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?
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Date: 2009-07-15 11:22 am (UTC)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?