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Originally Posted by fjtorres
The category existed 50 years ago but those books were written for a young audience whereas a lot of today's YA have the tag retroactively actively applied to titles that weren't written for young audiences and often don't really fit the category.
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Fair point. The books we surveyed were considered classics and were definitely written for younger audiences.
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Originally Posted by Catlady
Neither do any of the other broad categories tell anyone much. Mystery/thriller can apply to Sherlock Holmes stories, cozy series, espionage novels, or domestic noir.
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I agree. It’s off topic, but ‘mystery/thriller/suspense’ is a pet peeve of mine. A cozy mystery is very different reading experience from a true thriller. But Amazon treats them as one category. Thank goodness for online reviews to help sort the the books out.
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Originally Posted by DiapDealer
Maybe you didn't mean to, but you're helping prove my point just the same. All those other labels can get fuzzy, sure, but at least they tell me something about the book. YA doesn't tell me if there's a mystery at the heart of it--be it sherlockian, noir or cozy. YA doesn't tell me if it's science-fiction (or fantasy). YA doesn't tell me if it's Romance. Those other labels tell me at least something about the story. YA only tells me there's probably young protagonists and nothing more.
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Again, off topic, but your point applies to a lot of things. Where I live there’s a chronic lack of specialized services for young people. Instead, there’s usually an amorphous “children services”. Yet we never combine all programs that serve adults under a single “adult services” umbrella.