Enjoying YA Books

[6charlong]

Originally Posted by Luke King

For anyone who's seriously interested in YA fiction, I'd recommend Sonya Hartnett, an Australian writer. Her books are hard to put down, but very challenging, right on the borderline between what makes a book adult and young adult.

A similar example is The Book Thief--a very good book by the way. It was also written by an Australian author. In Australia it was sold as an adult book and as YA in the United States. The main characters are children but the narrator is Death. As you can imagine, it gets a bit grim in spots.

I think the distinction between children's books and adult books is nonsense. To me, fiction should be thought of as good or not so good or just plain bad but authors should be thought of as authors and artists and not graded as if they were in school. Anything else is just lazy.

[RolandD]

I think many publishers use YA designate books without gratuitous sex and violent and with younger characters. My thirteen year old turned us on to the Hunger Games last year. She read them, then my wife, then I, and then my sixteen year old. I've enjoyed the Artemus Fowl series and A Series of Unfortunate Events, because I bought them for the girls and ended up reading them myself.