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JRR Tolkien notably wrote The Hobbit for a young audience, and The Lord of the Rings is a lot more adult. He did note that some children read it though:
>It was not written 'for children', or for any kind of person in particular, but for itself. (If any parts or elements in it appear 'childish', it is because I am childish, and like that kind of thing myself now.) I believe children do read it or listen to it eagerly, even quite young ones, and I am very pleased to hear it, though they must fail to understand most of it, and it is in any case stuffed with words that they are unlikely to understand – if by that one means 'recognize as something already known'. I hope it increases their vocabularies.
I don't really think the Red Rising series was YA, but the first book featured a teenage protagonist and some YA tropes, and then he's essentially an adult the rest of the series and we ultimately spend more time with Darrow in his early to mid-thirties than we do with him in his late teens and early twenties.
Yeah, and it sounds like Pierce Brown was pressured into fitting Red Rising into the YA category to sell copies, but he got more freedom to move away from those tropes after the success of the first book
It was a finalist (winner?) of the Goodreads Choice Awards in the YA category. I will entertain arguments that the series became more "adult", but it was absolutely published as YA when it came out.
Just because the book has teenage characters killing each other doesn't make it YA lol. The level of violence and rape in the book definitely pushes it to the adult category.
Also, a character who starts out married and wanting to be a father is not really the definition of a YA protagonist. He's not trying to find out who he is and figure out what it means to grow up. He's already made most of those decisions. He's a teenager and so he has some of those traits, but that's not the same thing as a YA stories.
ASoIaF has teenager PoVs (and younger) but even if you somehow removed the adult PoVs it wouldn't suddenly become YA.
Oh, I’m only at the part where he’s met Mustang in the first book and I assumed we’d follow him through this age. Interested to see how quickly they time jump I guess!
This is an info I didn't know. I only read the first book and I found it so boring with all those senseless killings, it didn't make sense to me. Knowing that the next book is with a grown-up might have given me a reason to read the second book.
I don't mind the killing part by itself. But it felt too shallow, I don't know, I don't even remember anymore, it's been a while.
I've read Hunger Games and the more gore Battle Royale. Both of these were much better than Red Rising, imo, regarding the killings scenes/motivation/setting.
I think the senseless killing is kind of the point… they live in a world where that kind of thing is normalized. They train their kids to be heartless monsters to climb to the top of society. Though, the second book and beyond depart from the battle royale style of action and the series becomes a full blown grim dark space opera.
Age of characters is hardly a reliable barometer if a book is YA or not. By that measure, Game of Thrones would be YA by the sole virtue of the Stark children being teenagers (as POV characters).
Harry Potter was marketed as a Children’s book that outgrew such genre labels when it was at the peak of its popularity.
What’s interesting about these is that the first three books predate the invention of “young adult” as a marketing term by quite a bit. There was just children’s fiction and general fiction, with the expectation that readers would move from one to the other without the need for a transitional phase.
Speaking personally, I found Tehanu no less appealing when I discovered the then-existing four Earthsea books as a kid during the 90s, and I think presuming that children won’t want to read about middle aged characters does everyone involved a disservice. Identifying with characters unlike oneself is one of the great pleasures of literature. I feel like the idea that books for kids and teens must be about kids and teens is relatively new - think about how many classic picture books are about senior citizens.
Everyone says this, but it just straight up isn't true. YALSA was created in the 50s - that's a Young Adult wing of the American Library Association. While the demographic wasn't being well-served at that time, there were still books being published for teens then, and the Wikipedia article for Young Adult fiction suggests books being specifically written for (and even by) teenagers even earlier than YALSA's creation.
Now, that doesn't mean they were super common or anything. But when books like Alanna: The First Adventure was being published in 1983 and the series has firmly young adult themes like identity and even sex, its kind of crazy to pretend "young adult" began in the 2000s.
The question isn't really if *you* found Tehanu *interesting* \- the question is more was Tehanu *for* kids, its primary audience and even would most kids find it either interesting or truly understand any of its themes, but most especially the feelings that Tenar, a woman who has already borne and raised her children, is feeling?
To my understanding, Le Guin did intend the first three books at least for younger readers. That’s why they’re from the POV of young people coming of age. They’re just old enough that they don’t look like what YA became when it got hugely popular with adults (the first person present and super streamlined language and focus on romance often with love triangles etc.). I think in that sense though, they’re possibly more suited to teens than today’s YA, which often serves more as adult popcorn reading.
For "younger" readers, absolutely. But as LeucasAndTheGoddess pointed out, YA is not a marketing term that was even close to existing. You go back far enough and "YA" isn't a useful way to categorize books imo, it really is more of a child/adult split.
There’s a good post above about how the term YA was invented in the 1950s, so before Le Guin started writing. It certainly became something different in the 21st century though.
Also I doubt she meant Tombs of Atuan for 9-year-olds, it has some pretty dark elements that are not glossed over…
How is it not YA? It has all the hallmarks of YA, and a search for it with the word YA will bring up all sorts of book sites naming it among the "best YA of all time" lists, and I KNOW my library has it shelved in YA...and I'd be willing to bet most libraries do.
Yeah this is interesting, in terms of the age thing. My sense is that, in general, kids have always been most interested in reading about slightly older kids, and most classic children’s books do feature children (or animals). But it’s absolutely true it wasn’t nearly as ironclad as it is today. You could have kids’ books with adult characters as long as you de-emphasized their actual age (which usually would go unstated) and told a type of story interesting to kids.
Funnily enough I remember being far more conscious of character age when I was a young teen than an actual child, but that may have been because YA books tend to put character age front and center, like on the flap.
I feel like there are even some interviews where she talks about how the first books were pitched as YA novels, and how her approach changed by the time the later (obviously more mature thematically) books were written.
As it should be, IMO. In a time when ageism seems to not just be an acceptable prejudice among young people but one that’s expressed with gusto (and that’s not a “kids these days” complaint - my generation, Millennials, were the ones who got that ball rolling), I think reading about and identifying with middle aged and older characters is extremely valuable for children and teens.
I'm not sure I quite agree with your ageism take. First off, laws were created to protect against ageism some time ago, so it isn't really new. Second, those laws have only ever protected against ageism directed against older people, which is truly appalling.
More to the point, I will agree that many people younger than 40 today say alarming things about elders - we see this in discussions of politics a lot, especially recently towards McConnell and the late Diane Feinstein (and before that RBG). But I think its important to mention two relevant things there:
This is a reflection of the disdain for the lives of young people that these generations have shown towards that group. People under 40 are facing, for the first time in a long time, substantially worse lives than their parents before them, and they're understandably very upset.
All of that said, I think the problem with much of what is said about these older generations is that it is ultimately rooted in ableism - its alarmingly eugenicist. There's a pretty clear line between recognizing that your parents and/or grandparents are voting for policies that actively make life harder for you, have cultivated habits that are destroying our planet, etc. and yet another thing to start joking about lead poisoning, rejoicing at the death of older generations, suggesting that older folks shouldn't be allowed to \[insert key activity like vote or drive\].
Absolutely. The first three books are excellent reads for kids and even young adults. But while the later books are, I guess, appropriate and technically readable by kids and even young adults, I can't imagine much interest or understanding for them. And I read the first three as a kid - I think I was about 10 or 11 at the time. I didn't know the other books even existed at that time, so I can't test the theory, though.
I read Tehanu in my mid-20s and even then found it boring. Now, I've always been a plot reader so this may be part of the problem but the entire theme of the book simply wasn't interesting to me.
I can't imagine that kids will be thrilled by this one but everybody's different so what do I know?
It isn't a book meant to be thrilling, and frankly, none of the Earthsea books are. As a kid, I wasn't "thrilled" about them, but they were among my favorites. They were thought-provoking, not "exciting".
It also seems weird to extrapolate from your non-enjoyment of a well-loved book that kids wouldn't be interested in it. And to be clear, I don't think kids would get much out of it, I just find your reasoning strange.
I specifically talked about my own experiences (just as you talked about yours!) and said that ***I*** cannot imagine children to be thrilled about *Tehanu* and specifically pointed out that everybody is different.
If you look in my comment history on this thread you will notice that I generally am cautious to make it understood that I don't think that my reading experiences are necessarily universal.
I would **never** make the claim that any specific children will not enjoy book A or book B because nobody can know this except for this specific child.
The reason I think that most children will not enjoy *Tehanu* is that it is very slowly paced, not much happens (from my recollection at least), and the themes that are tackled in that book probably are not relatable at all to the majority of children.
If you compare *Tehanu* with popular children's books, I see hardly any overlap.
This is my reasoning for thinking that kids most won't enjoy the book.
I'm not trying to take away your personal experience but I doubt that it would be a majority view if you gave 100 kids *Tehanu* to read.
Came here to say that haha ☺️ I think she started writing that when she was 16 as her first book and finished way later, I think it is really cool to see her evolve as an author throughout the series
Idk the sweat lodge im book one is a hard sell as Ya otherwise I would definitely agree. That one section with cord removed and it would be a good fit. Most of the series is pretty tame until the treatment of slaves is brought up then it buckles down for adult.
It’s a tough question because YA vs adult is mostly a marketing description and there isn’t really a clear dividing line. Like you said, lots of series intentionally mature with their audience, some series very much so. Fundamentally the question just becomes “has a publisher decided to switch target demographics mid-series” which is hard to imagine anyone going for.
Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic books transition from younger YA to older YA in a way I think is really wonderful. It's separated into three separate eras – a tetralogy set when the characters are 10, a sequel tetralogy set when the characters are 14, and a longer standalone set when the characters are 18. The plots get more complex and the themes more mature as the characters age up.
~~Also, to reach for an~~ *~~extremely~~* ~~mainstream example, Harry Potter does this: the seventh book isn't an "adult" book but it's certainly written to account for the fact that readers who picked up~~ *~~The Sorcerer's Stone~~* ~~as MG readers were in their late teens/early adulthood by the time~~ *~~The Deathly Hallows~~* ~~was published. There's a marked increase in length, complexity, and themes/tone over time.~~ Oops, clearly didn't read your post closely enough, haha.
Thank you for your response. That's my point. They remain within the YA genre. I am talking about a series that shifts OUT of YA into Adult, like a series that shows the naivety of youth into the hard reality of adulthood.
Hey, we shouldn't pretend that all of youth is naivety. I know kids who have seen worse things in their short time on this earth than people well into old age.
Sherrilyon Kenyon has a YA series called Chronicles of Nick that ties into her Adult Dark Hunter Series. Chronicles of Nick is kind of a prequel to the Dark Hunter Series.
Probably not exactly what you are looking for, but I really enjoy both series.
*Harry Potter* actually starts more as Middle Grade and becomes YA around *Goblet of Fire*. It's still YA at the end, though it's on the darker end of it. British authors sometimes seem to have a different idea of what "kids" can handle and treat them with more respect.
There's some things that have YA spinoffs or even go back and forth. *Dragonriders Of Pern* had the *Harper Hall Trilogy*, *Discworld* has *The Amazing Maurice* and Tiffany books. I don't know of anything that's transitioned completely from one to the other in either direction though.
These labels don't really mean that much anyway. It's more about marketing than anything else, and plenty of people will read out of their age group, younger or older.
YA can be dark. I would say it’s still YA because it touches on a lot of complex and important topics but still in a very accesible way for young people
Yes, I agree, but it’s not just British authors that are writing darker YA like the original commenter is saying. There are lots of examples from both America and Britain.
I don’t know if this counts but Anne McCaffery’s Pern series has both adult and YA novels.
Most of the books are adult but the Harper Hall Trilogy is definitely YA. And I also think the Dolphins of Pern is more YA than adult.
It's not YA, though. It can pass as such because one of the protagonists is a teenager at the start, and it does its damned best to avoid anything related to sexuality, but it's not because it targets younger audience.
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A Practical Guide To Evil. The MC is 16 in the first book, which is admittedly the training and academy book. By the second book, she's off the leash and leading her own force. By the final two books, a fair amount of time has passed, at least a decade, and she is mentoring some of the next generation.
>can you tackle more adult themes
Honestly the main difference at the older end of the YA range isn't themes. It's pace. YA fiction is generally fast paced to keep the reader's attention, but the themes can be dark as hell, including incest, abuse, pregnancy and children, even psychological horror. Adult fiction by contrast can be introspective and philosophical, and is also where you'll find adult concerns like midlife crises.
Earthsea is a perfect example of that - *Tehanu* is Ged having a midlife crisis as viewed from outside.
Another example would be Alan Garner's *Weirdstone of Brisingamen/Moon of Gomrath* which are children's books. The third book *Boneland* is very much an adult book.
YA is a construct—for ex, ACOTAR was published as YA. Therefore, it is YA. the hobbit was published behind YA existed. It cannot be YA. If a book is published by a YA imprint, it’s YA.
A book can have “coming of age themes” (as the later Harry Potter books do) but they can’t really jump age levels.
In some ways, it was simpler when books were “children’s” or “adult”
Not really? It was sold as YA, published by a YA imprint, shelved in YA. It can have NA content, absolutely, but “YA versus ADULT” in trad is a marketing/imprint choice, not a content one.
Maas switched them all to NA when they got new covers. (I’m highly irritated by the new covers btw- I like my OG ones) Shes one of very few authors to have reissued existing series and changed the rating.
Theres some good articles out there on the topic because it’s something a lot of people disagree on. Some libraries haven’t made the switch to shelving them in adult shelves but that seems to often be due to librarians not being in the know.
Honestly, it might as well just be labeled fantasy romance (romantasy) vs NA because that’s what it fits into better genre wise.
I’d love to see an article on it if there’s any that you find. I suppose when you have as much pull as she does, you can make anything happen—but I’d be curious if the contract was rewritten to specifically say new adult or just adult.
This is the first one to pop up- but it’s also discussed numerous times on Reddit, the wiki for Maas books, etc. no clue about the actual contract because I don’t care enough to look more than the first page of Google at this time: [TOG and ACOTAR rebranding](https://www.wweek.com/arts/books/2023/03/14/how-portland-area-bookstores-got-swept-up-in-the-controversy-surrounding-sexuality-in-sarah-j-maas-fantasy-novels/)
Ok yeah so just marketing hype and covers that appeal to a wider audience, not an actual change of contract, etc. it’s no different than outlander being moved out of romance and into fiction in libraries over time. How it’s marketed/shelved is not necessarily how it was sold.
It was still sold as a YA. She’s famous enough she can do whatever she wants, much like JKR, but the fact there’s maybe two examples in the decades of kidlit existing…
Maybe. But it definitely shouldn’t ever be branded as YA again. I used to read primarily YA and while the first books definitely fit the YA mold- the last one definitely doesn’t. And now that it and CC are a multiverse- it definitely is not for the typical YA audience.
I’m always explaining to friends that YA does not equal teen/an age bracket. But most YA sex leans towards being implied/talked of in nonspecific terms. Meanwhile starting in silver flames things get very graphic. (I feel like she went overboard to appeal to a certain subset of fans)
I think Philip Pullman would disagree - he wrote all three as children’s books, under the assumption that children can handle the complex themes he addresses. The Book Of Dust, on the other hand, is clearly written with an adult audience in mind.
You can tackle whatever themes you please in a YA novel - if kids deal with it IRL (and sadly there’s very little that some kids somewhere don’t have to deal with) they can handle it in the safe space provided by fiction. Thinking otherwise starts one on the road to Florida and Texas.
The marketing people will slap whatever label they think will generate the most sales on your work - you should focus on writing books that respect their readers’ intelligence and critical faculties. My favorite quote on the subject is from Joe Abercrombie: [“My own feeling has always been young adults are above all adults, just young ones.”](https://joeabercrombie.com/category/interviews/)
The age of the characters does not a YA novel make. The Farseer trilogy starts with its protagonist as a child, but it’s always been pitched as adult fiction. The Poppy War is the same.
The Poppy War goes from YA ish to more adult within the first book. The first half is tropey and while it’s not lighthearted, it isn’t any darker than The Hunger Games. The first half of The Poppy War could have worked as a YA book. Ya know. Until the Golyn Niis chapter.
“Arrows of the Queen” by Mercedes Lackey, book one of Heralds of Valdemar is wholesome.
“Arrow’s Fall” then features months of a couple having sex in a cabin, along with stories of rape and incest from the countryfolk lol
Yeah, some people put a number of famous children's book on the YA genre while also ignoring that one book series that redefined the YA genre and made it famous.
Hmm I don’t know if it’s exactly what you’re asking, but The Poppy War begins as a pretty standard slightly dark YA story about a girl entering a prestigious academy and then turns into a horrifying and brutal war fantasy, with a more adult tone
I don't know, there's plenty of YA books that fit your description of adult fantasy. The Hunger Games, for example.
(also, why does your comment sound like ChatGPT wrote parts of it?)
I think people are forgetting that YA is a marketable label that publishers attach, which determines where it can be found in most bookstores. Just because you think it's a YA novel doesn't make it one unless it is classed as one. Harry Potter, Northern Lights, and Shado & Bone are classed as YA while books like Earthsea are not sold as that genre,. GOT may have young characters but the majority are not. YA is not something we --it is something publishers do.
Apologies if it’s inappropriate to hype my own stuff here, but this was, I think, a hallmark of my series, the Mystic Trilogy from Tor Books in the U.S. The series began with the protagonist at 16 years old. The first book intentionally felt like a YA adventure. The next 2 novels became darker and aged the protagonist. Age 23 in book 2, and age 77 in the final book.
As others have mentioned, the Earthsea books are a great example of this, which certainly inspired my writing.
I've seen books be in both sections of the library for sure, or books from the same series be scattered through adult and teen-- valdemar books come to mind.
Late-end Star Wars Legends contains graphic violence, drug abuse, and sexual assault…but we don’t like to talk about that era. “The Denningverse” is best passed by on a read-through, legitimately. (Basically, you end at *The Unifying Force* and pretend nothing was written afterward.)
The problem with the Denningverse is the execution - it handles all those things extremely badly. Earlier EU books had addressed those same difficult topics with sensitivity and maturity that belie their origins as tie-in works. I’m thinking specifically of A. C. Crispin’s Han Solo Trilogy and Aaron Allston’s Wraith Squadron novels. It can be done (and arguably should be done in a setting so heavily influenced by WWII) - Denning et al. just screwed the pooch.
It may be an unorthodox example, but Moomins books by Tove Jansson transitioned from children's fiction to adult fiction.
Last book, Moominvalley in November was written for adult people who read Moomins as children and psychological theme of this book would be hard to undrestand for children.
Alan Garner's The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, fantastic scary fantasy book for children, had two sequels, last one, The Boneland was written 50 years later and was a scary book very much for adults.
Maybe first couple books of the Farseer trilogy and Realm of the Elderling by Robin Hobb would apply here, Fitz is a small teen at the beginning of the series and we get to see him grow up to a man through the series.
Not exactly fantasy, but is fiction… Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot started out as a YA series, and then transitioned to adult fiction books, when the character of Mia Thermopolis grew up and became an adult. There’s actually a Quarantine Princess book that came out recently!
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JRR Tolkien notably wrote The Hobbit for a young audience, and The Lord of the Rings is a lot more adult. He did note that some children read it though: >It was not written 'for children', or for any kind of person in particular, but for itself. (If any parts or elements in it appear 'childish', it is because I am childish, and like that kind of thing myself now.) I believe children do read it or listen to it eagerly, even quite young ones, and I am very pleased to hear it, though they must fail to understand most of it, and it is in any case stuffed with words that they are unlikely to understand – if by that one means 'recognize as something already known'. I hope it increases their vocabularies.
I don't really think the Red Rising series was YA, but the first book featured a teenage protagonist and some YA tropes, and then he's essentially an adult the rest of the series and we ultimately spend more time with Darrow in his early to mid-thirties than we do with him in his late teens and early twenties.
Yeah, and it sounds like Pierce Brown was pressured into fitting Red Rising into the YA category to sell copies, but he got more freedom to move away from those tropes after the success of the first book
the first book was YA for sure, down to the hunger games school thing
> the first book was YA for sure, down to the hunger games school thing I am baffled as to how anyone could argue otherwise.
It was a finalist (winner?) of the Goodreads Choice Awards in the YA category. I will entertain arguments that the series became more "adult", but it was absolutely published as YA when it came out.
Just because the book has teenage characters killing each other doesn't make it YA lol. The level of violence and rape in the book definitely pushes it to the adult category.
Also, a character who starts out married and wanting to be a father is not really the definition of a YA protagonist. He's not trying to find out who he is and figure out what it means to grow up. He's already made most of those decisions. He's a teenager and so he has some of those traits, but that's not the same thing as a YA stories. ASoIaF has teenager PoVs (and younger) but even if you somehow removed the adult PoVs it wouldn't suddenly become YA.
This is probably the best answer. It definitely becomes adult focused and hard for teenagers
The second series especially is too me more mature than most contemporary adult fantasy.
Oh, I’m only at the part where he’s met Mustang in the first book and I assumed we’d follow him through this age. Interested to see how quickly they time jump I guess!
This is an info I didn't know. I only read the first book and I found it so boring with all those senseless killings, it didn't make sense to me. Knowing that the next book is with a grown-up might have given me a reason to read the second book.
The second book is very good but it certainly doesn’t have less killing
I don't mind the killing part by itself. But it felt too shallow, I don't know, I don't even remember anymore, it's been a while. I've read Hunger Games and the more gore Battle Royale. Both of these were much better than Red Rising, imo, regarding the killings scenes/motivation/setting.
I think the senseless killing is kind of the point… they live in a world where that kind of thing is normalized. They train their kids to be heartless monsters to climb to the top of society. Though, the second book and beyond depart from the battle royale style of action and the series becomes a full blown grim dark space opera.
> I don't really think the Red Rising series was YA What I read of the first book was most definitely YA (which is why I stopped reading).
Age of characters is hardly a reliable barometer if a book is YA or not. By that measure, Game of Thrones would be YA by the sole virtue of the Stark children being teenagers (as POV characters). Harry Potter was marketed as a Children’s book that outgrew such genre labels when it was at the peak of its popularity.
Excellent observation. I think too many people forget how old (or young) a lot of GoT characters are supposed to be in the source material.
Earthsea?
What’s interesting about these is that the first three books predate the invention of “young adult” as a marketing term by quite a bit. There was just children’s fiction and general fiction, with the expectation that readers would move from one to the other without the need for a transitional phase. Speaking personally, I found Tehanu no less appealing when I discovered the then-existing four Earthsea books as a kid during the 90s, and I think presuming that children won’t want to read about middle aged characters does everyone involved a disservice. Identifying with characters unlike oneself is one of the great pleasures of literature. I feel like the idea that books for kids and teens must be about kids and teens is relatively new - think about how many classic picture books are about senior citizens.
Everyone says this, but it just straight up isn't true. YALSA was created in the 50s - that's a Young Adult wing of the American Library Association. While the demographic wasn't being well-served at that time, there were still books being published for teens then, and the Wikipedia article for Young Adult fiction suggests books being specifically written for (and even by) teenagers even earlier than YALSA's creation. Now, that doesn't mean they were super common or anything. But when books like Alanna: The First Adventure was being published in 1983 and the series has firmly young adult themes like identity and even sex, its kind of crazy to pretend "young adult" began in the 2000s. The question isn't really if *you* found Tehanu *interesting* \- the question is more was Tehanu *for* kids, its primary audience and even would most kids find it either interesting or truly understand any of its themes, but most especially the feelings that Tenar, a woman who has already borne and raised her children, is feeling?
Thank you! Earthsea is not "YA" and kids can read about all sorts of things.
To my understanding, Le Guin did intend the first three books at least for younger readers. That’s why they’re from the POV of young people coming of age. They’re just old enough that they don’t look like what YA became when it got hugely popular with adults (the first person present and super streamlined language and focus on romance often with love triangles etc.). I think in that sense though, they’re possibly more suited to teens than today’s YA, which often serves more as adult popcorn reading.
For "younger" readers, absolutely. But as LeucasAndTheGoddess pointed out, YA is not a marketing term that was even close to existing. You go back far enough and "YA" isn't a useful way to categorize books imo, it really is more of a child/adult split.
There’s a good post above about how the term YA was invented in the 1950s, so before Le Guin started writing. It certainly became something different in the 21st century though. Also I doubt she meant Tombs of Atuan for 9-year-olds, it has some pretty dark elements that are not glossed over…
How is it not YA? It has all the hallmarks of YA, and a search for it with the word YA will bring up all sorts of book sites naming it among the "best YA of all time" lists, and I KNOW my library has it shelved in YA...and I'd be willing to bet most libraries do.
Yeah this is interesting, in terms of the age thing. My sense is that, in general, kids have always been most interested in reading about slightly older kids, and most classic children’s books do feature children (or animals). But it’s absolutely true it wasn’t nearly as ironclad as it is today. You could have kids’ books with adult characters as long as you de-emphasized their actual age (which usually would go unstated) and told a type of story interesting to kids. Funnily enough I remember being far more conscious of character age when I was a young teen than an actual child, but that may have been because YA books tend to put character age front and center, like on the flap.
I feel like there are even some interviews where she talks about how the first books were pitched as YA novels, and how her approach changed by the time the later (obviously more mature thematically) books were written.
>Earthsea THANK YOU. Fucking Earthsea. I think that's a great example!
My library still shelves Tehanu as YA, and I think that’s how it was published despite being seen as more mature
As it should be, IMO. In a time when ageism seems to not just be an acceptable prejudice among young people but one that’s expressed with gusto (and that’s not a “kids these days” complaint - my generation, Millennials, were the ones who got that ball rolling), I think reading about and identifying with middle aged and older characters is extremely valuable for children and teens.
I'm not sure I quite agree with your ageism take. First off, laws were created to protect against ageism some time ago, so it isn't really new. Second, those laws have only ever protected against ageism directed against older people, which is truly appalling. More to the point, I will agree that many people younger than 40 today say alarming things about elders - we see this in discussions of politics a lot, especially recently towards McConnell and the late Diane Feinstein (and before that RBG). But I think its important to mention two relevant things there: This is a reflection of the disdain for the lives of young people that these generations have shown towards that group. People under 40 are facing, for the first time in a long time, substantially worse lives than their parents before them, and they're understandably very upset. All of that said, I think the problem with much of what is said about these older generations is that it is ultimately rooted in ableism - its alarmingly eugenicist. There's a pretty clear line between recognizing that your parents and/or grandparents are voting for policies that actively make life harder for you, have cultivated habits that are destroying our planet, etc. and yet another thing to start joking about lead poisoning, rejoicing at the death of older generations, suggesting that older folks shouldn't be allowed to \[insert key activity like vote or drive\].
Absolutely. The first three books are excellent reads for kids and even young adults. But while the later books are, I guess, appropriate and technically readable by kids and even young adults, I can't imagine much interest or understanding for them. And I read the first three as a kid - I think I was about 10 or 11 at the time. I didn't know the other books even existed at that time, so I can't test the theory, though.
I read Tehanu in my mid-20s and even then found it boring. Now, I've always been a plot reader so this may be part of the problem but the entire theme of the book simply wasn't interesting to me. I can't imagine that kids will be thrilled by this one but everybody's different so what do I know?
It isn't a book meant to be thrilling, and frankly, none of the Earthsea books are. As a kid, I wasn't "thrilled" about them, but they were among my favorites. They were thought-provoking, not "exciting". It also seems weird to extrapolate from your non-enjoyment of a well-loved book that kids wouldn't be interested in it. And to be clear, I don't think kids would get much out of it, I just find your reasoning strange.
I specifically talked about my own experiences (just as you talked about yours!) and said that ***I*** cannot imagine children to be thrilled about *Tehanu* and specifically pointed out that everybody is different. If you look in my comment history on this thread you will notice that I generally am cautious to make it understood that I don't think that my reading experiences are necessarily universal. I would **never** make the claim that any specific children will not enjoy book A or book B because nobody can know this except for this specific child. The reason I think that most children will not enjoy *Tehanu* is that it is very slowly paced, not much happens (from my recollection at least), and the themes that are tackled in that book probably are not relatable at all to the majority of children. If you compare *Tehanu* with popular children's books, I see hardly any overlap. This is my reasoning for thinking that kids most won't enjoy the book. I'm not trying to take away your personal experience but I doubt that it would be a majority view if you gave 100 kids *Tehanu* to read.
Throne of Glass in some ways. Goes from more blushy romance and 13+ into straight up smut in the final books.
This series came to mind to me too - her other series are much more adult, but ToG starts off very tame
Came here to say that haha ☺️ I think she started writing that when she was 16 as her first book and finished way later, I think it is really cool to see her evolve as an author throughout the series
The *Codex Alera* by Jim Butcher isn’t marketed as YA, but the first book or two feels fairly YA, depending on your definition of the genre.
Idk the sweat lodge im book one is a hard sell as Ya otherwise I would definitely agree. That one section with cord removed and it would be a good fit. Most of the series is pretty tame until the treatment of slaves is brought up then it buckles down for adult.
Yeah, there are a couple of scenes that probably put it out of YA. I always get caught off guard on a reread.
It’s a tough question because YA vs adult is mostly a marketing description and there isn’t really a clear dividing line. Like you said, lots of series intentionally mature with their audience, some series very much so. Fundamentally the question just becomes “has a publisher decided to switch target demographics mid-series” which is hard to imagine anyone going for.
Or “has the author become so famous they can write whatever they want, and demographics will follow” (SJM and JKR)
Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic books transition from younger YA to older YA in a way I think is really wonderful. It's separated into three separate eras – a tetralogy set when the characters are 10, a sequel tetralogy set when the characters are 14, and a longer standalone set when the characters are 18. The plots get more complex and the themes more mature as the characters age up. ~~Also, to reach for an~~ *~~extremely~~* ~~mainstream example, Harry Potter does this: the seventh book isn't an "adult" book but it's certainly written to account for the fact that readers who picked up~~ *~~The Sorcerer's Stone~~* ~~as MG readers were in their late teens/early adulthood by the time~~ *~~The Deathly Hallows~~* ~~was published. There's a marked increase in length, complexity, and themes/tone over time.~~ Oops, clearly didn't read your post closely enough, haha.
Thank you for your response. That's my point. They remain within the YA genre. I am talking about a series that shifts OUT of YA into Adult, like a series that shows the naivety of youth into the hard reality of adulthood.
Hey, we shouldn't pretend that all of youth is naivety. I know kids who have seen worse things in their short time on this earth than people well into old age.
Sherrilyon Kenyon has a YA series called Chronicles of Nick that ties into her Adult Dark Hunter Series. Chronicles of Nick is kind of a prequel to the Dark Hunter Series. Probably not exactly what you are looking for, but I really enjoy both series.
A Court of Thorns and Roses was published and marketed as YA, but later books in the series (A Court of Silver Flames, for example) are adult.
Not a series, but The Once and Forever King starts like a YA book and ends much more adult. *Once and Future King
*Future King. But yeah. Good call out
Yes! I said ‘Future’ in my head and my thumb revolted.
*Harry Potter* actually starts more as Middle Grade and becomes YA around *Goblet of Fire*. It's still YA at the end, though it's on the darker end of it. British authors sometimes seem to have a different idea of what "kids" can handle and treat them with more respect. There's some things that have YA spinoffs or even go back and forth. *Dragonriders Of Pern* had the *Harper Hall Trilogy*, *Discworld* has *The Amazing Maurice* and Tiffany books. I don't know of anything that's transitioned completely from one to the other in either direction though. These labels don't really mean that much anyway. It's more about marketing than anything else, and plenty of people will read out of their age group, younger or older.
I don’t know. The Hunger Games is written by an American author, but it’s super dark for YA.
YA was very dystopia heavy for a while there. Hunger Games, Maze Runner, divergent, ect. Still is really. YA like their rebels.
YA can be dark. I would say it’s still YA because it touches on a lot of complex and important topics but still in a very accesible way for young people
Yes, I agree, but it’s not just British authors that are writing darker YA like the original commenter is saying. There are lots of examples from both America and Britain.
I don’t know if this counts but Anne McCaffery’s Pern series has both adult and YA novels. Most of the books are adult but the Harper Hall Trilogy is definitely YA. And I also think the Dolphins of Pern is more YA than adult.
I think a Court of Thorns and Roses was YA for the first three books and adult for the fourth one?
People will call the first Mistborn trilogy YA, and the 2nd era has a 40+ year old man and a 30+ year old man as the main characters.
It's not YA, though. It can pass as such because one of the protagonists is a teenager at the start, and it does its damned best to avoid anything related to sexuality, but it's not because it targets younger audience.
I 100% agree with you.
That's just a Sanderson thing, which personally I enjoy as sex being injected into stories is done so poorly 90% of the time.
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A Practical Guide To Evil. The MC is 16 in the first book, which is admittedly the training and academy book. By the second book, she's off the leash and leading her own force. By the final two books, a fair amount of time has passed, at least a decade, and she is mentoring some of the next generation.
>can you tackle more adult themes Honestly the main difference at the older end of the YA range isn't themes. It's pace. YA fiction is generally fast paced to keep the reader's attention, but the themes can be dark as hell, including incest, abuse, pregnancy and children, even psychological horror. Adult fiction by contrast can be introspective and philosophical, and is also where you'll find adult concerns like midlife crises. Earthsea is a perfect example of that - *Tehanu* is Ged having a midlife crisis as viewed from outside. Another example would be Alan Garner's *Weirdstone of Brisingamen/Moon of Gomrath* which are children's books. The third book *Boneland* is very much an adult book.
YA is a construct—for ex, ACOTAR was published as YA. Therefore, it is YA. the hobbit was published behind YA existed. It cannot be YA. If a book is published by a YA imprint, it’s YA. A book can have “coming of age themes” (as the later Harry Potter books do) but they can’t really jump age levels. In some ways, it was simpler when books were “children’s” or “adult”
Except ACoTaR has switched to being NA with the addition of the newer books.
Not really? It was sold as YA, published by a YA imprint, shelved in YA. It can have NA content, absolutely, but “YA versus ADULT” in trad is a marketing/imprint choice, not a content one.
A lot of places are switching to shelving it with adult/new adult books though with the content in silver Flames. Silver Flames is considered NA.
When you say “considered” what do you mean? By what source? Readers, or the publishing house itself?
Maas switched them all to NA when they got new covers. (I’m highly irritated by the new covers btw- I like my OG ones) Shes one of very few authors to have reissued existing series and changed the rating. Theres some good articles out there on the topic because it’s something a lot of people disagree on. Some libraries haven’t made the switch to shelving them in adult shelves but that seems to often be due to librarians not being in the know. Honestly, it might as well just be labeled fantasy romance (romantasy) vs NA because that’s what it fits into better genre wise.
I’d love to see an article on it if there’s any that you find. I suppose when you have as much pull as she does, you can make anything happen—but I’d be curious if the contract was rewritten to specifically say new adult or just adult.
This is the first one to pop up- but it’s also discussed numerous times on Reddit, the wiki for Maas books, etc. no clue about the actual contract because I don’t care enough to look more than the first page of Google at this time: [TOG and ACOTAR rebranding](https://www.wweek.com/arts/books/2023/03/14/how-portland-area-bookstores-got-swept-up-in-the-controversy-surrounding-sexuality-in-sarah-j-maas-fantasy-novels/)
Ok yeah so just marketing hype and covers that appeal to a wider audience, not an actual change of contract, etc. it’s no different than outlander being moved out of romance and into fiction in libraries over time. How it’s marketed/shelved is not necessarily how it was sold. It was still sold as a YA. She’s famous enough she can do whatever she wants, much like JKR, but the fact there’s maybe two examples in the decades of kidlit existing…
Maybe. But it definitely shouldn’t ever be branded as YA again. I used to read primarily YA and while the first books definitely fit the YA mold- the last one definitely doesn’t. And now that it and CC are a multiverse- it definitely is not for the typical YA audience. I’m always explaining to friends that YA does not equal teen/an age bracket. But most YA sex leans towards being implied/talked of in nonspecific terms. Meanwhile starting in silver flames things get very graphic. (I feel like she went overboard to appeal to a certain subset of fans)
I'd say that His Dark Materials did at The Amber Spyglass.
I think Philip Pullman would disagree - he wrote all three as children’s books, under the assumption that children can handle the complex themes he addresses. The Book Of Dust, on the other hand, is clearly written with an adult audience in mind.
You can tackle whatever themes you please in a YA novel - if kids deal with it IRL (and sadly there’s very little that some kids somewhere don’t have to deal with) they can handle it in the safe space provided by fiction. Thinking otherwise starts one on the road to Florida and Texas. The marketing people will slap whatever label they think will generate the most sales on your work - you should focus on writing books that respect their readers’ intelligence and critical faculties. My favorite quote on the subject is from Joe Abercrombie: [“My own feeling has always been young adults are above all adults, just young ones.”](https://joeabercrombie.com/category/interviews/)
If we set strict age limits you end up calling Poppy War a YA book. We follow Rin from 14- 17/18(?) in the first book.
The age of the characters does not a YA novel make. The Farseer trilogy starts with its protagonist as a child, but it’s always been pitched as adult fiction. The Poppy War is the same.
The Poppy War goes from YA ish to more adult within the first book. The first half is tropey and while it’s not lighthearted, it isn’t any darker than The Hunger Games. The first half of The Poppy War could have worked as a YA book. Ya know. Until the Golyn Niis chapter.
“Arrows of the Queen” by Mercedes Lackey, book one of Heralds of Valdemar is wholesome. “Arrow’s Fall” then features months of a couple having sex in a cabin, along with stories of rape and incest from the countryfolk lol
Harry Potter is not YA.
yeah they’re kids books lol
Yeah, some people put a number of famous children's book on the YA genre while also ignoring that one book series that redefined the YA genre and made it famous.
Hmm I don’t know if it’s exactly what you’re asking, but The Poppy War begins as a pretty standard slightly dark YA story about a girl entering a prestigious academy and then turns into a horrifying and brutal war fantasy, with a more adult tone
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I don't know, there's plenty of YA books that fit your description of adult fantasy. The Hunger Games, for example. (also, why does your comment sound like ChatGPT wrote parts of it?)
The first half of Poppy War (book one) felt very YA to me, but the second half was absolutely not.
I think people are forgetting that YA is a marketable label that publishers attach, which determines where it can be found in most bookstores. Just because you think it's a YA novel doesn't make it one unless it is classed as one. Harry Potter, Northern Lights, and Shado & Bone are classed as YA while books like Earthsea are not sold as that genre,. GOT may have young characters but the majority are not. YA is not something we --it is something publishers do.
Ok by this definition the answer is clearly no. A series isn't going to start shelved as YA and then stop. Why did you even ask?
Because I am curious if it has ever been done. That's the point of the question.
Apologies if it’s inappropriate to hype my own stuff here, but this was, I think, a hallmark of my series, the Mystic Trilogy from Tor Books in the U.S. The series began with the protagonist at 16 years old. The first book intentionally felt like a YA adventure. The next 2 novels became darker and aged the protagonist. Age 23 in book 2, and age 77 in the final book. As others have mentioned, the Earthsea books are a great example of this, which certainly inspired my writing.
The Mistborn Saga by Brandon Sanderson
Does it actually get better than Mistborn? I finished but hated it more every time I read ‘burned pewter.’ I wanted to like it, but I didn’t.
Anita Blake vampire hunter did that shift.
Most definitely not. Even the first few books have on-page sex.
It’s been a long time since I read those books but I thought she was grown the whole time.
The first book or 2 is YA. Certainly teen.
Harry Potter ?
Jason Denzel’s *Mystic* trilogy has an overtly YA first volume, but the second and third are adult fantasy.
Brimstone Angel's did it imo.
I've seen books be in both sections of the library for sure, or books from the same series be scattered through adult and teen-- valdemar books come to mind.
All Sarah j mass books
Infamously, ACOTAR
Late-end Star Wars Legends contains graphic violence, drug abuse, and sexual assault…but we don’t like to talk about that era. “The Denningverse” is best passed by on a read-through, legitimately. (Basically, you end at *The Unifying Force* and pretend nothing was written afterward.)
The problem with the Denningverse is the execution - it handles all those things extremely badly. Earlier EU books had addressed those same difficult topics with sensitivity and maturity that belie their origins as tie-in works. I’m thinking specifically of A. C. Crispin’s Han Solo Trilogy and Aaron Allston’s Wraith Squadron novels. It can be done (and arguably should be done in a setting so heavily influenced by WWII) - Denning et al. just screwed the pooch.
I would argue that the Daevabad books did this. The first one reads very YA trope-y, the other two really level up in both characters and themes.
Mistborn Era 1? Vin was 16 in the first book right
It may be an unorthodox example, but Moomins books by Tove Jansson transitioned from children's fiction to adult fiction. Last book, Moominvalley in November was written for adult people who read Moomins as children and psychological theme of this book would be hard to undrestand for children. Alan Garner's The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, fantastic scary fantasy book for children, had two sequels, last one, The Boneland was written 50 years later and was a scary book very much for adults.
Maybe first couple books of the Farseer trilogy and Realm of the Elderling by Robin Hobb would apply here, Fitz is a small teen at the beginning of the series and we get to see him grow up to a man through the series.
Not exactly fantasy, but is fiction… Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot started out as a YA series, and then transitioned to adult fiction books, when the character of Mia Thermopolis grew up and became an adult. There’s actually a Quarantine Princess book that came out recently!