What defines a young adult novel?

I’ve been wondering this myself. I’m reading I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett, which is a Tiffany Aching story, and those have usually been classified as young adult. This one starts out with a long, frequently referenced, detailed description of a large carving of a man with a humongous dong.

@mrentropy Well, to be honest, I’d say the rest of the series is young adult, and the Tiffany Aching ones are for slightly younger readers (not that she’s not a great protatgonist and I’ve heard that Eskarina is back!).

As for the question, I’d say young adult novels are any books that deal with serious, adult problems or topics, e.g., sex, love, modern times, business, et cetera.

I think Young Adult involves themes that kids will run against as they mature, and attempts by means of example to instill one or more “virtues” in them.

For example, some of the Young Adult novels that I read before I graduated to strictly grown-up literature involved the virtues of hard work and thrift over profligacy, the virtue of “virtue itself”, chastity and abstinence over random sex with multiple partners (it was the 60s and 70s, after all), and the notion that “honesty is its own reward” and “crime doesn’t pay”, that sort of thing. Themes that are familiar to parents, but presented in a way that growing young adults themselves have to make their own decisions about these things, instead of being led by the hand through the minefields of adolescence by parents always taking charge.

Maybe a child is faced with trouble at home (and this kind of thing is usually presented in black-and-white, with no shades of gray) such as an alcoholic and abusive parent. Is it better to run away, to fight the ‘bad’ parent, or to enlist help. I’ve seen YA novels handle each of those solutions in satisfactory ways: in each one the child faces a crucial decision point, makes a decision, follows through with actions that have logical consequences (again, presented in a fairly simple way), and ultimately grows and comes out on the other side a stronger and more mature person because of the experience.

Those are the key ingredients, I think:
– decision
– consequences
– growth
– happy ending.

Subject and content. Young adult novels are aimed at teenagers and deal with more mature subjects than those for children. Having said that, of course, there is a wide range of opinion as to what themes and language should be acceptable. Most YA novels are “problem” novels of some sort. It is mainly a designation devised by librarians and publishers and not necessarily that useful in a wider context. Cetainly most teens can read adult novels and many YA novels are of interest to adults.

@KatawaGrey I just finished reading a series that was leading me to ask the same question. It seems that “Twilight”, “Harry Potter”, and “The Hunger Games” were all considered young adult fiction. I wondered if because they all had “young” adults as characters if this was part of the classification, or if it was simply what the allowable language or topics are to be considered in this classification. I am currently reading “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”. I guess based on language that maybe that would not allow that one to be classified as young adult. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if writers pick a character with whom young adults can identify and therefore select topics and language apprpriate to that age range and then it gets classified as a young adult fiction book? Who knows.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo would not be classified as young adult for sure.

Targeted towards 13 to 18 year olds (and sometimes older), and often dealing in edgy content that this bracket tends to both find exciting, and actually deal with and relate to in real life.

Young adult is very broad. Young adult can be the barely kissing/touching romance between teens for 11–13 year olds. I think with all the raging hormones young adult content can be very explicit, by age 14+ it’s okay to start reading about sex, drugs, and drinking (except for those very sheltered exceptions who wouldn’t be aiming for that type of book anyway).

Think of Young Adult audiences as high schoolers who are already dealing with the above topics all the time especially this generation (pregnant in middle school? gross).

I tend to think that young adult novels need to have some kind of happier ending. If they didn’t, this would make most themes for this age very uninspiring and could possibly lead to rash suicidal tendencies (whether it’s just contemplating the purpose of life, or serious considering the act).

Adult fiction is geared towards those who understand more complex parts of human nature, and I believe that most “young adults” haven’t fully experienced those yet to the point where they can appreciate them in writing.

There is this great article in the NY Times here.

@Carly… I am not sure that the “The Hunger Games” series has what people would call a “happy ending”. It is for sure called a young adult series.

@sleepdoc
well, maybe it also has to do with the level of reading comprehension?
I could see young adults getting bored of higher level vocabulary, and older adults getting bored of most simple vocabulary. Of course it’s not dependent on age, but then again, why even call it “young adult fiction” in the first place?

The NYT article says that it is YA because more often than not it deals with younger protagonists with young people related issues. Which of course covers an immense patch of ground, no?

Well, if the characters are having sex, but the author isn’t describing it, then THATS young adult.

On a more serious note,
They usually just call “young adult” novels the novels that target teenage hardships. While they can be adult hardships as well; The things like First love, Rape, Drugs, Abuse, College choices and more are usually what is found in them. They also usually have characters with an age range of a teenager.