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.
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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.