Meta: What's a Young Adult?
When I proposed that this year be "young adult" themed, I didn't realize how complicated it'd get.
Selfishly, I decided early on to not limit the books to simply "teen" books. That would leave out a lot of my favorites. But this has caused some confusion. The eligible candidates were supposed to be "a young adult featured in a young adult novel."
But what is a young adult? And what is a young adult novel?
Here are several questions that have come up in the comments to the nominations post. I'd like some groupthink on the matter before I decide if some of our beloved heroines are out:
Is To Kill a Mockingbird a young adult novel? It's not shelved as such in bookstores (at least it wasn't when I worked at B&N), but most high schoolers will be asked to read it.
Is Discworld a young adult series?
Is a semi-adult (such as Johanna Mason from The Hunger Games whose age is given as in her 20s) a young adult?
Cleary's Ramona books are for young readers but are young readers the same as young adults?
Should we have an age range on contestants? In my head, 10-21 seems about fair. However that would eliminate several popular choices such as the aforementioned RAMONA (4-8) PIPPI LONGSTOCKING (9), ALICE IN WONDERLAND (7), and SCOUT FINCH (6-8). To do this, I would have to age-check all the characters nominated.
If the character ages throughout a series or book, as with Scout and Ramona above, do we count their ages at the beginning or the end?
Opinions? Thoughts? Ideas?
Selfishly, I decided early on to not limit the books to simply "teen" books. That would leave out a lot of my favorites. But this has caused some confusion. The eligible candidates were supposed to be "a young adult featured in a young adult novel."
But what is a young adult? And what is a young adult novel?
Here are several questions that have come up in the comments to the nominations post. I'd like some groupthink on the matter before I decide if some of our beloved heroines are out:
Opinions? Thoughts? Ideas?