In this article, Tom discusses the slippery definition of Young Adult Fiction, and attempts to answer that ever-challenging question of… What Exactly is Young Adult Fiction? He explains why defining and categorising YA is so difficult… and shares a bizarre story idea about an apocalyptic robot chef.
The [Young Adult Fiction] genre’s primary challenge is categorisation.
Wolf, S. et al., 2010
YA sales increased by seven per cent in Australia last year (Books + Publishing 2020) and 11 per cent in the U.S. (Gingerich, 2021). In fact, the 186 million YA novels sold represents about a third of all books in the U.S. (Gingerich, 2021). It’s clear that YA is extremely popular.
But just a quick question: what exactly is Young Adult Fiction?
Author and literature expert, Michael Cart, says trying to define YA is a ‘slippery and amorphous’ task that he compares to nailing jelly to a wall (2011: 10).
Professor Sandra L. Beckett agrees, noting the increased blurring of the borders between adult and juvenile fiction and a growing intersection of readerships (2009: 23).
But I’ll give it a crack.
Why is defining YA so hard?
Most genres are fairly easy to categorise because there’s usually one defining feature that rules a book in or out. A romance novel needs romance. A crime novel needs crime. There’s been a bit of debate about the differences between the sub-genres within speculative fiction but it’s still relatively simple to know which novels probably fall under those headings and which don’t. Everyone can recognise that a story about Steve who works in a bank but secretly wants to be a TV chef, probably shouldn’t be on the sci-fi shelf. Unless Steve is a robot bank clerk trying to be a TV chef during the apocalypse. (You can have that story idea for free, dear reader.)
Categorisation isn’t quite so easy with YA. First of all, there’s the question, ‘What is a young adult anyway?’ which brings a whole other set of problems. But even if we all agreed about who or what a young adult is, that actually doesn’t help us much with our quest to define YA.
We know the young adult isn’t referring to the authors of YA, as the vast majority of them are adults and a fair few haven’t been described as young for quite some time. So the young adult in YA must relate to the readership. The problem with that is young adult readers read all kinds of novels, including novels not categorised as YA, and some young adult readers never read YA. Conversely, lots and lots of fully grown-up adults do read YA, and are a large part of why it’s so popular.
This means we can’t really say YA is a genre read by young adults without the two fairly big caveats of ‘but not all young adults’ and ‘also there are heaps of adults who read it too’. And potentially ‘anyone is allowed to read anything really when you think about it’.
What exactly is Young Adult Fiction? According to Michael Cart, defining YA is like nailing jelly to a wall. Click To TweetAs American comedian, Mitch Hedberg (RIP), once observed:
‘Every book is a children’s book, if the kid can read.’
Same goes for young adults. This leaves us with the more accurate definition:
A YA novel is any novel for young adults.
In other words, the person or people who produced the novel, i.e., the author, publisher, marketing team, intend it for an audience comprising young adults. This definition feels like it’s getting us pretty close and it’s what I use most often but it still doesn’t help us identify a YA novel or work out what we need to do if we want to write one. Like my very illustrative example with Steve the robot bank clerk above, we should be able to work out which books are in and which are out.
So the question is really:
What qualities does a YA possess?
I can’t believe you just asked that. Didn’t you see how difficult it was to get to that broad and slightly unsatisfying definition above? Luckily, I find this to be a really interesting question and I’ve dedicated a lot of time to finding answers.
The first thing I’ll say is that the qualities of YA have changed over time, as I explain in three related articles of the history of YA (here). There is also a difference between the qualities YA novels are perceived to have and those they actually have. But I argue there are some qualities that are common in YA and differentiate it from everything else. You can read about what those are here.
The main thing to take away from all this is YA is a fascinating but constantly evolving and always hard to nail down concept. Like jelly on a wall.
p.s. I didn’t want to mention this at the start but many scholars argue that the issues I discuss above mean YA isn’t even a genre at all. Feels like they might have a point but I don’t think that will help you in a conversation.
‘What’s Young Adult Fiction?’
‘It’s not a genre.’
‘Thanks…’ * Awkward pause * ‘But what is it?’
If that happens to you, tell them to read: What exactly is Young Adult Fiction?
In my next article, I discuss what qualities make a good Young Adult novel. Hint: Identity.
References:
- Beckett, S. L. (2009). Crossover Fiction: Global and Historical Perspectives. Routledge.
- Books + Publishing (2020) Publishing and the pandemic: The Australian book market in 2020, accessed 1 March 2021 https://www.odwyerpr.com/story/public/15750/2021-02-26/print-book-sales-skyrocketed-2020.html
- Wolf, S. et al. (ed) (2010) Handbook of Research on Children’s and Young Adult Literature, Taylor & Francis Group
Cite This Article:
Gibson, T. (2023). What Exactly is Young Adult Fiction? – Tom Gibson Creative. [online] Available at: https://tomgibsoncreative.com/what-exactly-is-young-adult-fiction/
