While I teach at two elementary schools, I am a big fan of Teen Librarian Toolbox, a blog about youth services in public libraries. There's plenty of food for thought to be found there, and students as young as fourth grade can start reading young adult literature. But this post really caught my attention. Here is a quote from the author Stephanie Wilkes:

The discussions continued and as we got to know each other a little more, I realized that my teens were looking for characters that identified them but not necessarily by race, gender, or even life situations...they were looking for key traits in characters or even sometimes, just a certain feeling evoked by a genre.  For example, some of my boys were madly in love with a set of Sarah Dessen books that I brought.  SARAH DESSEN.  For incarcerated African-American male youth.  Seriously.  And even though I never wish to judge my teens to wonder what they are reading...it blew my mind. 

I don't work with incarcerated teens, obviously, but her work can be applied to all young readers this way: basically, all readers want the same things. They want good plots and interesting characters, but they also want escapism and wonder. For the same reasons we watch comedy shows and cartoons and dramas rather than solely the news, young readers want to be taken away by a book. They don't want to be lectured however creatively, and they don't always need a familiar situation to enjoy a story, otherwise fantasy wouldn't sell.

I find that the best fiction has characters that are relatable due to character traits. That shouldn't dismiss relatability by age, race, gender, or orientation. But the readers should view the characters as people, not flat symbols for an issue or moral. While I'm a fan of fiction that addresses current issues, I think such fiction should be guided by the characters first, plots second, and the issues will become brighter and more important as a result.