Chapter 5 - Writing Childhood: Young Adult and Children’s Literature

Summary

This chapter addresses the history, evolution, and status of Irish texts for young people as well as trajectories of Irish publishing of youth literature. The significance of Irish children’s literature and the importance of a national literature produced by Irish authors for young Irish readers have been increasingly recognised and confirmed over the last four decades, for example by the establishment of the Children’s Literature Association of Ireland in the 1980s and the creation of Laureate na nÓg in 2010. Since the turn of the millennium, the emergence and commercial success of Irish young adult (YA) fiction and its exploration of adolescent turbulence have extended the imaginative territories addressed by Irish youth literature. The momentum of YA fiction has generated valuable opportunities for considering how youth is positioned within Irish society. This chapter considers what these contemporary works tell us about childhood and young adulthood from an Irish perspective.