Är problemen ett problem för ungdomsboken? Hur uppfattar ungdomar beskrivningarna av problem i samtidsrealistisk ungdomslitteratur utgiven 2001?
There can be a gap between the author and the reader. This gap is especially remarkable when the author is an adult and the reader is a young person. The librarian has an important role as an intermediary of literature when it comes to selecting literature for young people. From this perspective the purpose of this paper has been to investigate how young people comprehend the problems and the stories of youth novels, first published in 2001, and to investigate to what extent descriptions of problems occur in this literature and what kind of problems that are described. The investigation consists of three parts: an examination of reviews of youth novels written by editors from Bibliotekstjänst and an examination of a number of youth to examine a number of youth novels that have been read, and sixteen interviews with college students in the first and third grade have also been done. To analyze the results I have chosen to use different parts of literature reception science. The result indicates that the young people who have been interviewed are mostly positive to the book they have read. They think that the author often has succeeded in capturing the thoughts of the youth as one of the young interviewed expressed it. They recognize the main plot but the extent of recognition varies when it comes to the different problems that are described in the books. The older youth often reacted on the form of the book. A split was shown between those who liked the theme in the book and felt that the book is a youth novel and those who felt that they soon will become an adults and want to be addressed in a more grown-up way. The absolute majority of the youth novel s published in 2001 that had problems as a theme also often included several different problems.