Thoughts on what makes a book YA or Children's or Teen

[Windshadow]

I was sent a book to review before its publication and the author identified it as YA.
Now aside from the quality of the book which in truth I would have a hard time calling 3 out of 5 I have a problem with putting it in the YA slot. The protagonist is 12 which I think would appeal to readers say 8 to 10.
The writing is juvenile gag based of the bodily functions sort (fart sounds etc.) but even so the situations and plot are not what I would call YA.

Is there a hard and fast definition for these age related target marketing slots? I had one person in publishing tell me that any book without overt sex and drug use was a YA title... and all a YA title needed was a cover illustration that will appeal to the target demographic...

Good YA books to me are typified by the books of RAH from the 40s and 50s that not written down to a perceived intellectual or grade level. If they require the reader to use a dictionary to look up the odd word or two, that would be a plus, as would requiring critical thinking on the part of the reader. I think perhaps a protagonist in the mid teens would have a better chance of having an empathetic connection to the target YA reader. A good YA book is just a good book for anyone to read

 

[Jennifer P]

Sadly, it appears that YA these days is defined entirely by the age of the protagonist - I've seen Ender's Game shelved as "YA action adventure." (Way to go...I'm not a huge Orson Scott Card fan).

I would personally not call The Hunger Games YA. The issue is that adults will read YA, but then not let their teenagers read "adult" books.

I think that the *correct* definition of YA is a book which is about the issues faced by a teenage protagonist who is in some way coming of age, and dealing with the kind of issues (first love, learning lessons of life, etc) faced by teenagers. (Which excludes The Hunger Games because even though Katnis is a teenager, she starts the book as her family's *breadwinner* and is effectively an adult).

 

[JacenAster]

I think that the *correct* definition of YA is a book which is about the issues faced by a teenage protagonist who is in some way coming of age, and dealing with the kind of issues (first love, learning lessons of life, etc) faced by teenagers. (Which excludes The Hunger Games because even though Katnis is a teenager, she starts the book as her family's *breadwinner* and is effectively an adult).

I would second that definition, with the additional obvious qualification of some content control. Which is, actually, another reason to not consider Hunger Games as YA(I actually didn't know it was), the themes are pretty dark for the target demographic. I'd honestly assumed Hunger Games was classified as New Adult, rather than YA, based on both the themes and the aforementioned effectively adult status of Katnis.

The problem, of course, is that there isn't any sort of hard definition of the difference, and any two people (even authors or publishers) define the line between Adult Fiction and Young Adult fiction differently. Indeed, the New Adult category was something of a result of that very blurriness, if I understand it's development correctly(I'm purely a Adult Fiction writer, so don't quote me on that!). However, therein also lies the potential solution to the originally posted issue. If your opinion of the book's genre is that it does not match what you, personally, perceive as "YA," than simply explain that (along with the why of it) in the request review. Since there isn't a hard definition of it, and indeed there is considerable variance in what even large publishing houses consider one way or another, there's not real issue with simply calling it like you see it. At least, that's what I would think.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

In terms of the book shops, YA is defined as 12 - 16.