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.

[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.

[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]

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