Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
The only way to truly know if something is YA is if it's marketed as YA. The label is the label's only quantifiable criteria.  |
I agree with this, and also with the notion that the common denominator is simply the ages of the protagonists.
Harry Potter, for instance, is (or at least was) classified as "children's" books (I suppose it is now reclassified as YA), even though the content of the later books in the series wasn't particularly childish. Sure, it doesn't have a lot of blood, virtually no gore, and certainly no overt sexual references.
But then again, I don't remember much of that in
The Lord of the Rings, either, and yet that is generally not considered a YA series. It seems as if
Harry Potter is considered Young Adult simply because the main characters are all young adults.
I would assume that is true for most YA books.