Alia
Young at Heart
Children and Young Adult Fantasy and Science Fiction
Please note that while there are a wide variety of books available to the general public, not all books may be appropriate for younger readers. This forum’s primary goal is to introduce, promote and discuss Fantasy and Science Fiction stories designed for children and young adults.
What is considered young adult and children’s fiction?
This topic is debatable, but in terms of this forum the following is a general guide to go by when covering books within the Young Adult fiction forum.
Age:
Generally, Young Adult (YA) is identified as ranging from the ages of 12-17, whilst children are under 12. Ages are set by The American Library Association (ALA), but some publishers and librarians have lowered the age for YA fiction down to 10.
Characters:
Main Character: The protagonist in the story is generally a youth that experiences a crisis in the story. Often, the story is taken from the point of view of the main character and may be limited by that character’s experiences. Young readers often can relate to the main character easily due to having shared personal experiences. Also, the protagonist very rarely dies or fails to achieve their goal; the reader must feel that there is hope.
Story Line:
The story line in a children’s book is fairly simple and develops further as it progresses into young adult fiction. Young adult books act as a transition from children to adult books.
Novels typically deal with critical moments in a young person’s life, with crises that range from physical to metaphysical, from individual to societal. The crises are most often based on age and sometimes gender. The subsequent situations and resolutions that occur are relative to the specific reading age. YA books tend to build grammatical and language skills for the more technical advance adult novels using a more descriptive writing process that isn’t found in children books.
Complexity:
Characters: easy to keep track of and also (as a general rule) not numerous. Often, characters have modern or close to modern names that are easy to pronounce and recognize.
Language: “New” or imaginary words start to develop in complexity in YA books, as opposed in children books where there are fewer, if any, imaginary words used. Words are easy to keep track of and identify to a young reader.
Things/Technology: With both Fantasy and Science Fiction there may be new creatures, tools, weapons and other miscellaneous items all of which are simply described and therefore relatively easy to follow.
Word Usage:
Stories use a hybrid adolescent language determined very much by culture, time and place.
The use of profanities may be quite common among the youth and publishers may have no explicit guidelines for this, as they do for example, in the movie industry. Therefore when recommending books here, if you could please indicate in the form of a Warning if a book uses profanities it would be appreciated.
Vocabulary tends to be a little limited with the use of simpler everyday terms. Naturally as the age of the characters increases, the vocabulary starts to become more extensive and more challenging. In case of profanities, often an author will choose to replace similar sounding or made up words, such as Freakin’ or Frakkin’ etc…
Controversial Content:
Developing a sense of realism in Young Adult and Children’s books, many authors may include topics of premarital sex, child abuse, homosexuality, drug use, alcoholism, madness, mental torture, serial killing, rape, murder and incest. These authors push these topics to the limits to establish a reputation. While many of these topics might not appear in Fantasy or Science Fiction stories, some do and others might be briefly touched upon. Many publishers don’t have a set guideline when setting limits on this kind of content, but rather go by how they feel about the book as a whole. A similar approach will also apply to the moderators of Chronicles. Please use extreme care, considering the audience who these books may pertain to and post warnings of such content when recommending a book. If you are in doubt of the appropriateness of a book for someone under the age of 18 please don’t hesitate in asking before you post.
Horror:
The story should end with the reader feeling relatively safe.
Classic Literature:
Literature written prior to the 1960s could be included as Young Adult.
Sources:
http://www.english.uiowa.edu/faculty/landon/brooks/tlucht/lit-yahistory.html#Anchor1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_adult_literature
http://www.uleth.ca/edu/currlab/handouts/genres.html
http://archive.ala.org/booklist/v94/youth/ja1/55yatalk.html
Please note that while there are a wide variety of books available to the general public, not all books may be appropriate for younger readers. This forum’s primary goal is to introduce, promote and discuss Fantasy and Science Fiction stories designed for children and young adults.
What is considered young adult and children’s fiction?
This topic is debatable, but in terms of this forum the following is a general guide to go by when covering books within the Young Adult fiction forum.
Age:
Generally, Young Adult (YA) is identified as ranging from the ages of 12-17, whilst children are under 12. Ages are set by The American Library Association (ALA), but some publishers and librarians have lowered the age for YA fiction down to 10.
Characters:
Main Character: The protagonist in the story is generally a youth that experiences a crisis in the story. Often, the story is taken from the point of view of the main character and may be limited by that character’s experiences. Young readers often can relate to the main character easily due to having shared personal experiences. Also, the protagonist very rarely dies or fails to achieve their goal; the reader must feel that there is hope.
Story Line:
The story line in a children’s book is fairly simple and develops further as it progresses into young adult fiction. Young adult books act as a transition from children to adult books.
Novels typically deal with critical moments in a young person’s life, with crises that range from physical to metaphysical, from individual to societal. The crises are most often based on age and sometimes gender. The subsequent situations and resolutions that occur are relative to the specific reading age. YA books tend to build grammatical and language skills for the more technical advance adult novels using a more descriptive writing process that isn’t found in children books.
Complexity:
Characters: easy to keep track of and also (as a general rule) not numerous. Often, characters have modern or close to modern names that are easy to pronounce and recognize.
Language: “New” or imaginary words start to develop in complexity in YA books, as opposed in children books where there are fewer, if any, imaginary words used. Words are easy to keep track of and identify to a young reader.
Things/Technology: With both Fantasy and Science Fiction there may be new creatures, tools, weapons and other miscellaneous items all of which are simply described and therefore relatively easy to follow.
Word Usage:
Stories use a hybrid adolescent language determined very much by culture, time and place.
The use of profanities may be quite common among the youth and publishers may have no explicit guidelines for this, as they do for example, in the movie industry. Therefore when recommending books here, if you could please indicate in the form of a Warning if a book uses profanities it would be appreciated.
Vocabulary tends to be a little limited with the use of simpler everyday terms. Naturally as the age of the characters increases, the vocabulary starts to become more extensive and more challenging. In case of profanities, often an author will choose to replace similar sounding or made up words, such as Freakin’ or Frakkin’ etc…
Controversial Content:
Developing a sense of realism in Young Adult and Children’s books, many authors may include topics of premarital sex, child abuse, homosexuality, drug use, alcoholism, madness, mental torture, serial killing, rape, murder and incest. These authors push these topics to the limits to establish a reputation. While many of these topics might not appear in Fantasy or Science Fiction stories, some do and others might be briefly touched upon. Many publishers don’t have a set guideline when setting limits on this kind of content, but rather go by how they feel about the book as a whole. A similar approach will also apply to the moderators of Chronicles. Please use extreme care, considering the audience who these books may pertain to and post warnings of such content when recommending a book. If you are in doubt of the appropriateness of a book for someone under the age of 18 please don’t hesitate in asking before you post.
Horror:
The story should end with the reader feeling relatively safe.
Classic Literature:
Literature written prior to the 1960s could be included as Young Adult.
Sources:
http://www.english.uiowa.edu/faculty/landon/brooks/tlucht/lit-yahistory.html#Anchor1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_adult_literature
http://www.uleth.ca/edu/currlab/handouts/genres.html
http://archive.ala.org/booklist/v94/youth/ja1/55yatalk.html
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