Wednesday Words: New Adult and Giveaway Winners

Chances are that if you're reading this blog, you're someone who is interested in the wonderful world of YA literature or at least interested in learning what all of the fuss is about. To be short, it's just awesome and is often criticized by people who don't give it a chance. This is often the result of generalizations: young adult is just teen books, fluff novels about high school, dating, no parents and no consequences. I'm not going to deny that some books are like that, but the spectrum of YA is much further reaching and deeper than that.

As a result, though, is classifying books as being YA too broad? First of all, it's a pet peeve of mine when people refer to YA as a genre - I think of it more as an age classification. There are still genre subdivisions under the young adult umbrella just like in adult fiction. But still, most of the time we just equate YA with teen books. And that's where the trouble starts. What is appropriate for a 13 year old and what's good for a 19 year old are worlds apart. When I took a YA lit class in library school, this was a constant topic of conversation - where oh where do we put the age cap?

Earlier this week I came across a blog post on Dear Author exploring the idea of a new age group - new adult. Simply put, if YA is meant for teenagers, then what about the books for people in their late teens or early 20s (the age group that people outside the publishing and book worlds think of as young adults)? Novels meant for this age are often difficult for people to place on their library or bookstore shelves. They deal with issues that maybe aren't quite right to include in a high school collection, but they don't exactly belong with the regular fiction either because they still have a specific target age group.

As an example, check out this Twitter conversation I recently took part in:

Personally, I'm in favor of this new classification. YA stories seem to have this sort of unofficial age cap on them that protagonists can never be older than the summer after their senior year of high school (because college suddenly puts them in adult territory). As someone in my young-mid twenties, I do wonder where the books are that are meant for an older YA loving audience.

But am I alone in this? What do you all think? Leave your comments below because I'm genuinely curious!

And now onto the moment I'm sure you're all waiting for, the giveaway winners! Yes, that's right, plural. Congrats to Jennifer - you've won the autographed ARC of Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin!

It's exciting to have my first giveaway under my belt, and I really appreciate those of you who entered. There weren't that many of you, but most of you are loyal readers and it means a lot to me. So I've decided that as a special thanks, I want all three of the books I'd mentioned to get new homes. Therefore, further congratulations go to Erin - you're getting a copy of Ravenwood by Andrew Peters - and Anna - you're getting a copy of Please Ignore Vera Dietz! All winners check your email and I'll do my best to get those mailed to you soon =)

So that's it for this post! As always, comments are always welcome and happy reading!