Caren Johnson Literary Agency

By Stephanie Kuehnert

I’m not the kind of person that can easily be categorized. I mean, I’m the punk rock girl who goes home and religiously watches her soap opera everyday. As a teenager I went through so many phases, hair styles, and hair colors that I’m shocked when people I went to high school with recognize me. It’s not surprising that my writing is difficult to categorize, too.

Caren spent a year shopping my first novel, I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE, to adult publishers and we received polite rejection after polite rejection. Finally she said to me, “I’d like to shop it as a YA.” My biggest concern was whether or not I’d be censored. After all, my character loses her virginity in the first chapter and the language I use is realistic for a rebellious punk rock girl and there’s a rape scene and some drug use, too. Caren promised me, “No, YA is edgier than you think.” And though I wondered what the difference between YA and adult really was then, when IWBYJR quickly sold to MTV Books, I stopped worrying about it. My editor didn’t ask me to make any major content changes. I toned down my language some, using profanity only where I felt it was necessary or realistic to give emotional emphasis. (This was a lesson I needed to learn anyway as someone who has sworn like a sailor since the age of 10 when I first dared to say “damn” at the dinner table.) But it’s essentially the same book. Ok, I thought, I guess it’s YA because my character is a teenager at the beginning of the book (it follows her from 14 to 23).

So I threw myself into the YA world. I joined a great yahoo group for teen lit writers. I started gobbling up YA books. I remembered why I loved teenage characters so much. They’re fun to write and read about because they are making major decisions that will shape them. I like to watch characters evolve over the course of a book, for better or worse, and teen characters are in that place in life where they can help but change and evolve. I was so psyched to be a YA writer, thrilled to be categorized for the first time in my life….

Then my editor told me that MTV Books had been successful with placing Laura Wiess’s books in the adult section of the bookstore and they planned to do this with IWBYJR as well. Okay, I thought, this makes sense, like Laura’s books mine is grittier, but this put me in limbo yet again. Am I still a YA writer? Or am I an adult writer with a YA publisher? Not to mention are MTV Books really considered YA? Barb Ferrer, with whom I share both agent and publisher with, mentioned that she didn’t see MTV Books included with the usual YA round-ups in PW, so she checked the inside of one of her books and found that as an imprint of Pocket Books, it’s considered part of Simon & Schuster’s adult line. Curiouser and curiouser.

Then, I go to my local bookstore, Barbara’s Books and find that they have divided their YA section into two. YA Books is marked for ages 12 and up and then there is “Teen Books,” which is designated “for older readers.” I found Barb’s (Caridad Ferrer’s)  IT’S NOT ABOUT THE ACCENT and Laura Wiess’s LEFTOVERS in that section and I imagine that this is where IWBYJR will end up at this particular store. Apparently it’s becoming a trend in bookstores and libraries to divide up YA this way.

It certainly makes sense. I read up as a kid, so I was perusing the YA section by 11 and had switched over to the adult section by 15 or 16 (with a few exceptions such as Francesca Lia Block which was about as edgy as I could find when I was a teen). But as much as I’d probably want to read a book like IWBYJR or LEFTOVERS or ALMOST HOME by Jessica Blank at 11 or 12, it wouldn’t be appropriate for me at that age. It would have been appropriate for me at 14 or 15 because of my maturity level. For other teens it might not be appropriate until they are 17. That’s why I liked that Barbara’s Books didn’t assign an age for their “Teen Books” section, leaving up to kids and parents to decide what an “older reader” is.

However, I wonder if the names are appropriate. I’d probably want to read “Teen Books” at age 12 because I aspired to be a teenager and “Young Adult” books at 14 or 15 because I wanted to be considered an adult. I don’t know, maybe that is just me, or maybe YA books have been considered for age 12 and up for so long that it would be confusing if a bookstore said they were for older readers.

And honestly, the more I think about it, I wonder if my editor’s original idea to shelve my book with the adult books is better than dividing up the YA section like this. My audience is probably late high school, college-age, and as someone told me this weekend, “the hip moms who used to be punk rockers,” and I’m not so sure those folks would go to the YA section. They probably shop in the adult section now, but are looking for books with a hip, eye-catching cover like many of the YAs have.

What it all comes down to is that even though I now consider myself a YA writer, I’m still not so sure what YA is. Is the only requirement a teenage character? And if so why aren’t books like HAIRSTYLES OF THE DAMNED and CROSSING CALIFORNIA shelved with YA? So, I’d love to hear people weigh in and tell me what they think YA is and what they think about splitting YA up in bookstores and libraries. And, hey, if you are so inclined, you can read part of the first chapter of IWBYJR here and tell me where you would shelve it.