How Do You Define “Young Adult” Fantasy?

The “young adult” fantasy book market is really hot now. Particularly trendy are young adult books that focus on vampires. Here are some of the more popular offerings:

• The Twilight Series
• Blue Bloods
• House of Night
• Vampire Academy
• The Vampire Diaries
• Vampire Kisses
• Morganville Vampires

Vampire Beach

All of these books are advertised as young adult or teen fantasy and target the respective demographic groups. Wikipedia defines young adults as 13-20 year olds and teenagers as 13-19 year olds.

Given the fairly wide age span in each category, are young adult/teen fantasy books really appropriate for ALL teens?

I occasionally receive emails from people asking me to recommend fantasy books that are appropriate for young adults and teens. I get requests from parents as well as from the teens themselves. Because I read and purchase so many urban fantasy books it’s not surprising that I frequently come into contact with books geared toward young adults. So you’d think it would be easy for me to provide parents and teenagers with “age appropriate” recommendations, right?

Wrong.

Why? Because the maturity level (more so than the age) of the teen/young adult in question has to be considered. And it differs for each person. Whereas one 15 year-old might be entirely comfortable reading a fantasy book with graphic violence the same book might not be appropriate for a different teen of the same age. And at what age is it okay for teens to read books with general descriptions of sex? What about explicit sex scenes?

By now you’re probably wondering what I tell parents or teens asking for age appropriate fantasy book recommendations.

I tell them the truth and let them make the decision as to whether the book is appropriate for them. I used to include statements like “inappropriate for someone under 16″ but I stopped doing that because as I stated earlier, it’s really the maturity level that counts. So when responding to email inquiries of this nature I’ve started using the following descriptors which (I hope) help people decide whether a book is age appropriate. Here’s what I’ve started telling them:

-whether the book contains romance, sexual innuendos, references to sexual acts or explicit sex scenes;
-whether the book contains mild, moderate, excessive or graphic violence;
-whether the book contains occasional, regular, or frequent profanity;
-whether the characters engage in alcohol consumption or drug use.

All of this is completely subjective of course, but it hopefully helps parents make informed decisions.

Some of the “safer” young adult fantasy books are listed below. They contain romance or mild sexual innuendos or references, mild or moderate (not explicit) violence, minor or no profanity and minor alcohol consumption:

-Night Runner by Max Turner
-Glass Houses (Morganville Vampires, Book 1) by Rachel Caine
-Corbenic by Catherine Fisher
-Ghost Huntress series by Marley Gibson
-Night World series by L.J. Smith
-Magic in Manhattan series by Sarah Mlynowski
-Vampire Kisses series by Ellen Schreiber
-Sucks to Be Me by Kimberly Pauley Mirrorstone
-How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier
-Inkheart series by Cornelia Funke
-Intertwined by Gena Showalter
-Good Ghouls Do by Julie Kenner
-Suck It Up! by Brian Meehl

I’ve created this Teen Fantasy Book List at Amazon which lets you scroll through reviews to see what other people think of them. Again, this is completely subjective and just my opinion.

Surprisingly enough, the books parents ask me about most often are the Sookie Stackhouse books, which I’m sure is linked to the popularity of True Blood. If you’ve read the books you know that the TV series is more graphic (think orgies) than the novels however, the books do contain explicit sex scenes. I was at one website (not this one) and saw an inquiry from a 13-year old girl who’d been watching True Blood and wanted to know if the Sookie Stackhouse books were appropriate for her to read. Sorry, I know what I said about maturity being a better indicator than age, but come on, 13 years old and watching True Blood? I responded by expressing my opinion that both the books and the True Blood series were for adults. Someone else chimed in (rightly so in my opinion) and instructed her not to identify herself online (giving out her name) as a 13 year old girl. She never responded to either of our comments.

So what do you think – what’s your definition of a “young adult” fantasy book? What other books can I add to the list?

Be sure to check out Vampire Diaries Episode 1