If you are younger than 50-55, stop telling people that YA didn& #39;t exist when you were young.

It did.

Even if you didn& #39;t know it, it did.

A Wizard of Earthsea was published as YA in 1968.

The Outsiders was published as YA in 1967.

I& #39;m seeing this everywhere, including from authors. Sheesh, people. Just because you didn& #39;t read in the YA section doesn& #39;t mean it didn& #39;t exist.

I should add: the category& #39;s roots began in the 1910s and 1920s when 2 @NYPL librarians coined the term and started curating books for their newly dubbed "teen-age" patrons. That it was a full-fledged category by the late 60s shouldn& #39;t be surprising.

And if you& #39;re younger than me (45) your local library very likely DID have a YA section, even if you didn& #39;t notice it. Ours was one bookshelf upstairs from the children& #39;s room, stocked with Lois Duncan and scandalous books on how our bodies were changing at that age.

Access and knowing something exists are definitely an issue--a lot of people didn& #39;t have access (I& #39;m surprised I had access to Lois Duncan in 1987; our nearest bookstore was 1/2 hour away and we were a tiny Carnegie library). And the selection was VERY white. But it EXISTED.