This week’s Top Ten Tuesday asks what we would make authors write about if we had that power.  I have very strong opinions about this topic as you can see from how much I feature on the Reader/Blogger Wishlist tumblr. I mostly read YA lit, and I have a teenager who mostly reads YA lit, so I decided to devote my wishlist to what I want to see in YA lit.

I want to see the following:

• books featuring middle class black teens as the main character(s)
• teens struggling with anxiety or other mental illnesses
• teens in recovery from alcoholism/addiction or who have friends/family members in recovery from alcoholism/addiction
• nerdy/quirky teens who are not ashamed of their quirky/nerdy interests and don’t feel a need to breach the “popular” crowd (whatever that means)
• nerd competitions such as Odyssey of the Mind, robotics clubs, math team, etc.
• any kind of specialized summer camp (daughter attends Duke TIP, has friends that go to dance camp, theater camp, Boy Scouts/Girl Scouts camp, computer camp, etc.)
• teens in Boy and/or Girl Scouts
• involved parents
• teens with non-visible or non-obvious disabilities
• teens who try their best and fail
• pregnant teens and teen parents
• regular teens doing regular things (i.e., dealing with friend, family, and school drama)
• teens that don’t live in the city but still live in apartments
• teens whose parents aren’t rich or who aren’t the only “poor” teens in their school  (in quotation marks because ya lit poor isn’t usually real people poor)
• teens whose parents are struggling with money so the teens can’t do everything they want to do
• interracial adoption
• religious teens/teens questioning religion (not just Christian, and I’m not talking about Christian fiction, which is its own genre)
• teens that go on vacation and don’t have a romance

I want the books my daughter reads to reflect her reality, basically.

That’s way more than 10, I know, but I still feel like I missed some. Tell me, readers: what would you add to the list?