It seems whenever I walk into a bookstore these days I end up browsing the novels in the young adult section. I find it more exciting and promising than the section that, as an adult, the bookstore is telling me I belong in.
My interest in YA fiction was reignited a couple of years ago when I found myself reviewing a lot of YA novels. Suddenly I realised how much fantastic literature is out there now for teenagers. And with some of the books I read the only thing that identified them as YA fiction was the fact that the main character (or characters) were teenagers. Going off the writing style and sophistication of the plot alone they could have just as well been written for an adult audience.
The line between the YA and adult fiction categories is murky grey and seems to be more determined by publishers and booksellers than writers or readers.
Recently some publishers have made a move to implement even more limited age labels on books by introducing age banding, the aim of which is to further clarify a book’s age appropriateness.
But many writers, illustrators, librarians and some publishers have been outraged by age banding and created the No to Age Banding initiative with the aim of convincing publishers that it’s a bad idea.
It seems to me that age banding will only result in putting some children off reading – either because the book that they want to read or are able to read is banded for an age younger than they are and therefore they may be embarrassed to read it or because it’s banded for an age older than they are and perhaps their parents or teacher thinks they shouldn’t be reading it.
And from the other side of the spectrum, who’s to tell me as a 34-year-old that a book labeled for 14-year-old isn’t suitable for me? No one. Exactly.
Philip Pullman, a member of No To Age Banding, summed it up in his address at a recent conference discussing the age banding issue:
I did not intend the book for this age, and not that; for one class of reader, and not others. I wrote it for anyone who wants to read it, and I want as many readers as I can get, and I want to meet them honestly.
More reading on age banding:
