Christian young adult fiction has been given a cautious thumbs-up in a leading online secular magazine.

A reference to the genre offering "a surprisingly empowering guide to adolescence" concludes an article in Slate, which notes the rise of the category with more than 2 million copies of the "Christy Miller" and "Sierra Jensen" series.

Amid the "piety" of the genre's story lines "are explicitly positive--even feminist--messages like positive body image, hard work, and the importance of not just settling for just any guy-that present a grounded alternative to the Gossip Girl landscape," the reports adds.

Ruth Graham--an editor and writer in New York who shares the name of the late wife of evangelist Billy Graham--says that the books' "larger takeaway ... is not that girls should imagine themselves as subservient wives, but that they should prepare themselves for adulthood," adding, "As far as girlish escapism, it's better than holding out for a Prada purse."

Graham traces Christian fiction back to the 17th century and observes that series for women and girls first became widespread in the 19th century. Catherine Marshall's 1967 Christy--which gave the name to the annual Christian fiction awards to be announced for 2010 this weekend--remains "the gold standard for Christian fiction for women," she says.

The article references Debbie Viguié's 2008 Zondervan novel, The Summer of Cotton Candy, in which the lead character tells the young man she is seeing: "I want a guy who values the same things I do." That is "a pretty excellent guideline for teens of any religious background," Graham writes.

However, the books are "often didactic and formulaic, and a secular parent should think twice before buying them for his or her child," she says.

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