I will give you a topic, discuss amongst yourselves

[megwrites]

Actually, this is something I've been wondering for a while now.

Are YA books actually intended solely for young adults anymore? Because it seems like a lot of YA bestsellers are becoming more and more popular with the decidedly not-so-young adult set, and I'm wondering if authors have started keeping older audiences in mind when they set out to write books in the YA genre.

I can't say I read very much YA myself, nor do I imagine that I'll be writing it any time soon. Which is not an insult to the genre. I can see why readers outside the advertised age bracket are attracted to some of the books coming out in the genre. Many of them are better written, less cliche, and all around more exciting that some of the so-called "adult" fare.

However, I guess the genre boundaries interest me, as well as what attracts adult readers to some of the works in the genre and what factors into the minds of those who write it. How does writing a book for a younger audience change what you do, or does it?

For that matter, how does one differentiate between a book that's "YA" and a "children's book" or a "middle grade" book - and where did the term "Young Adult" originate from?

Comments

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that some YA books are not really YA, but are simply categorized that way because of one or more characters are not adult.

This often bothers me because I write novels with teenage characters that I do NOT consider YA, but will probably be categorized that way anyway.

Having said that, though, I do think some (not all) YA novels are better written, perhaps because they're shorter and there's less tendency to over-write? I don't know.

I often find more appealing characters there. In YA UF, for example, I don't find the female characters to be as bitchy and there's real story because you can't fill it all up with sex.

Just a thought.

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

It's interesting that a lot of the discussion on the YA/Adult borderline seems to stem from sexual content, and I think that says a lot more about the adults than the YA readers. Or, rather, the adult publishers and what not.

I find it interesting that we seem to believe or wish that the lives of modern pre-teens and teens are utterly asexual, when in fact, I can't think of a time in my life when sex was more on my mind. And I think it's interesting that the only books that would deal with sex in a way that didn't feel like Just Say No To Sex Forever Or You Will Get Pregnant And Chlamydia Just From Looking At Boys! propaganda (I grew up in Tennessee, it was a very conservative environment) were romance novels, but the "age appropriate" novels I dealt with didn't seem to address the sexuality issues that were part and parcel of my life at that point.

And I'm wondering if that will change as YA becomes the new "hot ticket" genre.


In YA UF, for example, I don't find the female characters to be as bitchy and there's real story because you can't fill it all up with sex.

I find this sort of ironic, because speaking for myself? I know that as a teenager, I would have been absolutely thrilled to read a book that was filled with sex scenes.

And now that I'm an adult and sex is just Part of Life and about as mysterious to me as washing dishes (though decidedly more fun) - I'm kind of bored by that very thing and have very little tolerance for constant, run-of-the-mill sexual content that fills a book like creme fills a Boston donut.

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

In fantasy (perhaps science fiction to a lesser extent) the boundaries between adult and YA are very ambiguous, I think, because adult science fiction and fantasy novels don't usually touch on the topics that are likely to alienate teenage readers (middle-aged angst, adultery and divorce, the problems of marriage and parenthood) and often have teenage protagonists. Adult fantasy books have always had a large teenage readership -- the folks at my high school reading endless Dragonlance books -- but the genre has been getting way self-conscious lately about adolescent wish-fulfillment stuff and pulpy writing. So, where do you put a book that's a little more wish-fulfilly, a little more id-vortexy, a little pulpier? In YA so that the people who originally ate those books up will still find them. (See for example Libba Bray's trilogy, which has a lot of teen fans and a lot of adult fans and is a perfectly great series (at least until the last volume) but has a teenage breathlessness that's perhaps best suited to YA.)

In contemporary realistic fiction, I think we're starting to see a niche for books that are a little less heavy and bleak than adult literary fiction, and more plot-heavy, while still being well-written. I think that niche is going to break out soon from the land of YA, but it's still there at the moment.

And in both genre fiction and realistic fiction, the perception of YA as a "hot" marketing category means that books that weren't originally written as YA, or originally marketed as YA, get slotted in there. (See: Peter Cameron's "Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You," the Firebird reprints of older fantasy novels.)

A "middle-grade" book is one that's written for around the grade 4-5 level. Harry Potter is middle grade (though the later books are arguably YA). "Children's," I would say, encompasses everything up to YA. But the age boundaries are kind of blurry -- you have to take into consideration not just the problems of literacy, but the problems of emotional readiness as well.

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

Interesting thoughts, and I'm going to have to chew on them for a while.

On the one hand, I see what you mean. Being sort of pulpy and straight-from-the-id does seem to be a hallmark of YA and some of the fantasy books that were really popular with teens and what not. Especially in the YA Fantasy subgenre (I find it weird that we haven't had any mega bestselling YA Sci-fi yet, but fantasy seems to be like a runaway train as far as popularity goes).

On the other hand? A lot of fantasy (and particular urban fantasy) are as id-y and wish-fullfilling/author-inserting as any YA novel could dream of, and yet I don't think anyone is going to try to remarket the Anita Blake books as YA any time soon. I could trot out more examples.

So I'm wondering, do you think there are other things that make publishers/writers categorize things as YA?

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

There's the traditional rules, of course -- a LOT less is out of bounds than there used to be, and on writing forums you still get people asking "Can you say 'fuck' in a YA book?" (yes) and "I have a gay character in my YA book, is that okay? He doesn't actually have sex" (yes). I've seen fade-to-black sex and alluded sex and fully explicit brief interrupted sex. You're not going to see a gratuitous sex scene but you can get away with a lot if it's relevant to the story. This is all for contemporary realistic YA, though, which is hard to market as anything else; I think YA fantasy is still expected to be a little tamer. A LOT of ten-year-olds read YA fantasy.

Must have a teen protagonist -- there are YA books with adult protagonists (Tamar, by Mal Peet) but I could count them on the fingers of one hand.

Must be written at a level teens can understand -- Margo Lanagan has some of the loveliest and densest writing in the entire fantasy genre, but I don't think YA has anyone as experimental and difficult as Greer Gilman or Samuel Delany, to say nothing of James Joyce. The "typical" YA voice tends towards breezy and a little sarcastic, and you won't see as many fantasy authors going with language that's deliberately archaic.

The best definition I've arrived at for a YA novel is that it's about a young person coming out of the world she has always known and into a new world that's more dangerous and more free, more autonomous, where she's forced to make her own rules and cope with the inadequacy of the rulesets she's been given, and eventually comes into her own as an adult. (Even if she happens to be 14 or 15 and still has a lot of growing up to do -- you might have to come into your own as an adult half a dozen times!)

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

I think I like your definition of YA. If only because it not only suits literature, but suits real life.

I was just thinking that "dealing with the inadequacy of rulesets" is something that you have to go through several times in life, especially when anything big happens to you.

you might have to come into your own as an adult half a dozen times!

Truer words were never spoken. There's no such thing, I think, as "reaching adulthood". You pick up pieces of it along the way and maybe, by the time you die, you put them together and get a complete picture.

[chomiji]

You might be interested in this discussion of the "YA" label and the intended age group(s), which occurred in response to the review I posted of Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu's Zahrah the Windseeker on the Writers of Color 50 Book Challenge LJ community.

My take is that an awful lot of today's YA books are just more explicit versions of the first-crush, no-one-understands-me material that's been aimed especially at teen girls over the years. Also, works that have child/teen leads and no explicit sex or foul language seem to have been "demoted" in recent years to YA: most people now encounter To Kill a Mockingbird, which was written for adults, in 6th or 7th grade. Things can go the other way too, though: McKillip's "Riddlemaster" trilogy was definitely released as YA (I remember which section of the library it was in when it came out), but the paperback edition was released as adult fantasy.

[scififanatic.livejournal.com]

chomiji--you're spot on with these observations.

I worked for a couple of years in a public library. I found it very interesting that Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower was shelved in the YA section of the library.

In some ways, I think the publishing world and librarians apply similar classes: children's books are for 12 and below (with MG being for 10-12 yo, chapter books being for 7-9 yo, picture books being for 3-6 and board books being for 6 mos-2 yo).

ETA: I failed to mention that the YA section of our library was located downstairs with the adult fiction collection because co-workers argued that young adults often like to browse in the adult fiction stacks. What's so great about this YA boom is that we're seeing the reverse--adults who enjoy browsing in the YA section. Either way, it's certainly healthy that people are reading! :D

JD Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye is often considered the first YA novel but it wasn't called this when it was published.

I found this interesting as well: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204261704574275941028138178.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

My take is that an awful lot of today's YA books are just more explicit versions of the first-crush, no-one-understands-me material that's been aimed especially at teen girls over the years.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, huh? That does seem, to my mind, to be a pretty good description of it. Though I kind of wonder what teenage boys are reading these days, because it seems like a lot of the YA fantasy out there is either pointed at girls or made extremely girl friendly.

I didn't realize that that McKillip's books had been re-released as YA. I knew that OSC's "Ender's Game" (yes, I know, I too feel bad mentioning He Who Shall Not Be Mentioned on this LJ), was remarketed rather a while back and it always struck me as odd, because Ender's Game was held up as a stunning book for adults and had a lot of adult fans before it was remarketed.

Do you think there will be a lot of shelf shifting in the coming years?

[scififanatic.livejournal.com]

I'm still trying to learn about the YA genre but it seems as if some writers are crossing over because YA seems to be the "hot" ticket right now.

My jaw fell to the floor when I found out that James Frey (author of A Million Little Pieces) received a significant publishing deal for his YA sci-fi series but I'm not complaining because I certainly would like to sell my YA sci-fi book. :D

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

I'm still trying to learn about the YA genre but it seems as if some writers are crossing over because YA seems to be the "hot" ticket right now.

I think that might be part of my reluctance, to tell you the truth, to ever write YA. Because I tend to get a little wary of hot ticket items. Because they cool down fairly quickly sometimes, and because I remember when Snarky Heroines In Leather Who Shag Vampires became all the rage in urban fantasy. Now the shelves are clogged with sub-par tomes because that's the "hot ticket", and now some agents/publishers (and definitely some readers) are starting to say, "No more vampires!"

So I'm wondering if the same dip in quality will happen in YA as writers who haven't really been YA fans/readers pour in to take advantage of the gold rush.

Also, part of me resists the idea because I appreciated the books I had in my younger years that were written specifically for me, my age group, and were written by authors who were very sensitive to the things that were important in my life at that age and didn't talk down to me. Because even at age 9 or 10 or 14? I was pretty discerning about which books were "Adults Writing About Kids" and which ones were "Adults Writing About How They Think Kids Are".

And the good books were my refuge. And I'd hate to see that refuge get destroyed for kids because a bunch of adult writers just wanted to "cash in" on a trend.

[scififanatic.livejournal.com]

Luckily, I think most YA is written by skilled and talented writers who have a passion for the YA voice (I would argue that there are many YA voices but the common thread is some of what chomjii mentioned.)

It is annoying to see the shelves cluttered with copycat books or with literature that talks down to teens or simply does a poor job of writing about that teenage experience when life during that young adult time is often just as emotionally charged.

This is why I'm for breaking some of the "rules" of YA, such as no-sex or cursing or drug abuse, etc. because clearly, some of these adults want YA to be a preachy don't-do-this kind of literature and that just isn't interesting to me at all.