Best-selling Books For Young Adults

How do you determine fiction for young adult, and how is it categorized differently? Fiction books written for the age group of 14 to 21 is generally categorized as young adult books. This genre was first categorized in 1802 when Sarah Trimmer described a category of human life as young adulthood in her literature periodical, The Guardian of Education.

She divided books for children into 2 categories; books for children (for those under 14 years of age) and books for young persons (for those between 14 and 21).

This categorization of reading age groups though, was not used widely then, and it was only in the latter half of the nineteenth century that this category in literature started gaining prominence with many books for young adults gaining recognition.

How are good books for young readers different from other categories of fiction? Most young adult fiction books feature a protagonist, who is an adolescent. Also, the subject matter of the book may deal with the problems faced by youngsters.

Regardless of the genre of the book, the experiences of the protagonist may have some similarities with that of the reader due to similar age group. Many of these books focus on the challenges faced by the youth of that particular age. The writing styles vary greatly, however, most books have common characteristic of the plot, setting, and characterization.

Bestsellers for the younger group have now crossed categories, and have become popular with adults as well. This may be due to the fact that, many of the young adults have now crossed the age barrier, and also because the subject matter of many of these books has become more mature in nature.

With the popularity of books like Harry Potter and Twilight, the young adult genre is popular among writers. In this list, we have made a compilation of those books that have been constantly picked out as the most popular books in book reviews, and have been notable contributions to the genre.

• The Swiss Family Robinson - Johann David Wyss
• Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
• The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
• Tom Brown's Schooldays - Thomas Hughes
• Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Caroll
• Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain

• Heidi (1880) - Johanna Spyri
• Treasure Island (1883) - Robert Louis Stevenson
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
• Kidnapped (1886) - Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Jungle Book (1894) - Rudyard Kipling
• Moonfleet - J. Meade Falkner
• House of Night - P. C. Cast and Kristin Cast

• Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - Judy Blume
• Forever - Judy Blume
• The Princess Diaries - Meg Cabot
• Obernewtyn Chronicles - Isobelle Carmody
• Artemis Fowl series - Eoin Colfer
• Lord of the Flies - William Golding
• The Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
• The Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer

• His Dark Materials Trilogy - Philip Pullman
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Series - Rick Riordan
• Harry Potter Series - J. K. Rowling
• The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger
• Bartimaeus Trilogy - Jonathan Stroud
• Gossip Girl Series - Cecily von Ziegesar
• True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle - Edward Irving Wotis
• The Pigman - Paul Zindel

• The Millennium Trilogy - Stieg Larsson
• Charlie St. Cloud: A Novel - Ben Sherwood
• To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
• A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket/Daniel Handler
• The Inheritance Cycle - Christopher Paolini
• Stardust - Neil Gaiman
• The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank

• The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
• The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
• The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova
• Animal Farm - George Orwell
• The Lord of the Rings Trilogy - J. R. R. Tolkien
• Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
• Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
• Adrian Mole Series - Sue Townsend

Now that you know which are some of the best-selling books, rush to your nearest book store, and pick out the books that intrigue you. You never know some of you may discover a hidden writer.