious Tides

Emory develops new magical powers after a ritual gone awry leaves some of her friends drowned in a forbidden cave.

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YA Lit: A Guide For The Perplexed — And The Just Plain Curious

Glen Weldon

The Young Adult or YA genre features resourceful protagonists who are, often, still figuring things out about the world and themselves.

There's more to it of course — a lot more — but whether you're a longtime fan or just thinking about how and where to get started in YA, we've got you covered with some recommendations, some thoughts about what YA is and is not, and some things to look for as you wade into the inviting but turbulent waters of Young Adult fiction. I'm Glen Weldon, one of the hosts of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, and we're teaming up with Life Kit for a beginner's guide to YA.

YA defined, albeit vaguely, and with caveats

Among readers and writers of YA, there are those who rankle at the term itself. "It's just a marketing term used by publishers," they sniff.

How To Read More Books

Which: Fair point. It certainly is. But then ... every genre you care to name began its life as a marketing term — specifically, an attempt to alert prospective readers that a new book in question has several things in common with a book or books they've previously enjoyed.

When it comes to what those specific "several things in common" might be for the YA genre, there are some pretty broad, squishy parameters that keep turning up.

First up: Age. Both that of the book's protagonists and its readers.

Generally speaking, protagonists in the YA genre range from 12 to 18. (Yes, there are exceptions! That's what "generally" means!) A lot of the genre's readers fall into this range, as well, but not nearly all of them. YA is read by many, many people in their 20s, 30, 40s and beyond. We'll get to why that is in a moment.

Next: Firsts. YA characters are dealing with the same things all of us deal with — they're just dealing with them for the very first time.

Explore Life Kit This story comes from Life Kit , NPR's family of podcasts to help make life better — covering everything from exercise to raising kids to making friends. For more, sign up for the newsletter and follow @NPRLifeKit on Twitter .

That newness grants these events a primal emotional power that readers love. There are all the thrilling firsts we remember fondly — first kiss, first party, first time away from the family. But there are also the many firsts that are just as irrevocable and life-changing, though as we age, we tend to underestimate and misremember the sheer impact they had on us: first time driving a car, first death of a loved one, first sundered friendship, first time rejecting the advice of others and making a choice for yourself — even (especially) a bad one.

Next up: Selfhood. YA characters experience new things, yes. But those experiences have a cumulative effect.

They help them define who they are and — equally importantly! — who they're not. The term coming-of-age gets trotted out a lot, but YA has more to do with a coming-of-sel f. Whether it's something as simple as figuring out who their real friends are, or what they want to do with their lives, or something altogether thornier like embracing revelations about their sexuality and gender, the YA genre is about self-discovery and self-determination. This is one reason so much of the genre explores themes of rejecting authority, in one form or another.

How To Start A Book Club That Actually Meets

Finally: stakes. always emotional, sometimes physical..

Some YA books deal with things that those who dismiss the genre consider trivial and unworthy of "serious" fiction — teenage crushes, school rivalries and romances, the ending of lifelong (albeit teenage) friendships. What these folks fail to grasp is that the emotional stakes are what's truly important. They're what drives people to the genre and keeps them devouring book after book. In the charged, hormonal landscape that YA characters navigate, the world may not be literally ending, but when the author's on top of their game, it sure as hell feels like it is. (Note: There's plenty of YA fantasy and science fiction in which the emotional stakes are made all-too-perilously literal.)

So: Why read YA?

Most of us grew up on YA fiction. From Nancy Drew to The Hunger Games, we're drawn to (and marketed to by) books whose characters look like us. And while many move on to "adult" fiction as they enter adulthood, there are plenty of folks who keep coming back to YA throughout their lives.

How To Focus While Reading

The reasons are many, and some are complex, and may in some cases have to deal with seizing upon an opportunity to re-examine our adolescent selves, so as to forgive or heal them.

Mostly, though, it's about the stories, the characters and the heady, ceaseless emotional churn of being at an age when your body is screaming at you, your parents are screaming at you and the world's expectations are screaming at you, and you're just trying to find a way through it all without making a litany of dumb, embarrassing mistakes that (you feel certain) will brand you forever.

Looking For Summer Reading Ideas? Fall In Love With Romance

If all fiction is about empathy — the opportunity to jump into someone else's head, see through their eyes, and feel what they feel — then YA fiction is about doing so when the emotions involved are those that we felt most deeply, most thoroughly and most profoundly, before the world got a chance to come in and calcify our hearts.

Enough! (I mean: It's not enough. It's barely scratching the surface. But we need to get to the recommendations, already.)

Recommendations for summer reading

I talked to three panelists who are building and shaping the YA genre right now. Aiden Thomas is the author of Lost in the Never Woods and Cemetery Boys . Loan Le is the author of A Pho Love Story and the forthcoming novel Solving for the Unknown. She's also an editor at Atria Books. Rounding out this all-star panel is Gabby Rivera , author of Juliet Takes a Breath , and the writer of the much-missed Marvel comic AMERICA, about queer superhero America Chavez.

You can listen to this episode at the top of this page or here.

Aiden's pick: Gearbreakers by Zoe Hana Mikuta

If you love Pacific Rim, check this out. It's a queer sci-fi book — there are giant fighting mechas, found family, Sapphic romance, and those really messy, chaotic relationships we all remember.

Book Reviews

Fierce girls and giant robots battle an empire in this ya adventure.

Loan's pick: I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

This book is for anyone who thinks that YA is one-note, or recycled, or petty because this book is going to make you cry. It represents so much of humanity. There's a journey to find your identity. There's some romance. There are gay characters. There's a deep exploration of parents and children, and the relationship between siblings, too. It's about fraternal twins who used to be close but have grown apart.

Gabby's pick: Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender

This book is just glorious. It's one of the quintessential YA books, especially for queer kids of color. It takes place in Brooklyn, so there's all that New York grit and hustle and chaos and love on every page. It's the first book I've ever read where the character is already trans, so there's no "What am I?" or anything. You just root so hard for Felix.

Finding Love — And Feeling Worthy Of It — In 'Felix Ever After'

The audio portion of this episode was produced by Andee Tagle.

We'd love to hear from you. If you have a good life hack, leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823 , or email us at [email protected] . Your tip could appear in an upcoming episode.If you love Life Kit and want more, subscribe to our newsletter .

• Young Adult
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The Best Therapy for Our Anxiety Epidemic

Solutions to the mental-health crisis striking young people in particular are within reach.

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T o note that a mental-health crisis is hitting American adolescents and young adults is hardly news—data to that effect emerge almost every day. The latest confirmation, in April, comes from a survey that I was grateful to help develop: This major survey, sponsored by the Walton Family Foundation and fielded by Gallup , revealed that some 38 percent of respondents aged 12 to 26 had received a formal diagnosis of anxiety or depression. That finding broke down by gender as 29 percent of young men and 45 percent of young women. Even among those who have not received a diagnosis, about half say they often feel anxious; a quarter say they often feel depressed.

In a search for answers and solutions, Jonathan Haidt’s recent best-selling book, The Anxious Generation , ascribed blame to the overuse of screens and social media. The Gallup/Walton data support his argument: Among adolescents and young adults who spent more than 20 hours a week on social media, 65 percent said they felt anxiety “a lot of the day yesterday” (as opposed to 49 percent of those who spent 20 hours or less so engaged); 49 percent of the heavy social-media users felt sadness for a lot of the day before (versus 26 percent of non-heavy users); and 80 percent of them felt a lot of stress (against 59 percent of those other users).

But I believe a deeper philosophical problem affects the lives of young people today as well, and of many people who are no longer young. Folks lack a sense of meaning; they don’t feel they know the “why” of their lives. Worse, evidence suggests that they’re not even looking for it, nor are we encouraging them to do so. This creates a feeling of hollowness and futility, especially when times are inevitably rough, and that encourages a culture that strives to provide a sense of security that is doomed to prove false and can only make the problem worse. If you see this syndrome taking effect in your life or in the life of someone you love, here is how to apprehend and address it.

Arthur C. Brooks: The meaning of life is surprisingly simple

I have written about the meaning of life, including the way to understand and define it, in a past column . In my research, I often refer to the work of the psychologists Frank Martela and Michael F. Steger, who have defined meaning in life as a combination of three elements: coherence (how events fit together), purpose (having goals and direction), and significance (a sense of the inherent value of one’s existence). I find this conception helpful because it takes a huge, amorphous problem ( What is the meaning of life? ) and breaks it down into three categories that, though they still require a lot of work, are more manageable. The big question thus becomes three smaller, more specific ones: Why do things happen the way they do? What are my goals in life? Why does it matter that I am alive?

A quite similar version of these questions appears in the Gallup survey, and the answers map powerfully onto the findings about unhappiness, depression, and anxiety. After my team and I investigated the survey’s microdata concerning the 18-to-26-year-olds, we found that 20 percent of them rarely or never felt that “things in my life happen for a reason” (the coherence measure). These young adults were 16 percentage points less likely to say they were “very happy” than their peers who often or always felt things happened for a reason (7 percent versus 23 percent); they were also 11 percentage points more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety or depression (48 percent versus 37 percent). Similar patterns applied among the young adults who answered “rarely” or “never” on the purpose and significance questions.

One explanation for this pattern might be that, for some reason, depressed and anxious young people simply can’t come up with answers for these questions. But it’s also possible that these are the ones who simply aren’t looking. Consider the longitudinal survey data from the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA showing that, over a 40-year period starting in the mid-1960s and ending in 2006, the percentage of American undergraduate freshmen students that reported that “developing a meaningful philosophy of life” is a “very important” or “essential” personal goal fell from 86 percent to less than 50 percent, where it has remained to this day .

Haidt’s work on the dramatic rise in people’s screen time and internet use shows that the problems began in the mid-2000s, almost certainly making any quest for meaning cognitively harder. Notably, neuroscientists have found that the default-mode network—the set of brain regions that become active when we are mentally at rest—is crucial for finding high-level meaning, memory, future contemplation, and daydreaming. Other studies have demonstrated that this neuro-network exhibits disrupted or abnormal functioning during tasks that require external focused attention, which would surely include heavy internet usage.

Arthur C. Brooks: Three paths toward the meaning of life

O ne very obvious implication from all of this is that to seek meaning in life in order to lower symptoms of depression and anxiety, we should stop spending so many hours online. But that still leaves unresolved the issue for those who have forgotten how to find meaning—or never learned in the first place—of getting started. How do you search for meaning? Where should you look?

Reframing the problem is a helpful way to begin: Try putting yourself not in the position of the asker but of the asked. This was the technique proposed by the psychiatrist and psychotherapist Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor who wrote the influential Man’s Search for Meaning and created “logotherapy,” a clinical method based on identifying a personal sense of meaning. Frankl’s approach starts by inverting the original question: “Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.” In other words, put aside your need to find a formula for your own gratification and instead see the world’s need for you to find meaning—so that you can do more with your life and benefit the world.

In that spirit of service, Frankl put forward three practical ways of discovering meaning. First, create something or accomplish a significant task—you will make meaning simply in the process of striving for an accomplishment. Second, experience something fully or love someone deeply, which is to say: Stop thinking about yourself and dive into an external experience or a relationship with another person. Third, adopt an attitude of strength and courage toward unavoidable suffering, and resolve to learn from your pain.

An alternative approach involves breaking down the quest for meaning into the components identified by Martela and Steger. Enquiring into coherence, purpose, and significance naturally elicits serious reflection on life and death—why your limited time on Earth matters and what you’re supposed to do with it. In my own work, I’ve found that this centers on trying to answer these two big questions: Why am I alive? And for what would I give my life? A sustained effort to find answers to those will reveal your life’s coherence, purpose, and significance.

Your search might also illuminate just why you feel so hollow. For example, if your best answer to the first question is “a sperm found an egg,” and to the second you say “nothing,” that could explain why life seems random and trivial to you. If you find yourself in that position, the right strategy might be to decide to live in a way that provides more existentially substantive answers. That, in turn, may well lead you to purposely adopt a set of beliefs to live by. You might, say, decide to live with the conviction that you have the gift of life in order to serve others, and you might also decide that a cause you would die for is your family’s safety and survival.

Of course, these issues are intensely personal and individual, which is why you’ll find no substitute for the deep introspective work you’ll need to do to arrive at your own right answers. And there’s no substitute for using screens and social media responsibly so that you can do that work. But as Frankl taught us, the work itself is an exciting, productive adventure.

Jonathan Haidt: End the phone-based childhood now

O ne last point I’d make is that having meaning in life can protect you to a degree when suffering inevitably comes your way. A theme that emerges throughout Haidt’s work is a critique of “safetyism,” the belief that safety is a sacred value, and of the trend among parents and schools to elevate this value above others. Safetyism, in his analysis, is a direct consequence of a decline in people’s sense of life’s meaning, because meaning makes sense of suffering—so if you lack meaning to help you cope with suffering, then safetyism is the reflexive response, to try to provide a shield against suffering.

In other words, when pain has no seeming purpose, the only logical course of action is to fight against it. In a doomed effort to forestall suffering, we protect our kids from conflict, danger, and anything that might offend or alarm them. This strategy has proved catastrophic for happiness: It leaves young people ill-prepared for the inevitable threats and challenges that everyone has to face, and for the suffering that is impossible to avoid in our highly complex world. The only reliable way to travel through that world with courage and hope is to do the work to find meaning, and encourage those we love to do so as well.

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Best Books for Teens 2023

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Authoritatively ranked lists of books sold in the United States.

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17 weeks on the list

The Reappearance of Rachel Price

by Holly Jackson

Annabel Price's mother was presumed dead, until she reappears during the filming of a documentary about her disappearance. (Ages 14 to 17)

3 weeks on the list

The Darkness Within Us

by Tricia Levenseller

Feiwel & Friends

When Chrysantha's husband, the Duke of Pholios, dies, she believes she's the sole heir to his fortune. Until Eryx Demos arrives and claims to be the duke's estranged grandson. (Ages 13 to 18)

7 weeks on the list

The Shadows Between Us

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58 weeks on the list

Divine Rivals

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38 weeks on the list

by Alex Aster

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31 weeks on the list

Ruthless Vows

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New this week

Chasing Embers

by Glenn Beck with Mikayla G. Hedrick

Ember and Sky navigate a United States of America that is now run by a corporation called Topos. (Ages 14 to 17)

by Christopher Paolini

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Ten young adult books adults should read, too

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A 2012 study showed that more than half of young adult books are actually being purchased and read by adults. So who are they really for?

Is it juvenile to read books that are marketed to teens? Some think pieces say "yes" — a legion of readers say "no." After all, what part of becoming an adult means you can no longer enjoy a good story?

(This list is just ten books. It could be a thousand. Send us your suggestions on Twitter @TheThreadMPR .)

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"An Ember in the Ashes" by Sabaa Tahir

Put "The Hunger Games" and "Harry Potter" in a literary blender, and you might get something like this. The New York Times deemed it "a worthy novel." It cracked their bestseller list almost instantly when it was published last year.

Tahir winds a fantastical tale of love and defiance in a fictional world, with shades of ancient Rome. A young slave girl fights to save her family; a soldier longs for his freedom. For series lovers, there are at least three more books coming.

My pitch to adult readers: Nobody does fantasy series quite like the YA world. Tahir's book might be shelved for teen readers, but it gets at dark issues of false hope and what it means to be human. Plus, "Game of Thrones" isn't coming back for awhile — here's something to tide you over.

"Salt to the Sea" by Ruta Sepetys

Everybody knows the Titanic, and the Lusitania got its spotlight last year with Erik Larson's "Dead Wake."

But what about the Wilhelm Gustloff?

The tragic but rarely talked about shipwreck happened in 1945 when a Soviet submarine sank a German ship filled with civilians fleeing the war. As many as 9,400 people died, making it likely the worst shipwreck in known history.

Sepetys brings the lost history to light in this historical novel, following three passengers aboard the doomed ship. The Wall Street Journal hailed it as "masterly crafted."

My pitch to adult readers: Love history? Dive in. War, tragedy and secrets meet on the deck of the Wilhelm Gustloff, and you'll catch up on little-known moment of World War II.

"Six of Crows" by Leigh Bardugo

"No one's going to read Leigh Bardugo's newest book, 'Six Of Crows,' without thinking about 'Ocean's 11," wrote Jason Sheehan, one of NPR's book reviewers.

And he's right: This story of thieves and outcasts treads in familiar waters, but it charts its own direction.

You've got a teenage crime prodigy, an underworld gang of thieves and an impossible heist that could yield millions or could bring death. Bardugo's imagination makes it sing.

My pitch to adult readers: Who doesn't love a good heist? This book will swallow your whole afternoon if you let it.

"Only Ever Yours" by Louise O'Neill

Take the eerie alternate reality of Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" and turn it up a notch.

O'Neill has created a world where all women are raised in dormitories and trained to be wives — beautiful, quiet and obedient. Isabel and Freida are 16 and best friends, dreaming of their futures and fighting to stay in the top 10 most beautiful girls in their class. But in their final year in the Schools, as the men arriving to choose brides, the futures they saw for themselves start to self-destruct.

Buzzfeed called it "an ingenious exploration of gender roles, female identity, and female competition."

My pitch to adult readers: Like Margaret Atwood? Like "1984"? Like Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go"? Then you'll love this terrifying future tale.

"The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" by Sherman Alexie

Alexie's 2007 novel is a clever, frank and revealing portrait of what life is really like for teenagers. There's enough alcohol, profanity and honesty to land it on the most-challenged book list , year after year.

The book takes the form of Junior's diary. Junior is 14, and he just transferred from the school on the reservation where he lives to the all-white school in the neighboring town — the one with an Indian for its mascot.

Navigating high school, first crushes and the difficulty of staying close to his friends still at the reservation school, Junior's diary drives straight through tragedy, love and disappointment.

My pitch to adult readers: Who doesn't want to read one of the most-banned books of all time? Banned books are the good ones.

"This One Summer" by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki

Everyone should have a graphic novel on their reading list — and you can start with this one.

This beautifully illustrated book is an ode to the feeling of summer, and to the feeling of being in between — still a kid, not quite a teenager.

Rose and Windy have always spent their summers at the lake, swimming and riding bikes, until they find themselves in the last gasp of childhood — facing down bickering parents, teenage bullies and the longing to just grow up already.

My pitch to adult readers: Remember how excited you used to get for summer? This wistful look at those lost days is a lovely trip.

"Bone Gap" by Laura Ruby

This is a book not just to read, but to re-read. Ruby's voice is intoxicating in its strangeness.

She brings readers along on the stories of two lives changed forever. "Bone Gap" follows Roza, a young girl kidnapped from a small Midwestern town, and Finn, the only witness to the crime.

The New York Times Book Review raved : "It's a novel about actual changes in worldview, and all its science and myth and realism and magic are marshaled, finally, to answer crucial questions about empathy and difference, and the way we see people we love."

My pitch to adult readers: Imagine Stephen King with a heap of magical realism.

"Akata Witch" by Nnedi Okorafor

No YA book dealing with magic can avoid a comparison to "Harry Potter." "Akata Witch" is no exception, but it lives up to the expectations that come when you write about a magic school.

Okorafor's book slams magic right into everyday Nigeria. A 12-year-old albino girl named Sunny is forced to stay out of the sunlight because of her skin, leaving her feeling trapped. But she soon discovers she is a Leopard — a person with magical powers. (The opposite of a "Lamb," a person with no powers.)

She joins a class of fellow magical students who must take on a dangerous task. (Yes, I know, it sounds even more like "Harry Potter" now. Just read it.)

My pitch to adult readers: Okorafor, the daughter of Nigerian immigrants, provides a much-appreciated new entry to the world of magic­ that doesn't center around Europe.

"Eleanor & Park" by Rainbow Rowell

Here's a good, old-fashioned high school romance: Awkward, painful and light-your-heart-on-fire.

Rowell brings 1986 roaring back to life in all its hair-sprayed glory. She also brings back the humiliation of the school bus.

Eleanor's wild hair is out of control, her clothes are weird and her home life is falling apart around her. Park is half-Korean, making him one of the only non-white kids in his entire Omaha school. Both outsiders, they're drawn together by mixtapes, comic books and the feeling that they'll just never fit in.

My pitch to adult readers : John Green, the czar of young adult books, made it for me in The New York Times Book Review : "'Eleanor & Park' reminded me not just what it's like to be young and in love with a girl, but also what it's like to be young and in love with a book."

"Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" by Jesse Andrews

This book is billed as "the funniest book you'll ever read about death."

Andrews mixes the misery of high school with the misery of leukemia in a way that still holds its humor. Yes, it seems like there's a whole subgenre of "cancer books" for young adults, but this has a genuine and inspired heart behind it.

When Greg's mom forces him to hang out with a girl in his class who just got a cancer diagnosis, he'd rather do anything else. But their forced friendship ends up surprising both of them.

My pitch to adult readers: High school sucks. This book agrees.

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The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Michael Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson, Nina Lassam and Nick Pitman.

Jonathan Abrams writes about the intersections of sports and culture and the changing cultural scenes in the South. More about Jonathan Abrams

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