Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Children's literature/youngadult

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How should we address the relationship between YA and children's lit?

It's my belief that asking people to distinguish between the two genres is a POV-storm waiting to happen. 80% of what would end up categorised as YA would belong as Children's as well, and a large number of what would get categorised as Children's would be fairly also categorised as YA. I propose -- and I can't believe I'm suggesting this -- renaming the phrase "Children's Literature" in the children's lit categories to "Children's and Young Adult Literature" (or just making a new parent cat), and then having separate categories and articles where appropriate. For example, "Problem Novels" and "Printz Award" could legitimately be in a young adult literature category; "picture books" and "Newbery medal" could legitimately be in a children's literature category. But instead of having separate young adult and children's books categories (right now there's only one, Category:Children's books and its children), just have one parent category Category:Children's and young adult books, and put everything under that tree in order to avoid constant POV-wars and really quite unresolvable discussions about vast numbers of books. Deborah-jl _Talk 16:37, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not understanding what "Problem Novels" are and why they would be exclusive to young adult literature and never children's or adult. I'd put the "Newbery Medal" under a middle grade genre category, but then I'm a newbie to Wikipedia taxonomy. Tem2 19:06, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

"Problem novel" is a relatively recent coinage (1960s, I think) for a subgenre of YA that's about The Problems of Being a Teenager. Though some of them are quite good, it was coined as a derogatory term, since they have a reputation for being cookie cutter "plug in your problem here". Think Luna, the YA novel from a couple of years ago about the girl with the MTF transgendered brother; his problem could have as easily been that he was gay (10 years ago), or doing drugs (15 years ago), or dating a black girl (30 years ago).

On the other hand, now that I think of it, Judy Blume books (Blubber, Tiger Eyes) and M. E. Kerr books (Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!, Deliver us from Evie) are often called problem novels, and those are crossover YA/middle grade in readership. ...Ah, genre definitions, how fuzzy you are.

As for the Newbery, I know the ALA's formal guidelines define child as up-to-14, but I think technically the book can be for any age younger than 14. It usually goes to middle grade books, but A Visit to William Blake's Inn, a picture book, won in 1982, and Dear Mr. Henshaw is arguably more of a chapter book than a middle grader. And now we're back to fuzz. *sigh* Deborah-jl _Talk 20:57, 3 March 2006 (UTC)