Words on hubski, words on facebook, even words at The Atlantic, they don't help as much as Dostoevsky, Hemingway or Woolf. The argument further goes that young adult fiction really cratered a generation's reading ability, because it's so damn easy. It seems logical (as a parent, teacher, librarian or even as a teen who "likes to read") to think of young adult as the next step on the ladder in the hierarchy from children's literature to classics and nonfiction, but it's more like a broken rung.

Yeah but I wanted to have a discussion, dammit. What you read is definitely important, but what, exactly is the impact of reading some sort of young adult fiction versus, say, Mark Twain at a young age? Or to pick an elementary school example, The Giver? As a kid I read plenty of Harry Potter, Eragon (hey I didn't know any better), etc., which I think could be classified as young adult fiction (maybe not?) as did many people in my age bracket. Is there more of a negative stimulus from reading that type of work compared to a positive stimulus of reading children's literature or nonfiction? Paging lil.