As summer dawns on YAastan, we await the awakening of the trolls from their long winter’s naps. Last year, Meghan Cox Gordon was the once-sleepy troll whose blood was most roused by the early June sun. Cox Gordon , to her credit, is a book person, and though she trolled us all with her preposterous and hysterical (in the bad sense) piece on the relative darkness of YA, I don’t actually believe this was her intent.

The trolls have risen earlier this summer, and one scribbler called Jason Koebler has rolled out of bed to whip the citizens of YAastan into a frothy frenzy with a piece on the US News & World Report web site. Given Mr. Koebler’s prodigious output, I do worry that he hasn’t had time to stop and admire his trollish handiwork (viz: “#ratingYA”).

Look, all joking aside, there’s nothing to this. I’m actually being unkind to Cox Gordon’s idiotic piece by comparing it to this one. We’ve officially spent a million more minutes reacting to this than the author spent writing and researching it. For the love of Robert Cormier, look at what this guy wrote before he wrote the YA piece!

Follow the money. Who has an economic interest in rating YA? Who wants to pay to make that happen? Who wants to alienate all the adult readers of the genre?

If there were Congressional hearings about this issue, I still wouldn’t be all that worried. But this is nothing.

On the other hand, follow the money:

Can you see the money?

Those links must be really important is they’re underlined twice, right?

They thought the piece was so important that they decided to hide it under this very important “survey”…

If you don’t think there’s money to be made in publishing inflammatory articles that hit close to home in heavily social networked communities of interest, then you don’t understand the Internet.

I suggest we answer the headline (and always beware of articles whose headlines are questions) to this piece with a simple “no” and get back to making books.