--- title: The Hunger Games History: How YA Books Became a Category description: The idea of separating out books for teenagers dates back to the 1920s canonical: https://time.com/4121206/hunger-games-ya-books/ author: Merrill Fabry article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-11-20T17:00:24.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T12:47:33.615Z article:section: History og:title: Before 'The Hunger Games': How Young Adult Books First Became a Category og:description: The idea of separating out books for teenagers dates back to the 1920s og:url: https://time.com/4121206/hunger-games-ya-books/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt701fb143b4c59421/69887211cf40a80105c40c06/mockingjay.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Before 'The Hunger Games': How Young Adult Books First Became a Category twitter:description: The idea of separating out books for teenagers dates back to the 1920s twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt701fb143b4c59421/69887211cf40a80105c40c06/mockingjay.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Before _The Hunger Games_: How Young Adult Books First Became a Category  by [Merrill Fabry](https://time.com/author/merrill-fabry/)  ## Merrill Fabry Nov 20, 2015 5:00 PM UTC  Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins Mockingjay by Suzanne CollinsDavid Cooper—Toronto Star/Getty Images  by [Merrill Fabry](https://time.com/author/merrill-fabry/)  ## Merrill Fabry Nov 20, 2015 5:00 PM UTC As the movie version of the last _Hunger Games_ book, _Mockingjay, Part 2,_ arrives in theaters Friday, the popularity of books and movies geared to young adults is a well-established phenomenon. Still, that wave of young-adult fiction is frequently seen as a cultural force for this generation—when in actuality the YA category is older than you’d expect. Although there were 19th century books about and aimed at young readers—including Louisa May Alcott’s _Little Women_, Lewis Carroll’s _Alice in Wonderland_ and Mark Twain’s _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—_it wasn’t until the mid-20th century that a separate category dedicated to the interests of teenagers emerged. It was a librarian in New York City, Mabel Williams, who helped promote the idea, the New York Public Library [notes.](http://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/04/20/how-did-ya-become-ya) In 1929 she and her staff published their first “NYPL Books for Young People” list, which the NYPL has continued to publish annually. Today, they continue this list on their teen-focused blog and list of “[Best Books for Teens](http://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/12/05/best-books-teens-year).” In 1944 Margaret Scoggin, another NYPL librarian, changed the title of her column for the _Library Journal_ to “Books for Young Adults,” in one of the earliest uses of the term. The Young Adult Library Services Association was [founded in 1957](http://www.ala.org/yalsa/aboutyalsa/history/briefhistory) as the Young Adult Services Division of the American Library Association. The YALSA has influenced publishing and library collections, encouraging the focus on books geared to adolescents. In the following decade the term became more widely used, if sometimes derided. And S.E. Hinton’s _The Outsiders_ (1967) is often cited as a key publication in the development of YA fiction. In a [1968 book review TIME](http://time.com/vault/issue/1968-10-11/page/129/) was still skeptical of “that artificial category of literature known as ‘young adult novels.’” The review went on to question the basis of such categorization: “But to what worthwhile end? Surely today’s ‘young adults’ do not need such pallid dramatizations of their problems when Simon and Garfunkel and the Beatles do it so much better.” The 1970s have been [called](https://books.google.com/books?id=un4RJ8rOTTgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=michael+cart&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAGoVChMIpaHQrL-dyQIVC2s-Ch0DHgjz#v=onepage&q=golden%20age&f=false) “the first golden age” of YA, featuring books by Judy Blume (_Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret_ was published in 1970) and Robert Cormier (_The Chocolate War_ was published in 1974). “Problem novels” dominated, dealing with a single dramatic issue—divorce, bullying, identity, drug abuse, poverty—at length. These stories tended to devolve into formulaic constructions and though there were some exceptions, the category experienced a dip in popularity and publishing rates after that period. Things soon turned around. In a 1999 article[“Reads Like Teen Spirit,”](http://time.com/vault/issue/1999-07-19/page/83/) TIME wrote about the new focus on books for teens, as booksellers created specific areas of stores and websites for them: “Teen fiction may, in fact,” the magazine noted, “be the first literary genre born of the Internet.” The exploration of literary form with multiple narrators, letters, shifting time periods as well as “stark themes, complex plot lines and ambiguous resolutions,” marked a movement beyond problem novels. By then TIME was more upbeat about the possibilities of the books: “Teen books may not be able to compete with the visuals of _The Matrix_, but they do provide a few hours of what teens may need most: time to think. And there’s nothing bleak about that.” Suzanne Collins’ _Hunger Games_ was published in 2008\. The trilogy sold 50 million [copies](http://mediaroom.scholastic.com/press-release/scholastic-announces-updated-us-figures-suzanne-collinss-bestselling-hunger-games-tril) (print and digital) by 2012, when it [surpassed](http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/17/amazon-crowns-hunger-games-as-its-top-seller-surpassing-harry-potter-series/?%5Fr=0) _Harry Potter—_the first book of which came out just at the beginning of this most recent YA wave—as Amazon’s top-selling series. But the category had some help getting to the top: Despite its name, over half of the young adult books [purchased](http://www.bowker.com/news/2012/YOung-Adult-Books-Attract-Growing-Numbers-of-Adult-Fans.html) in 2012 were bought by adults 18-44. **_Read more:_**[ The Real-Life Hunger Games: Meet the Ancient Women Who Lived Like Katniss](http://time.com/3598421/real-female-gladiators/) **_Read TIME’s first story about_** **The Hunger Games** **_, from 2009, here in the TIME Vault:_** [Game On](http://time.com/vault/issue/2009-09-07/page/67/) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4121206/hunger-games-ya-books/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4121206/hunger-games-ya-books/"},"headline":"Before The Hunger Games: How Young Adult Books First Became a Category","datePublished":"2015-11-20T17:00:24.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T12:47:33.615Z","description":"The idea of separating out books for teenagers dates back to the 1920s","url":"https://time.com/4121206/hunger-games-ya-books/","keywords":["Books","Hunger Games","book"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt701fb143b4c59421/69887211cf40a80105c40c06/mockingjay.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Merrill Fabry","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/merrill-fabry/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt701fb143b4c59421/69887211cf40a80105c40c06/mockingjay.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins","caption":"Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins","creditText":"David Cooper—Toronto Star/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/books/","name":"Books"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4121206/hunger-games-ya-books/","name":"Before The Hunger Games: How Young Adult Books First Became a Category"}}]}] ```