What, exactly, is "young adult fiction"? How is it distinguished from "children's books" or "middle-grades literature"? Where are the lines between the categories? Who draws those lines? What, pray tell, is "speculative fiction"? What is "fantasy," and what is "science fiction," and how are they different?
Answering these questions: Bad idea. Any definitions are going to make somebody mad, which is fine. Making people angry is not such a bad thing. But more importantly, definitions are going to be reductive. No sooner would we define "young adult fiction," than some book would come along, a cool book, a book that 13-year-olds love, but a book that wouldn't fit the definition. Drawing lines can be very helpful (and, in some cases, necessary -- say, around ZIP codes). But boundaries keep things out, as well as in.
So I'm going to take the coward's way out. I'm going to follow Justice Potter Stewart. You may not know the name, but you've heard his famous response to an obscenity case. In 1964, asked to address the attempted ban of a movie, Stewart refused to define "hard-core pornography," asserting, "I know it when I see it." (He went on to deny the censorship of the movie.)
So, let's assume, like the pragmatic Justice Stewart, that while we may be hard-pressed to define "young adult fiction," still we know it when we see it. Similarly, we know speculative fiction when we see it.
That said, debating whether a particular book is or isn't for young adults (or children, or adolescents, or tweens) is good fun -- the rhetorical door is always open. Like Justice Stewart, such definitions are valid as they apply to individual examples. Apply away....
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