The choice is yours. It is about young people reading books and recognizing themselves. Many of its practitioners are too old to be called youths any more and the whole thing has passed into the mainstream. It's difficult to pin down, but you know the sort of thing - futuristic films, loud music, graphic mags, computer games, lazy days, love, dance, drugs and books. Of course books are part of that culture - but not if you're at school.
Children are far too young for youth culture, which is really only suitable for adults.
It's so rich - sexy, loud, violent, ironic and cruel, but also beautiful, dreamy and intense. Schools have an obvious problem with this kind of thing. Things are worse than ever right now, with government treating books as a mere aid to acquiring reading skills rather than something in their own right, but the fact that schools are educational institutions does give them a certain bias in their buying power - one reason why books for teenagers have been so slow to take on the experience of other media. Without the support of schools it's quite possible that children's books would decline into one of those arts which can't survive without grants, like modern dance and poetry. Fortunately, books are such a great teaching aid that we're likely to carry on for a good while with their support, but in the end, the survival of novels for young people lies with readers wanting to read.