ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Is Young-Adult Fiction So Popular? “The rise of the young-adult novel is the most significant literary event of this century,” writes Tanner Greer, who analyzes the fantasies in The Hunger Games, Twilight, Harry Potter and other phenomenally successful young-adult (YA) novels.

This is the defining feature of the YA fictional society: powerful, inscrutable authorities with a mysterious and obsessive interest in the protagonist. Sometimes the hidden hands of this hidden world are benign. More often, they do evil. But the intentions behind these spying eyes do not much matter. Be they vile or kind, they inevitably create the kind of protagonist about whom twenty-first century America loves to read: a young hero defined by her frustration with, or outright hostility toward, every system of authority that she encounters. . . .

Yet if these novels speak to the sum of our anxieties, they are a poor guide to escaping them. In the world of YA speculative fiction, those who possess such power cannot be trusted. Even worse than possessing power is to seek it: our fables teach that to desire responsibility is to be corrupted by it. They depict greatness as a thing to be selected, not striven, for. This fantasy is well fit for an elite class whose standing is decided by admissions boards, but a poor guide for an elite class tasked with actually leading our communities.

Of course, it’s a great guide for millennials marching in pointless protests.