“If it seems strange to think about the emphatically adult-programming TV show Game of Thrones in conjunction with an essay about Young Adult novels, I don’t think it should. The question is about genre and sophistication; if we could read very very generously, we might see, in Graham’s essay, the claim that our culture requires sophisticated discernment in its adults, discernment these adults will develop by reading complex, morally-ambiguous stories and will not develop by indulging in escapist, simplistic, and predictable genre texts. I’m not swayed by the argument, but staging it this way, we can see how she might have, logically speaking, written about fantasy rather than YA; fantasy, too, is a genre often disparaged as formulaic and immature. And the pleasures of YA are very similar to the pleasures of fantasy.”

Sarah Mesle on Game of Thrones, Season 4: “The Watchers on the Wall”