What is young adult age range?

[WritingChick]

For my children's book, Mysterious Chills and Thrills, a library rated my book as YA. But what is young adult in general..9-12, 10-14? Also...looking at my book cover...what do you feel would be a good age based on the book's cover? Thanks :)

http://www.freewebs.com/lhpublicationsandproductions/mcat.bmp

[Risseybug]

It works like this...

children: up to age 8
Middle grade: 9 (some places say 8) to 12
YA: 13- 18 (or thereabouts, some say 17)

I thought for a while that I was writing YA, but my target audience is 8-12/13, which means I really write Middle grade.

[WritingChick]

I also must've been under the wrong impression on my writing being for a certain group.

Do you think I should trust the libraries judgement for rating my book YA?

[Risseybug]

Well, now, maybe not. It not only depends on the material, but the language. There is a formula somewhere, that I used to know, about how many words and syllables per sentence/paragraph/page that they use to calculate "reading level" age. Material doesn't usually enter into that equation.

It's not anything that I would worry about. Just write the way you write, and let your publisher decide where to put it.

[WritingChick]

Okay, thanks for the advice :)

[BlackHolly]

Just wanted to post this link (http://www.write4kids.com/colum44.html) from write4kids.com. It has a lot of good information on the age range for YA and for the other categories of children's literature.

There are almost two different categories of YA. There is younger YA and older YA. Older YA is where you find a lot of the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Younger YA is just the rock 'n' roll.

[Kida Adelyn]

Some libraries count 9-12 age group as YA. Some don't.
As well, In my local library it's not reading level that's the dividing line, but content.