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Originally Posted by DiapDealer
I remain convinced that YA is merely a decision (made primarily for marketing reasons), and not really any kind of quantifiable rules-based style of story-telling. YA is certainly going to be about younger protags, but having younger protags does not automatically make a story YA.
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I agree. I've also seen complaints that SF and fantasy by women tend to get tagged as YA when similar books by men wouldn't be.
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Originally Posted by haertig
What makes YA (Young Adult) novels immediately recognizable?
I don't mind reading them - I'm reading one now. But I was just pondering, what is it that defines these novels? When you start reading, within the first paragraph, you can usually tell it is YA. Why is that? Is it the wording? The tone? The characters? I can't put my finger on it. All's I can say is that when you start reading one, you definitely know you are reading one, right from the very beginning.
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You do? I'm pretty sure I can't tell.
I'm tempted to do a little test
Here are some novels I really like with young protagonists. Half of them are YA, the other half aren't. Does anyone want to try their hand at guessing?
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Originally Posted by Sample 1
It was a terrible day even before Crispin blew up the study.
It had started badly, as every day did under Mr. Maupert. He was not a patient teacher at the best of times; he specialised in resonance, a form of practice at which Crispin was embarrassingly inept; and after six miserable weeks of failure, it had become merely a question of whether teacher or student would crack first.
Obviously, that was Crispin.
He didn’t mean to do it. He was trying his best, in the disheartening consciousness of his own uselessness; trying to ignore the constant nagging temptation of the better, easier, natural way. He was trying to get it right. So when Mr. Maupert shouted “Three over eight, boy!” Crispin tried to do that too.
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Originally Posted by Sample 2
Today is going to be a good day.
There is little outward evidence of this. Ragged, gray clouds skittered in overhead during my morning bus ride. By the time I got to my stop a few blocks from the edge of campus, rain was coming down in earnest. Now, passing cars send up a fine spray of droplets. The umbrella in my backpack gave up the ghost as soon as I pulled it out, and I haven’t had a chance to duct tape the fabric to the spines yet, because I’m about fourteen minutes away from a class that starts in eleven minutes and twenty-nine seconds.
Today hasn’t started particularly well, and my schedule only forecasts worse. I have five hours of work this afternoon and several projects due in the next two days. Before I can tackle any of that, there’s the pesky issue of three hours of morning classes. I’ll be lucky to sleep before midnight.
But counterbalancing that undoubtedly depressing list is one bright beacon: I’m wearing my favorite sweater.
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Originally Posted by Sample 3
I shouldn’t have come to this party.
I’m not even sure I belong at this party. That’s not on some bougie shit, either. There are just some places where it’s not enough to be me. Either version of me. Big D’s spring break party is one of those places.
I squeeze through sweaty bodies and follow Kenya, her curls bouncing past her shoulders. A haze lingers over the room, smelling like weed, and music rattles the floor. Some rapper calls out for everybody to Nae-Nae, followed by a bunch of “Heys” as people launch into their own versions. Kenya holds up her cup and dances her way through the crowd. Between the headache from the loud-ass music and the nausea from the weed odor, I’ll be amazed if I cross the room without spilling my drink.
We break out the crowd. Big D’s house is packed wall-to-wall. I’ve always heard that everybody and their momma comes to his spring break parties—well, everybody except me—but damn, I didn’t know it would be this many people.
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Originally Posted by Sample 4
It was the best of times until it was the worst of times.
We had never been allowed to go away for the weekend alone together before. So our holiday at Martha’s Vineyard was a rare and special treat, sweet as only things that come seldom and do not last can be.
Those two days were long and sunshiny and warm. When I think about them now, I remember the pale amber of the sky at sunset, like light shining through honey. I remember the last time I was purely and uncomplicatedly happy, as I used to be when I was a child and my mother was alive.
Happiness is self-sabotage, a mean trick that your own mind plays on you. It makes you careless, makes you lose your grip, and once you lose your grip, you lose everything. You certainly aren’t happy anymore.
I was very stupid. It was because I was happy that I made my first mistake.
In the weeks that followed, I made more.
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Originally Posted by Sample 5
Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that’s not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he’s still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we’re grateful, but not that grateful.
He doesn’t devour them really; it only feels that way. He takes a girl to his tower, and ten years later he lets her go, but by then she’s someone different. Her clothes are too fine and she talks like a courtier and she’s been living alone with a man for ten years, so of course she’s ruined, even though the girls all say he never puts a hand on them. What else could they say? And that’s not the worst of it—after all, the Dragon gives them a purse full of silver for their dowry when he lets them go, so anyone would be happy to marry them, ruined or not.
But they don’t want to marry anyone. They don’t want to stay at all.
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Originally Posted by Sample 6
On the morning we are to leave for our Grand Tour of the Continent, I wake in bed beside Percy. For a disorienting moment, it’s unclear whether we’ve slept together or simply slept together.
Percy’s still got all his clothes on from the night before, albeit most in neither the state nor the location they were in when originally donned, and while the bedcovers are a bit roughed up, there’s no sign of any strumming. So although I’ve got nothing on but my waistcoat—by some sorcery now buttoned back to front—and one shoe, it seems safe to assume we both kept our bits to ourselves.
Which is a strange sort of relief, because I’d like to be sober the first time we’re together. If there ever is a first time. Which it’s starting to seem like there won’t be.
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And here's the verdict. I've checked whether Amazon classifies them as YA or not.