YAOK or NOYAOK?

Stephen Deas is looking for YA readers and will throw free copies at them (not literally; the exact reasons and manners can be read on his blog) in a search for the essence of YA.

While I have yet to read the Thief-taker's Apprentice (damned maxed out credit card!), I think Deas makes an excellent point about how subjective the picking of a hero is, and that our childhood heroes are often completely different from those we pick as adults. All you have to do to confirm this is reread a couple of your favourite childhood novels, and you'll easily find that your beloved hero turns out to be a naive git, and that the boring guy is a far more intriguing character.

Only yesterday, whilst conversing with the hubby on *issues* (or -isms as they are or are not present in books or movies; this mainly prompted by our processing of Newton's City of Ruins), we came upon the subject when he reminisced on having heard about heroes and examples in popular culture from his 18y+ students. A bunch of worldly-wise, free and outspoken young women amongst them nominated Druuna as their female heroin and champion. Seriously, if you have no idea who Druuna is, click on the link and you'll see how this is a quite baffling choice for emancipated women to make. NB: I am not judging the choice here, only illuminating that it really is not as easy as it seems.

So I think Deas is engaging in an interesting experiment here. I know I've always been confused by the many ways you can define a genre, and in the end it *is* marketing that decides (as Adam Christopher wonders in his comment), for the same reason that readers of Dark Romance are considered (by marketing dudes) to feel more at ease standing close to the Thrillers and SF&F section than the mainstream Romance.

I'm one of those crazy kids who was reading adult fiction of all genres by the time I was 13, and most of the YA novels I continued to read were either emotionally quite hefty and thought provoking, or SF&F, where the only difference with the adult stuff was the difference in language. And as it happens, one of the definitions of YA zones in on the language used (as in the actual grammar and words) and whether it is on a YA level, which is already pretty vague if we're trying to define a box, if you ask me. Yet, it's the only definition I've found that holds up cross-genre (fiction, thriller, SF/F,...).

I regularly check reviews or comments about YA books, since I'm not averse to reading a YA book once in a while. But I often wonder why adults find a story more easily not-YA-okay (NOYAOK) when it's SF&F YA (based on the -isms or violence or dark and disturbing stuff the story deals with). As if SF&F for teens must always deal with cute ETs and nice unicorns, while mainstream YA fiction can go further without its YA-okayness being questioned.
Well, unless you're asking your Catholic schoolteacher if you can read Aidan Chambers' Now I Know for your book report. Ah, if only she had known that I was also reading  and working through Dante's Divina Comedia, verse by verse, as my serious lecture that year. Ah, good times, good times...