Why so they call it "Young Adult"?

Adults aren't necessarily over-eighteens. The age of majority is different in each country. Scotland tends to be a little more liberal with age than the rest of Britain so you could say we're adults here at 16. In some American states you can't even drink alcohol until you're 21. And you don't immediately start being an adult upon your eighteenth birthday. You only become an adult legally at that age (in some countries). The emotional, sexual and cerebral processes all start much earlier than that.

It's a term that's been changing over time. It has a lot to do with teens not seeing themselves as "kids" at all. If you're going to target them as a market, start by pandering to their sense of themselves as all grown up!

It definitely is a marketing thing. Teens want to think of themselves as young adults. Although I do think originally, YA was more for 17-25 year olds. It continues to get younger, in a way. Now some books for kids 11-14 are considered YA.

Plus, you do see a lot of actual "young adults" (i.e. 18, 19, 20 year-olds) reading from the YA / teen sections in the bookstores and libraries these days. The genre has matured a lot in recent years and a lot of the books appeal to college students and people older than that.

Last night I went to a Stephenie Meyer signing (Meyer writes the wildly popular Twilight series, shelved in YA in the bookstores) and the ages ranged from elementary and middle schoolers on up through high school and college age and older than that. I'm 27, as were my friends who came with me. The women in front of us in line were 40+.

Yup, I know middle aged people who read nothing but YA/MG fiction, and they're not even writers. And who can blame them? If you're selective, you can get all the groundbreaking literacy/unique new concepts in books that take half the time to read.

Because they think they'll offend us by calling us teenagers.

The genre has matured a lot in recent years and a lot of the books appeal to college students and people older than that.

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Yup, I know middle aged people who read nothing but YA/MG fiction,

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I'm one of them. I got started reading it because I'm a teacher and a parent, but now I'm finding it hard to get into most writing for adults. Why do they take so damn long to get into the story?! For every adult book I finish, I end up tossing about 4 aside because NOTHING'S HAPPENING! Or they have no sense of humor. Who says serious literature has to be so serious?

I guess because teenage lit is like, a modern colloquialism. And it doesn't sound serious.

Shady Lane said:

Because they think they'll offend us by calling us teenagers.

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*agrees with Shady*

It's all to do with marketing and not offending your readership. Some teenagers don't like being called 'teenagers' because the connotations (moody, rebellious etc) are patronising. By calling them 'young adults' you're appealing to the side of them that thinks they're already grown up.

Plus, in my mind at least, they ARE young adults. From puberty upwards, every child is developing into an adult.

12-15 year olds are adults in all the ways that matter. Just not legally, which is an arbitrary number that varies from country to country. And if it varies from country to country, it's obviously not an absolute, cross-this-line-and-you're-an-adult-on-your-eighteenth-birthday number.

And okay, some 13-year-olds aren't fully mature emotionally yet. Well, some 65-year-olds aren't mature yet.

And when it comes to 'golden age' over 'over the hill' - well, over the hill is an insult. It suggests you're past it.

When I was a teen, I didn't mind being called a teenager. But you can be sure as shit I minded someone telling me I 'wasn't an adult'.

javili said:

I just read something saying that "YA" is kids 12 to 18. This makes no sense to me. They aren't adults. Adults are over 18.

Why don't they just say teen-agers? 13-19 is literally, technically teen age.

Young adults would be people 18 to 15 or 29 or whatever. And they have a lot more common interest than a 12 year old and an 18 year old.

I don't understand how things like this get started. Or is it useful in some way?

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In America, you're legally an adult the day you turn eighteen, even if you can't drink alcohol. Legally, if you can vote, you're an adult. If you can't vote, you aren't an adult.

The point, I think, is that if you call it teen fiction, you lose a big chunk of the reading audience, just as was the case with the also outdated term "juvenile fiction."

Yeah um when I was fifteen I wasn't exactly a wise old soul but I wasn't three on the inside, either.

Anyway there are more than a few posters in the younger YA age bracket whose maturity and intelligence suggest that they are actually younger adults rather than bigger kids. It just takes some people longer to get from bigger kid to younger adult.

But I'm an adult now so it doesn't matter

Well, considering I myself am 17, and I know many "teenagers" that are more mature then people in their 20s, I'd say that "young adult" is a perfectly acceptable term.

We're not little kids, but we're not quite adults yet either. Therefore, we're young adults.

What I think we really need is a category for the in-betweeners, who aren't middle grade anymore but aren't really ready for YA themes yet. Like Eragon is YA because it's about a million pages long, and is about a teenager coming of age, but there's nothing remotely sexual or offensive so I know lots of fifth and sixth graders who read it. But they're not ready for the real YA where kids are getting pregnant and drinking and such.... We need PG-13 YA and YA-M!

JudScotKev:
What I think we really need is a category for the in-betweeners, who aren't middle grade anymore but aren't really ready for YA themes yet. Like Eragon is YA because it's about a million pages long, and is about a teenager coming of age, but there's nothing remotely sexual or offensive so I know lots of fifth and sixth graders who read it. But they're not ready for the real YA where kids are getting pregnant and drinking and such.... We need PG-13 YA and YA-M!

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I disagree - how can you segment the market based on morality and censorship? Children and teenagers 'read up' and they read what interests them. There are already YA books out there with the 'Parental Advisory' labels on them, which together with the jacket blurb should be enough of a warning for concerned parents and teenagers themselves as to what the likely content is.

MM

JudScotKev said:

What I think we really need is a category for the in-betweeners, who aren't middle grade anymore but aren't really ready for YA themes yet. Like Eragon is YA because it's about a million pages long, and is about a teenager coming of age, but there's nothing remotely sexual or offensive so I know lots of fifth and sixth graders who read it. But they're not ready for the real YA where kids are getting pregnant and drinking and such.... We need PG-13 YA and YA-M!

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Yeah, but do you actually know any fifth and sixth graders who say "Well, I liked Eragon, so I'll get something else from the YA shelf... I know! Looking for Alaska!"

The local Borders actually segments the YA SF/fantasy from the YA realism, which can be a pretty good proxy for the "less intense" and "more intense" YA books. (No, really--YA fantasy characters don't really seem to do drugs and have sex, do they? Holly Black's series is one of the few exceptions I've seen, and Tamora Pierce is pretty blase about the existence of sex but not its mechanics--from what I've seen, anyway.)

But kids are good at self-censoring. If you're reading a book, and it offends you, you can just stop reading it. And many, many YA books have neon-light foreshadowing before they get to a really disturbing part.

I'm a youth librarian, so my job is in part to recommend books that are age-appropriate, and... I just feel like so much depends on the individual teen, and the individual book, that a single label couldn't really cover it.

(Oh, yeah--and is homosexuality a 'mature' theme? Even in a book like 'Totally Joe' where the main character is in seventh grade and everything is kept at a very seventh-grade level?)

Okay, I wasn't asking for censorship, and I apologize to anyone who interpreted my comments that way. What I meant was that for writers trying to easily market their books to an agent or an editor, there's a huge range in YA themes, and I see a lot of books being labeled YA just because of the length of the text, not the nature of the content. Then I look at other books (maybe the "edgy YA" label is the hint), and the themes are as mature, and often even more blunt, than anything on the adult shelves. There's a place where the story becomes about figuring out who you are (including sexuality) and what you're going to do with your life (including dangerous choices) that really matters to older teens more than younger. And in those books, I think the relentless honesty makes them YA as opposed to mainstream adult. So again, I wasn't advocating censorship, and I never would. I was making an observation that as young people become ever more savvy, mature and critical thinkers, as well as more literate, kids keep reading up at younger and younger ages.

It's not that my 12-year-old shouldn't read more mature books that deal with issues of sexuality. Jeez, he watches South Park! I'd rather he have literary choices that give him a more balanced perspective than that.... But he isn't interested. His reading ability is several years above his age, so he could be reading books for 16-year-olds, but he'd rather not. He wants more books like The Lightning Thief--written about kids his own age, funny, hip, and full of battles and adventures. It would be nice if he could easily find more books like that without wading through the YA that he's not ready for. And again, I will repeat, I'm not talking about my deciding for him what he's ready for. I'm talking about what he's interested in.

scarletpeaches said:

12-15 year olds are adults in all the ways that matter.

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what????????????

I was referring to puberty. They're physically adults but not all of them are mentally so. Just as many people in their 20s, 30s and 40s aren't necessarily mature.

But they'd be 'adults' in all the ways that matter to writers of Young Adult novels.

moondance said:

*agrees with Shady*

It's all to do with marketing and not offending your readership. Some teenagers don't like being called 'teenagers' because the connotations (moody, rebellious etc) are patronising. By calling them 'young adults' you're appealing to the side of them that thinks they're already grown up.

Plus, in my mind at least, they ARE young adults. From puberty upwards, every child is developing into an adult.

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Bolding mine.

Yep, exactly. Telling a 12-15 year old that they know nothing of real life and that they're still children is patronising.

scarletpeaches said:

I was referring to puberty. They're physically adults but not all of them are mentally so. Just as many people in their 20s, 30s and 40s aren't necessarily mature.

But they'd be 'adults' in all the ways that matter to writers of Young Adult novels.

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I agree. I think it's the fact that young adults are suddenly adults in the physical sense, but have yet to become adults in the mental, emotional sense that makes the genre interesting. Wanting to do more and be thought of as the adult you suddenly are, but still not quite able to handle all the adult situations in your life, like love and sex and jobs. I mean, you're still stuck in school. Everyone treats you like a kid. You think you deserve more and can handle more.

Intriguing, if you ask me, and why I like to read and write YA.