“Targeted at readers 12 to 18 years old, [the genre] sprang into being near the end of the turbulent decade of the 1960s – in 1967, to be specific, a year that saw the publication of two seminal novels for young readers: S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders and Robert Lipsyte’s The Contender. … Before these two novels, literature for 12- to 18-year-olds was about as realistic as a Norman Rockwell painting.”