(urth) PF as YA
"Fernando Q. Gouvêa"
fqgouvea at colby.edu
Fri Apr 17 11:05:16 PDT 2009
I actually thought a bit before phrasing it as "for young adults"
instead of "YA", for that very reason. "YA", after all, is a marketing
category. Today it seems to mean "preadolescent".
That said, however, the scuttlebut among authors is that folks have been
asked to *add* sex and violence to their books in order to make them
appropriate for the YA market. If you've read a review of Margo
Lanagan's "Tender Morsels", to choose an example that I happened to
notice, you know that the "YA" category today embraces a lot of stuff
that junior high librarians used to frown at.
Fernando
Jerry Friedman wrote:
> --- On Thu, 4/16/09, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: (urth) PF as YA
>> To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
>> Date: Thursday, April 16, 2009, 12:21 PM
>>
>>> Hmm, I thought it was obvious that PF
>>> (and, before it, The Wizard Knight) were
>>> intended as books for young adults!
>>>
>> I haven't read PF, but I can pretty well guarantee that
>> WK will not end up in the library at any junior high I know
>> about. It's violent and overtly sexual. And it's
>> tone would definitely not hold the attention of any but the
>> most exceptional young teen. I'd as soon label "A
>> Voyage to Arcturus" as YA fiction as I would WK.
>>
>
> I don't think "for young adults", quoted above, means
> junior high. Maybe "YA", which I used, does, thought I
> thought it included high-school-age kids too.
>
> Jerry Friedman
>
>
>
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--
=============================================================
Fernando Q. Gouvea
Carter Professor of Mathematics
Colby College Editor, MAA FOCUS
5836 Mayflower Hill Editor, MAA Reviews
Waterville, ME 04901 http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/19/
http://www.colby.edu/~fqgouvea
A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be believed; but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttle-fish.
-- G. K. Chesterton
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