In the essay ‘Pay Attention to the World’, written shortly before her death in 2004, Susan Sontag argues that fiction is ‘one of the resources we have for helping us to make sense of our lives … [it] educates the heart and the feelings and teaches us how to be in the world’. While Sontag’s insight recognises the power of literature in general, the qualities she identifies are particularly significant in young adult fiction. Genius Squad and At Seventeen are two examples of the ‘rite of passage’ novel, where adolescent characters’ quests for self-discovery illuminate parallel themes in the lives of teenage readers.