09-19-2011, 06:29 AM | #16 |
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I think the real problem is the assignment of these labels are fairly arbitrary. I could write any thing, then publish it as YA, or OF (old fart). Most book sellers will honor the label put on it by the publisher so it ends up on the shelf with the YA/OF books regardless of the content. Sure go way out of like (like pass off erotica as children's lit) and you will have book sellers relabel you ... but if your sorta kind of close, then the label seems to just stick.
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09-19-2011, 08:18 AM | #17 |
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I think the labels about audience are mostly what the author considers the target.
I'm old and when I was growing up we read books without graphic sex or violence. Hemingway, Steinbeck, Jones, Heinlein, and even Louis Lamour and Mickey Spillane. I don't know how we managed without knowing exactly, clinically, what was going on in the bedroom and how the author thought it felt to have your intestines pulled out through a tiny hole in your navel. It's amazing we ever manged to have a life, isn't it? |
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09-19-2011, 08:30 AM | #18 | |
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Quote:
The Heinlein juveniles (and Asimov's--people tend to forget the David Starr books) were the 50's SF equivalent of today's young adult market, aimed at the 15-21 age bracket; literate high schoolers and university undergrads. Heinlein explained it as "make the protagonist 17 and write him as an adult after that". Isn't that pretty much the formula for current YA fiction? (For that matter, lots of other classic SF&F works that aren't labeled juveniles follow it. Hal Clement's NEEDLE comes to mind.) Different authors will have different ideas of what "write him/her as an adult" means but we need to remember that times change; what other eras would have considered adult material today barely rates a PG or PG13 rating in movie terms. In the SF/Fantasy genres, pretty much any pre-60s material is teenager-friendly even though the bulk of the audience at the time was adult. (Mostly because the publishers balked at more mature content.) YA has always existed. The prominence of the label today is simply marketing and the realization that the Harry Potter cohort is a market worth pursuing. |
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09-19-2011, 09:51 AM | #19 |
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YA is a fairly new creation. I think I had a professor tell me it's only been around for 20/30 years or so. Before that everything was either juvenile or adult.
It's really hard to define YA because there are so many "rules" that only work part of the time. Generally the protagonist is 12-19 years old and the book has less language, violence, and sex than "adult" books. |
09-19-2011, 09:57 AM | #20 | |
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I know!!! It was sooo horrible to read books like that growing up! Thankfully my 8 year old lives in a society were gratuitous sex, gore and violence are normative so he wont have to suffer so! |
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09-21-2011, 12:24 AM | #21 |
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I like the label; it lets me know what to avoid.
Oh, I know, there are many very fine YA books. But too often I read a YA book and as good as it may be, there inevitably cones the moment when I think I'm too old fah this sh**. |
09-22-2011, 08:24 AM | #22 |
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What is Young Adult?
The first modern book to be considered 'young adult' was 'Catcher in the Rye' which, due to it's language and theme, moved the publishing industry to create an official new book category to separate children's books from adult books. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young-adult_fiction
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09-22-2011, 08:25 AM | #23 |
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Well if Wikipedia says it... then that's the end of it.
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09-22-2011, 08:47 AM | #24 |
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Wow! From Catcher in the Rye to Twilight... oh how far YA has fallen. Seriously, you would not consider Catcher in the Rye to be YA today. Besides the age of the protagonist, I consider YA to have a simpler writing style.
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09-22-2011, 08:55 AM | #25 |
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I think everyone else has pretty much covered the "What is the YA label?" I'd just like to say that I enjoy reading them. I actually hated being a teenager, but I enjoy reading books where the protagonist is a teenager. Weird.
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09-22-2011, 11:34 AM | #26 |
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What I do find irritating is when people apply the "YA" label to what are clearly children's' books.
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09-23-2011, 03:08 AM | #27 | |
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The YA label is a marketing strategy, nothing more. It's a publisher's way of pointing out that a book may appeal to high school readers, and it can encompass everything from simplistic teen romances to dark and gritty vampires. As mentioned above, the age of the protagonist is a strong determining factor. (Because teenagers don't like to read about forty-year-olds. Go figure.) Fortunately, many forty-year-olds don't mind reading about teens, and a number of YA titles have appealed to readers across the board. (Anne McCaffrey's DragonSinger trilogy comes to mind.) |
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09-23-2011, 03:11 AM | #28 |
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Also: YA works tend to have only a single POV and only one major storyline.
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09-23-2011, 04:40 AM | #29 |
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The Monstrumologist is a fantasic series. I think in this case the Young Adult label might be hurting sales though as it is apparently a commercial flop.
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09-23-2011, 07:35 PM | #30 |
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