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1 Introduction YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE: DEFINITION, HISTORICAL CONTEXT, AND INCLUSION IN THE CURRICULUM “Young adult literature” (YAL) is a term that Michael Cart, on behalf of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), defines as “inherently amorphous, for its constituent terms ‘young adult’ and ‘literature’ are dynamic, changing as culture and society—which provide their context— change.” Some experts in the field, such as Chris Crowe, describe YAL as including “all genres of literature published since 1967 that are written for and marketed to young adults,” whom he argues are typically between grades 7 and 12. The date—1967—refers to the year that S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders was published and marketed specifically to adolescent readers it is also the year that many scholars identify as the beginning of young adult literature as a field. Since then, young adult literature as a category of books has increased exponentially and has grown to include not only real- istic fiction but also fantasy, science fiction, romance, adventure, poetry, graphic novels, and nonfiction. With the population of American adoles- cents estimated at 42 million and climbing, the number of young adult literature books being written and read in the United States is unlikely to decline in the near future. The positive attributes of young adult literature have been well-estab- lished by scholars in our field. Cart notes that these include YAL’s capacity to help readers see themselves on the pages of the books, to foster “under- standing, empathy, and compassion by offering vividly realized portraits of