The young adult boom: it's a mixed bag for teens of color.

GIVEN THE COMMERCIAL SUCCESS OF THE HARRY POTTER SERIES, publishers are now treating teenage readers as a major consumer market. The number of young adult fiction books published has risen by about 30 percent in the last five years, and in this rush for profit, communities of color have been a target, for better and worse.

Much of what is available to young readers follows the cliche of a young person of color dealing with an identity crisis because of their race. But some books are actually about teens with a smart and sassy approach to their racial identities. Either way, these books are garnering teenage and adult authors thousands of dollars and publicity, as was the case with Little, Brown and Company, which signed Kaavya Viswanathan, a South Asian teenager, for a six-figure book contract. Later, her novel was found to be partly plagiarized.

The potential of the young adult market has not gone unnoticed by famous writers of color. Walter Mosley's book 47 won the Carl Brandon Society Parallax Award this year. Edwidge Danticat and Sherman Alexie have young adult novels coming out soon, and the boom in teen fiction has allowed more authors of color to publish.

"One of the major changes in young adult fiction has been the arrival of authentic ethnic voices," says Joseph Bruchac, an American-Indian author of more than 70 books for both adults and children. Bruchac is happy to see a shift. "A lot of the books that were published over the last half-century which featured people who were not white were often close to racist in their portrayals and, frequently, extremely inaccurate."

Bruchac and others note that parents and teen readers alike are faced with more options in choosing books. So, we've compiled a list of classics and new favorites that address issues of race, class, gender and sexuality for teenagers (and the rest of us) in an intelligent and thoughtful way.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

THE CLASSICS