[hildea]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Seems to me that some of you folks expect an awful lot from the YA label. It's meant to be a broad category. Do you have the same concern about books labeled as children's books?

What I expect from all labels is that after I've read a book, I can mostly tell whether that label applies to that book or not. There's a lot of variation in children's books, but most of the time I know if a book I'm reading is a children's book or not.
If I want to know if a book is YA or not, I usually have to check how it's labelled in a book store, I can't tell from the book itself.

The label that annoys me no end is "adult." Why did it come to mean porn, erotica, etc., rather than simply books that are not aimed at a juvenile audience?

Yes, that's pretty silly.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

...
- teenager leads adults? check
...

This reminds me of one of my favourite passages in one of my favourite books (which happens to be YA, and engages with a lot of tropes in interesting ways).

Originally Posted by "In Other Lands" by Sarah Rees Brennan

“Ah, you’re so much fun,” said Louise. “Write Luke a letter tonight, okay? He’s nervous about taking over command.”
“Ahahaha,” said Elliot. “Now you are the one who is being hilarious, because you did not leave a fourteen-year-old in command of armed forces.”
Louise hesitated. “You have to understand. They’re doing better than okay. Better than all the grown men I have under my command. I couldn’t have left my men with anyone else. They wouldn’t have followed anyone else when there was a Sunborn to lead them.”
“Obviously you’re delirious from some sort of medication,” said Elliot. “Or maybe I’m delirious, because you talk and all I can hear is la la la suicide mission la la la your fourteen-year-old brother!”
“Serene’s there to help him,” said Louise. “I left the command to both of them, really.”
“Serene is, what’s the word I’m searching for here, oh yes, ALSO FOURTEEN.”
“What about you, Little Red?” asked Louise. “Getting tired of fiddling with those treaties? Going to leave it all to the grown-ups?”
Elliot opened his mouth to argue. He knew that Luke and Serene were exceptional. He had been told that and had seen that over and over again. But shouldn’t the adults, if they loved them, if they were responsible for them and cared for them more than for anything else, the way adults were supposed to . . . shouldn’t they try to stop them saving the day, even if they could do it? Unless Elliot’s father was only the most honest of the adults, and all adults were willing to betray children if offered an incentive.
Surely there had been other soldiers, not as good as Luke but grown, with strength a kid could not have and experience a kid could not have. For a fourteen-year-old to come to the fore as the obvious leader, others must have made the choice, conscious or not, to step back. Elliot did not know how they could live with letting this happen, letting someone this young be the leader and the sacrifice.