There was an interesting article by Margo Rabb in the NY Times Book Review (7/20/08) about how some novels get classified as YA.
I was surprised to find out that a number of the authors she mentions didn't originally intend for their books to be YA, but it confirms my suspicion that a young protagonist tends to put the book in YA territory, no matter what the complexity, theme, or tone are.
2 comments:
That was very interesting and enlightening! I agree that the age of the protagonist must weigh heavily in some of these decisions. And nice that they give kids/teens credit for searching out adult lit, but thinking it doesn't happen so well in the other direction! We are obviously a special group, able to make the adult to YA transformation quite easily in choosing our reading material!
I also liked Alexis' comment “A lot of people have no idea that right now Y.A. is the Garden of Eden of literature,” said Sherman Alexie". Maybe it's one of those best-kept secret things.
I actually didn't notice this article when it first came out, but saw it mentioned in a series of letters to the editor from this week's Book Review. One of the letters was from a 60-year-old who said that she still reads YA and didn't think it was as unusual as all that...
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