Photo by Dan Dan the Binary man

Humorist and writer Joel Stein wrote a short opinion piece for The New York Times’ “Up For Debate,” column this week, proclaiming that adults should not be reading young adult fiction.

“You can’t take an adult seriously when he’s debating you over why Twilight vampires are O.K. with sunlight. If my parents had read ‘Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing’ at the same time as I did, I would have looked into boarding school,” he wrote.

Stein almost certainly wrote this piece in reaction to the record-breaking mania surrounding the March 23, opening of “The Hunger Games” movie, and despite the fact that he doesn’t mind adults watching Pixar, apparently reading the stories behind these films is unforgivably facile.

But the debate doesn’t originate with Stein. Read some opinions for and against putting the “adult” in young adult fiction.

For:
>> Foreveryoungadult.com
>> A 2010, NYT essay touting YA’s credibility.

Middle of the road:
>> Why teens should read adult books and why adults shoulr read YA at The Globe and Mail.

Against (there were not a lot of anti-adults and YA-ers out there):
>> A blog post against adults reading young adult fiction.