Young adult literature is hot. According to the Young Adult Library Services Association, sales of books aimed at the 12—18 age group grew 20% between 1999 and 2005. With general market YA such a hot commodity, and religion soldiering on as a steady growth category—up 5.2% in 2007, according to the Association of American Publishers—it's no surprise that Christian publishers are scrambling to marry the two success stories. A number of Christian houses have started their own YA lines, aiming to be relevant to teens' needs while remaining true to a core Christian message.

New Players

This month sees the launch of Zondervan's first-ever YA line, with nine initial titles by such authors as Bill Myers, Melody Carlson and Bryan Davis. “Back in the summer of 2006, we started looking at how well YA fiction was doing in the general market,” says Annette Bourland, v-p and publisher of Zonderkidz. “It was a booming part of the general marketplace, and it was just beginning with a few books in the CBA marketplace. We decided if we were going to do it, we would do it in a big way.” Zondervan plans to publish 10—15 YA titles per year in a wide range of genres, including fantasy, chick lit, suspense and supernatural fiction.

Thomas Nelson decided two and a half years ago to substantially augment its YA emphasis. “Our fiction team had been focusing on ages 18 and up, and the kids' group had been focusing on young readers,” says Allen Arnold, senior v-p and publisher for fiction at Nelson. “So there was a black hole of products for readers between 12 and 18.” Nelson launched its YA line in 2007 and has had its best success so far with established novelists like Ted Dekker, whose first two installments in the suspenseful Lost Books series have sold more than 100,000 units since December.

Another fresh face is FaithWords, which decided just last year to make a splash with Christian YA since its parent company, Hachette, has been so successful in YA for the general market with the Twilight, Gossip Girls and Clique series. This month kicks off the new FaithWords YA line with It's All About Us, Shelley Adina's first in a planned six-book series called It's All About Us, about juniors at an elite boarding school. The debut novel will have a 65,000-copy first print run. For slightly younger readers, a four-book series called the Miracle Girls (by Anne Dayton and May Vanderbilt) will launch in September.

These new players on the YA scene come alongside a more quiet growth in Christian teen fiction at other houses. Julee Schwarzburg, Multnomah senior fiction editor, says the house has had strong success with Melody Carlson, whose Diary of a Teenage Girl series launched in 2000 and is still going strong, now on book 15. Carlson is a fixture at NavPress as well: the 12 books in her True Colors series have sold 285,000 copies to date for NavPress's Th1nk line for 16- to 23-year-old readers, which launched in the summer of 2003.

Growth Factors and Design

Why the upsurge in YA? One reason is just plain demographics: with anywhere from 24 to 30 million young adults in America, Millennials (aka Generation Y) are second only to baby boomers in sheer numbers. And this MySpace generation boasts impressive disposable income. Thankfully, some are choosing to spend those dollars on books, not just iTunes downloads; Zondervan's focus research found that 41% of teens are buying books for themselves with their own money. What's more, “boys are more likely to purchase most of their own books, whereas girls will read something their mom picked out for them,” says Zondervan's Bourland.

Cover design is hugely important for YA readers, she says. “Teen buyers are very sophisticated. They don't want their covers to look like juvenile novels, and so our designers spend hours researching.” Bourland notes that the “hot” colors right now for teen fiction covers include “colors you would have seen on countertops and bathroom tiles during the 1950s”: retro pink, retro blue and spring green. Boys, she notes, go for cover designs with visual illusions and layered images.

Thomas Nelson's Arnold agrees that cool designs are essential, and says the press might go through 200 versions for a single title, tweaking incessantly over a period of months. “Covers are even more important for YA than adult books, because if teens don't feel like it passes the initial test—if they don't want to be seen holding it or reading it—the concept of the book doesn't even have a chance.”

Shelving also is an issue. While most ABA stores shelve YA Christian fiction along with general market YA, some Christian stores still don't quite know where to place it. “Adult Christian fiction is read widely by kids as young as 13,” says FaithWords editor Anne Horch, who advocates shelving YA with adult fiction in Christian stores. Zondervan's Bourland has another idea: to break out a special YA zone that is distinct from adult areas and especially from the children's section. “Teenagers are not going to shop for a novel near the I Can Read books,” she says. “We're trying to have a special YA section near the music, because we have found that when teens are shopping in Christian stores now, they are there for music, not books.”

Flirting with the Edges

However teens find the books, what keeps them reading is content, plain and simple. And publishers are clear about one thing: say good-bye to Sweet Valley High. Just as YA content in the general market is getting edgier—Gossip Girls, anyone?—YA Christian fiction is changing as well. “It's evolving to remain relevant in response to the tough issues teens today are facing,” says Multnomah's Schwarzburg.

How far is too far? For the All About Us series, FaithWords is certainly pushing the envelope, says Horch, but not to prove some kind of point. “We're just trying to portray real-life situations,” she says. “But since CBA fiction has been so overly conservative in the past, our books seem edgy by comparison.”

Thomas Nelson has encountered the “edgy” accusation with its manga for teens, according to Allen Arnold. In the Serenity manga series, the main character is a worldly, even jaded, teen girl: “She's not a virgin, she has done some drugs and drinking, and she has a terrible relationship with her mother,” says Arnold. Serenity doesn't become a Christian until halfway through the 10-volume series—but by that point, some retailers had given up. “So the issue in the CBA market is: how do you get a product that a teen girl would love to have and would totally relate to as true to her situation, and tell that story honestly but not upset the gatekeepers?” Arnold asks. Even Serenity's squeaky-clean faux swearing was anathema. “When Serenity would get angry, we'd do the Beetle Bailey thing with the &*!%@!,” he says. “Cursing was implied but not explicit. And even that is too edgy for some parents.”

Clearly, it's tough to balance depicting the rough stuff of adolescence in a realistic way without offending conservative sensibilities. Novelist Claudia Mair Burney understands this tension well. “Christian fiction seems to play it safe so often, but adolescence is inherently unsafe,” she explains. “If we can't show Christ as redeemer in the midst of people cutting themselves, starving themselves or having sex before they're ready, why would we write at all?” Burney's latest YA novel, The Exorsistah, comes out from Pocket on July 22 and will push some buttons: it's about a homeless teenage girl with a spiritual gift for discerning demons. “Exorcism is not child's play,” warns Burney.

At NavPress, writers aim for realism while offering hope and faith, says Rebekah Guzman, senior editor of student resources. She points to Lisa Samson as a writer who does this well. In her Hollywood Nobody series, Samson features a mature-for-her-age teen girl traveling around the country in an RV with her mom, who works on location for the film industry. The series deals with relationships and finding identity, but “always with humor and memorable character portraits,” says Guzman. Book 2, Finding Hollywood Nobody, just released in April, with the third and fourth installments due in July and September.