After posting about the definitions of YA yesterday, I kept thinking about certain books that didn’t easily fall into any category. As PJ Hoover’s comment on my post shows, I’m not the only one who has trouble making the distinction sometimes:
It’s so hard to get a finger on this. I read a YA recently that felt like an adult book. I was trying to figure out why and it came down to the plot being way more the focus rather than the characters.
What PJ says goes back to Beth Revis’s point on YA novels generally being more character-driven than adult novels. This got me thinking about Fire by Kristin Cashore which I finished over the weekend. It was a lovely book and I enjoyed immersing myself in it, but after I was done reading, I started wondering what made it YA. The main character is seventeen, but her thoughts and actions are very adult. It’s set in a vivid fantasy land and has a cast of intriguing characters, but the story is intently focused on the main character; I suppose that’s what makes it YA.
I wonder, though, if Cashore’s previous novel, Graceling, hadn’t been published as YA, if Fire might have been released as an adult book. Graceling featured some of the themes we associate with YA, such as first love, while Fire’s content was more adult. Publishers have been known to market certain books based on the author’s previous titles, rather than the actual market for the current book (MT Anderson’s Octavian Nothing books are a good example). Ultimately they’re doing what they think will sell, which is probably why Cashore’s books have been published both as YA and adult around the world.
Do the categories matter that much? Does it make a difference whether a book falls into the YA genre instead of adult? I’d like to say no; good books are good books no matter what. But in a way it does matter. There are so many wonderful YA books that would easily find adult readers, if only those adults knew where to look for them. Maybe not every upper-YA book could be marketed as a crossover, but I wonder if more of them should be in order to give readers access to books they might not notice otherwise.
- Categories: Books
Great post. I read the post of Beth’s you referred to. It was great, too!
I don’t know if YA is really a genre we can pigenhole. It’s like trying to say all 18 year olds are adults b/c they are now eligible to vote or go off to war…yet they still can’t buy alcohol. They aren’t yet adults…yet aren’t kids anymore. I just don’t know. SOme 18 year olds are far more mature than 30 year olds I know. That’s sad, isn’t it?
Anyway…I agree with you. Good books are good books, regardless of who they are targeted for!
peace,
Donna
Thanks Donna! You’re right that the teen/adult line is so difficult to determine. No wonder we have so much trouble figuring out where YA ends and adult lit. begins! I’m glad YA has become so popular in recent years; I hope this means all readers will have access to more good books, no matter where they’re shelved.
I think Kristin Cashore’s novels are an excellent example of crossover titles that would be best released as both YA and Adult. Publishing Graceling as a YA title kept it from many adult readers who would have loved it. Then again, there are many high school readers who are insulted by the YA label and refuse to read anything that has been categorized as YA, preferring to read books published for the grown up readers that they believe themselves to be.
Good point, Deb. It almost makes me wonder why YA has become so popular if it excludes adults and many teens. Maybe this is slowly changing and YA is finding a broader audience?
GREAT post. I often wonder who reads YA? (Even though that’s what I write). My kids skipped right over it. I think it was because they both read so much for school – which rarely picks YA titles – that when they had free time neither of them chose to read.
Why books are published in some countries as adult yet in others as YA is interesting. Margo Lanagan’s TENDER MORSELS has recently caused quite a ruckus when it was published as YA in the US and UK but as adult in Australia.
It seems like a lot of books that are published as YA in the US are published as adult in the UK and Australia. Tender Morsels is a good example, and I believe this is true for a lot of Markus Zusak’s work too. I’ve noticed that many titles we would consider to be YA in the US are also published as middle grade in the UK. Clearly we’re working with different definitions of YA!
Oh, that IS a good point. Cashore has been very odd for me to read, too. Katsa certainly felt much older than 17–and Fire felt older than her age, too. It was certainly an…unusual book, and hard to classify. I wonder sometimes if all the hard to classify books get grouped into YA…
That’s a very interesting point, Beth. It makes sense that hard-to-classify books would wind up in YA since that’s essentially how YA started. I’m okay with YA being a catch-all, though, as long as it means we’re getting some good books out of it!
I would love to see Crossover become a more popular genre. I totally think adults would love YA. My husband is really enjoying HUNGER GAMES, and my neighbor and I talk YA all the time.