I do want to point out I have lumped in Middle Grade with YA. That was intentional and will be addressed in Pt2. Before reacting too strongly one way or the other, please wait for the video where I break down my actual "Problem"
Glad you said this, because they are drastically different in my mind. There are tons of middle grade books that are so good and most YA is nothing but trashy, unrealistic, unhealthy romance. There is some good stuff in there but it’s hard to find. Then they mess around and put YA on something that has enough open door stuff to be landed firmly in adult romance. Looking at ACOTAR. I loved it but it has NO business in YA. I was in high school when HP started. It was calm and quiet at first. And then Goblet of Fire came out. And the world went insane. I’d never seen anything like it. I didn’t even read them until that one came out. Lol. I needed to see what all the fuss was about.
Totally agree with the lumping, it helps with series like Percy Jackson (and that whole universe) that have actually aged with the original audiences a bit, with each additional series.
About the YA re-branding of WOT, that is actually how I started reading them. I got the two-part version of Eye of the World for either Christmas or my birthday. I probably would not have picked up the books on my own, not because I didn't like fantasy but because I rarely bought books for myself.
@@brewwin Quite obviously, we are talking about markets in which the term "Young adult" is used. That limits us to English speaking countries, as well as countries that frequently sell books. That would be the US, Canada, Australia, UK. Maybe I missed some, but you will notice that in those countries, people are considered adults when they turn 18.
@@kayla4551 in my country they market books for teens that way, but by "books for teens" i mean "books for kids 10-12 year olds, with a protagonists in their early teens showing them how cool is high school" or smth. So publishers and bookstores would put "THE NEW TEEN HIT BOOK" on the book or smth, or like "EVERY TEEN READS THIS" to the point where it's incredibly cringe
My problem with YA fantasy is mostly because of how so many of those books do romance. It’s 2020. We need to stop telling girls that the asshole they’re crushing on will change for them and become a wonderful person.
True, maybe it's personal experience, but I feel like Twilight had (sadly) a bigger impact. After Twilight I saw so many book stores suddenly having a "Twilight" section, which most of the time was summed up as "supposedly generic girl falls in love with pretty boy, but there is much more to him than it seems. Also them being together causes problems somehow." I also never heard about YA before Twilight not even during the Harry Potter craze, then again maybe it wasn't just that big in my home country.
Yep yep yep. It's not even so much that them having romance arcs is an issue, but so many of them depict such unhealthy, even abusive relationships. I'd also just love to see more YA books in which romance isn't a centerpiece, or the romance doesn't work out perfectly, especially since it's catering to a demographic notorious for having skewed and unhealthy views about romance and feeling utterly worthless if they aren't in a relationship. I, personally, would also ADORE seeing an aromantic protagonist who has to grapple with people falling for them when they just don't feel the same way and never will, especially since explicit aro representation is next to none and I've never seen an aro protagonist *ever*, and I think it would be really helpful to aromantic teens who are going through the same alienation and feeling broken that I was to see that hey, they're not alone, and you can still live a meaningful and fulfilling life without romance--especially in a genre so saturated with the theme that romance fixes all your woes.
"It's not really a genre" As a YA writer, I agree with that. I've tried to look up the requirements so many times, because I'm trying to figure out how to brand myself - literally all I can find is "main protagonist must be a teenager or young adult". There are no other major genre restrictions, that I can find.
Well, yeah, it's not a genre, it's demographics of your target audience. Japanese editors invented it way back with manga magazines, which were marketed towards young boys, or young girls, or older teens, pretty much adult guys and girls. You can buy a magazine and find all kind of stories in there, comedies, adventures, detective mysteries, horror, romance, only restricted by age and gender of their audience. So I guess you just write freely whatever you like, only considering mc demographics and possible age restrictions.
@@poppypollen4362 Yeah, I really don't know why western audiences (or maybe just Americans) don't understand that fundamental truth. It's literally in the name YOUNG ADULT. It's not that complex. It's a target audience, like a family movie or children's cartoon. The media can actually be anything or unintentionally appeal to anyone, the point is that for marketing purposes it's TARGETING X age group or generation. They will naturally exhibit similarities are studies are done to show X age group likes Y in a story, but that's just demographics (which are a different problem, but hardly a genre). It's the same thing with trying to explain how cartoons or western animation are medium and not all are targeting kids or fit into a genre. Like tell, me why I still have to explain to people that ANIME or MANGA are a freaking medium and refer to an animation or drawing style and culture's artistic representation (like Manga literally translates to Japanese comics) and not a gosh darn medium. Like how many times do I have to draw circles within circles to get this across?!
I agree and I'm in my sixties. I even read books markeded for middle grade every now and then. A good story is a good story, and I love well written charaters. Last winter I read the Charlie Bone series by Jenny Nimmo and loved it.
Same! I am still in “ya age” and sometimes my family tell me that i will grow up one day and stop liking it but i am just like why? I like ya because there are good books, not because i am a teen... this reduction of the genre is so offensive to me especially when non-ya readers say it
I still love Percy Jackson, Percy Jackson is what got me into reading and gave me a place to go to whenever I had problems or something was going on, I will forever love it.
Percy Jackson is one series I always love to recommend to people who are looking for a series that isn't a straight kids book but isn't quite adult/teen yet. Hell, I recommend it to parents and adults all the time too at my store.
Zachery Morrison Same, but if they’re used to adult fantasy and stuff like that with complex characters, i would tell them to expect something different or read it with low expectations so that they’ll know what they’re getting into. Lots of booktubers have read it with low expectations and ended up loving it!
me too! it didn't get me into reading but instead of harry potter, percy jackson was my childhood (or, well, roughly ages 10-14 actually) i only got to reading harry potter when i was 15, later than most kids at the time (and thoroughly enjoyed it). but pjo was and still is a really cool series to me. i was the kid who sparked the pjo obsession in my class and we'd all have a great time discussing it lol
Without YA books, I wouldn’t even read books at all. Now I read anything fantasy from middle grade to adult. Also: Thank you for including 6-7 Rick Riordan books in the thumbnail 😂
dobliviate I don’t know if he made that thumbnail background or just found a convenient image off google but I liked it too. Perhaps he’ll give PJO another chance sometime.
@@keegszzz8356 I see very difficult Daniel giving it another try to READ it, but Im sure that he would give it to the possible adaptation uncle Rick is trying to give us (I hope as an animated series). He's reviewed Middle Grade-YA animated series like ATLA and The Dragon Prince soo...
I think that is how it is supposed to work, you start with children's books, move on to YA and then on to adult literature. When people just read YA only forever it makes me wonder.
It's funny how the covers of the books in the children's section in Barnes & Noble tend to be bright & colorful. Then you walk to the other side of the store, where readers are several years older, and books in the YA section have dark and dramatic covers, lots of black and red colors.
They put the children’s section on one side, tons of normal fiction including the classics and literary fiction and really grungy super adult stuff in the middle, and YA on the opposite side of the store.
Man, Harry Potter release days where somethin else, never have I seen that many ppl desperate for a book. Specially for the final book, stores everywhere around me opened early so people could go to the bookstores, there would be police at the line up spot and at cash register. People where terrified of the book stores selling out before they got a copy. I'll never forget walking through a dark mall at 6 something in the morning, surrounded by a huuuge group of ppl of all ages wearing wizard robes, all beyond excited. All for one single book.
I think a large problem with YA is marketing. Books that really should be marked as Adult (Sarah J. Maas I'm looking at you) are given to teens. But at the same time books are put into YA that are really more middle grade! The fact that the YA age range is considered 12-18 is insane. YA has improved greatly imo but I'm not as well read in it anymore tho.
True, and not only the case with fantasy. I recently saw Dan Brown's The Davinci Code in the YA/Middle Grade section of my local bookstore and was highly disturbed
When I was in high school a court of thorns and roses was still classified as YA and it was at my school library and was I think in 10th grade and picked it up and was like this is good and then first sex scene and I was like this isn’t YA at all and was like why is this at school.
I think the thing is, YA has become more than an age group, it has become a set of conventions and topics. People want to write and read stories that feature the YA conventions but with older characters, and that space hasn't been created yet (new adult is a different conversation because it's usually just porn). As long as that space isn't created YA will continue to be a weird middle ground.
I think you’re totally wrong. When I was 16 and 17, those sex and drug concepts helped me understand the world I was walking into. And I was aware enough to realize it was actually an immature view of reality. An aberrant sort of fantasy. For me I don’t think we need to age gate info. What we need to do is provide context with the info to make sure it isn’t the only story, or the whole story, or even a good story. That was a decade ago for me.
Yukino Aguria XD Dan Brown released a YA edition of The Da Vinci Code, which has been met with some controversy because the intended demographic sees it as a step down from the original novel. Almost as if it has to be “dumbed down” for them
The original Percy Jackson pentalogy will always be my favorite series. That franchise could have been the next Harry Potter if the movies were better and if the book releases were more staggered so as to build up hype.
@Hans Hanzo The Riordan universe got a little too progressive, in my opinion. His attempts to include characters of every marginalized demographic should not have extended to religious diversity. It still doesn't make sense to me how Sam could practice Islam while her dad is literally a polytheistic god.
@@metsfanovan I mean, her mom could've converted to islam after hooking up with a god 🤷🏻♀️ or she was just always muslim that just happened to hook up with a norse god 🤷🏻♀️🤣
To me, Rangers Apprentice is the perfect series. It's someone everyone can enjoy- no matter what age. Also I can't read depressing books they make me depressed and so-
I love how ranger's apprentice is technically fantasy, but most of the world and a lot of the details are based on real history. Obviously some mature parts of the time period are left out because it's for kids but the realistic world building for each faction was great. I've always been into history so I loved those books as a kid
As the YA genre becomes more A than ever to meet the desires of its grown readers, something odd is happening, where the themes, dialogues, and personalities no longer match the 12-18 age gap. You showed Six of Crows on the background, which clearly only kept the ages of the characters bellow 20 for the book to be marketed as YA, when actually all of them read as above 20 (ok, Wylan could be 18). Fans make some mental gymnastics to explain they behave maturely because of the world they grow up, but in reality, it just reads more mature than YA was meant to. Similar issue with A Court of Thorns and Roses, where explicit sex is included in every book of the series, yet, given the young female lead and focus on romance over usual fantasy themes (magic system, world-building, etc), it was basically forced to be marketed as YA, because there is no in-between genre or better, age group. I personally believe that a better rating system should be implemented, there were short-lived efforts to star a New Adult rating in traditional publishing, which did not ultimately work, I believe bc New Adult is often confused with erotica. So perhaps a similar system to movie ratings? However, YA has come to mean more than the age-group it targets, we know that a YA fantasy, compared to adult fantasy, won't just be more "clean", it will also be likely more focused on character over plot, a smaller cast of characters, focus on friendships, romance, first experiences, etc. So I guess the challenge remains on how to still direct the audience to the books they wish to read if the YA label isn't attached to it.
To your last sentence, even before reading anything about the book, I found that you can almost always tell from the covers lol. It shouldn't be so easy, but literally any cover that has fancy, swirling designs or a young model posing for the cover or the onscreen adaption, is YA. YA books can have simple covers, but adult books are never as fancy as books written for audiences who want to buy pretty books (young adults, mostly).
@@SidPil not all popular sayings are correct. Definitely judge a book by its cover. One that is excessively fancy and catches your eye first is either high fantasy, a good enough book to have a collector's edition published, or the newest YA novel. More than half the time it's the latter.
I read the books when I was around 16 to 17 and I have to disagree. I think it's one of the cases where the environment and the things happening made the characters in their personality seem older than they actually were. They had to grow up faster. Still, someone like Wylan (who's trauma was more recent than for example Kaz' or Inej's) felt actually like a teen to me. And if you compare Kaz with for example Tommy out of the Peaky Blinders TV show (not 100% but still in a lot of ways similar) you start to notice the age difference far more
I wish I had been able to get on board the Harry Potter hype train when I was a kid. But my parents wouldn't let me read or watch it cause they thought it glorified witchcraft and satanism.
My parents got me the books but they also thought it had a demonic influence over me because I'd get moody and annoyed when they interrupted my reading.
I pre-screened it for my nieces at the time, for that reason. I was more troubled by the constant rule breaking / swearing / making out in the later books. The "magic" here is just make believe. The point is made & explicitly stated at one point that you can't solve your personal problems through magic. It's got great lessons on friendship, family, love, self sacrifice. This is why it's important to check things out for yourself (or pre-screen for your kids) instead of just going by what others say.
@@Yesica1993 Teenagers are generally like that though. Rebellious, hormones all over the place and swearing when adults aren't about. So.... It wasn't inaccurate or a bad influence really, it was just a mirror to what teenagers are actually like. They grow up eventually. It's just a phase.
I read both YA and adult fantasy and I find that both have their pros and cons. As an adult I find myself generally enjoying adult fantasy more, but there are gems within YA that outshine even most adult fantasy(imo).
Lena Zeller agree. YA yields much lot eye rolls and frustration but they also get pretty creative because Ya is so saturated. Sometimes adult can be too slow but usually is worth it.
Can you recommend any good YA? I use to read them... But growing up I became very desilusioned with. I have come to hate Sara J mass and Cassandra Clare (the last one very much). So any good book?
For every book after The Sorcerers Stone my mom had to go out at midnight and get three copies, and the next day my sister my dad and I would lock our doors until we were done. My dad was such a nerd that when the first movie came out he convinced a drug rep (he was a doctor) to buy out a theater so we could see it a few hours before it came out. One of my best childhood memories.
So personally- I am 19 and I am female. Logically, a lot of what I have read has been YA because I mean, when I was in high school our library was filled with it. I started branching out into adult books in high school as well and that's when I noticed the differences. When I was just 15 I couldn't explain this well but my reaction to picking up a lot of adult fantasy was summed up with, "This is a great but like...where are all the women?". I don't want this comment to be pegged as hate. There are plenty of books I love that do not have a lot of female characters or really well written ones. To be completely real, I relate to female characters easier- there are just a lot of struggles that as a woman I relate to more then what a man goes through. I don't hold it against a guy at all if he relates to a man easier, there is nothing wrong with that. But I think their needs to be a a bigger discussion on how (from my perspective at least) a lot of adult fantasy (that is targeted towards men) is taken more seriously overall as a narrative then what's targeted towards women. Like, I think it speaks volumes that New Adult spawned, just to essentially lump in even more female driven narratives so they didn't have to market it as Adult. Not a big fan of this book series but The Court of Thorns and Roses Series is a excellent example of this.
LovelyLDragon I agree with you. So much adult fantasy is geared towards older men, and I think the popularity of YA fantasy with female characters have shown publishers that women want fantasy too!
Lorin Paterson I know! Women want fantasy! Lol. I think we are just in this weird stage where publishers have realized this but they don’t how to market or are just scared. I think they just need to go for it like damn YA is so lucrative. Trust me TOR fantasy -the women will show you they want some fantasy with their wallet lol
Understandable. Fortunately we are getting much more female atention too, more and more. Sanderson for one has characters like Shallan, Jasnah, Vin, etc. all awesome and cwntral characters, especially Vin. Jojo Part 6 Stone Ocean is mainly women cast and the main protagonist Jolyene is fuvking amazinggg, The Poppy War, etc. But the examples are still too rare and far inbetween. We will get more though, Im sure.
LovelyLDragon I think the problem with the specific example of ACOTAR is that that particular series is more romance than fantasy. At least from what I remember of it. Yes there was some interesting fantasy elements and I enjoyed the world, but a large emphasis was put on the romance. And I think a lot of adult fantasy readers want their books to be mainly fantasy with a dash of romance mixed in. Whereas fantasy in YA is dominated by romance heavy stories. I think as a story ACOTAR fits in way better to YA and it wouldn’t have been as marketable in the adult section even if it’s themes lean toward an older age.
I read Percy Jackson when I'm ten. Those times it really warmed me up to the fantasy genre moreover it was really fun and exiciting story to read. I don't know If I read now I can feel the same things for the PJ but for beginners this kind of books makes really good beginning for the new fantasy readers.
My dad worked for FedEx during the Harry Potter mania and he had people following him while delivering around bookstores at some point they had to have special deliveries so people wouldn’t try to rob the delivery drivers.
I remember when HP 5 came out, I think I was 15 or 16. I went to the bookstore straight out of school to pick up my pre-order. I had never ordered anything before. I read all afternoon and after dinner, and halfway into the night, until I finished it. Completely failed my exam in school the next day due to not having studied and barely had any sleep 😂
I really like YA fantasy/sci-fi, as long as it isn't dumbed down. In my opinion, YA fiction is much more willing to approach the emotional sides of life directly than a lot of other fiction is, which though not always done amazingly, I appreciate.
I think Harry Potter proved YA could sell, and Twilight proved the market wanted female protagonists and more mature themes. A lot of times people are writing things but publishers hate to be the one taking a gamble. Once someone takes that gamble and wins, they latch onto it.
I remember when "The Son Of Neptune" by Rick Riordon came out and it was everywhere in school! I thought it was so cool, but I was also sad cause I had to wait till Christmas to read it haha
I remember back when I was reading the heroes of olympus books, my mom bought me The Son of Neptune but would only let me read it on the condition that I finished reading my summer reading assignments, which I was slouching on. I finished both books I needed to read in a week just so I could get to TSoN, which I then also read in less than three days. I was *hungry*
My issue is that things that were labeled as YA that had more mature themes were still marketed towards young teens/preteens. When I was in grade 5/6 I read books that had really mature themes that I wasn't ready for, but I didn't know going in because they were in my middle school library. It's not a problem that YA is growing up, but grown up YA should be marketed to high school and college students, not preteens.
Sorry for awaking a dead post but I disagree. That won’t fix the issue because super gore-filled and depressing books are marketed towards children. I grew up on Warriors and the rest of Erin Hunter’s work when I was in elementary and reading that as an adult now, holy crap is that stuff dark! Very sure the reading level is still marked as 6th grade. I also read Watership Down in middle school but I already knew what I was getting into. Maybe it’s a YA or something but the early movie is marketed and rated for children even though I’m sure some scenes will be scarring for them. The biggest issue for lower level schools, bookstores, and second hand stores is not properly labeling or warning about more intense topics. I’m not sure if they just look it up and slap the label on but my mom would have been pissed knowing I picked up an erotic dragon fantasy novel from a goodwill that was labeled for children (I didn’t check the back, I was just happy to see a dragon book).
@@MicukoFelton The problem is, YA is a MARKETING genre, aimed at a very big age gap, preteens included in the marketing age gap. The gap is too big! There isn't a category for preteens, really. There is only YA, were preteens are INCLUDED.
to be brutally honest, every ya book i know falls into one of three categories: -the harry potter wagon, with percy jackson, eragon, his dark materials -tho this came a lil before - , artemis fowl, lemomy snicket, miss peregrine's etc -the twilight wagon, with mortal instruments, vampire academy, beautiful creatures, fallen, hush hush, house of night, shiver etc -and of course the hunger games wagon, with divergent, maze runner, uglies, legend, delirium, matched, selection etc ☕☕☕ i mean literally....fight me for all i care
What about John Green, The hate u give, the book thief, perks of being a wallflower, and the whole Lara Jean series, that Georgia Nicholson series, etc?
I'm around the same age as you, so the explosion of YA is what got me into reading (Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games) so I really respect the genre and I think it creates a safe space for teens to get into reading. BUT I also hate that it really is just a marketing technique that places restrictions on a lot of books that are harmful to the story (like you argued with Scythe) and i find it really frustrating a lot of the time, because so many things are marketed wrongly as YA or adult and chunks of audiences miss out on it, or people refuse to picks things up because its YA. Personally, it's a genre/section of the book shop that my tates don't really align with anymore, but it's still one I'll always respect
Leigh bardugo's ninth house was a phenomenal book, shadow and bone didnt cut the mark for me and I totally loved six of crows, but I do agree with people who are saying that the characters shouldn't have been 17.
How mature do you think someone needs to be to read SOC vs Ninth House? Because I loved SOC and want to read Ninth House but don’t know if I should yet lol
@Madden Mckenzy I read it when I was 17 and hadn't even read SOC, at that point. It lies in the adult genre and not typical "ya" so proceed with that in mind
@@wham1984 no we would literally come to school crying and be emo all week because we got spoiled in the line at the book premiere 😂 it was a wild time, pretty silly looking back, and not everyone was that diehard, but it was like the whole world to those of us who cared 😄 hence why u see so many millenials with like deathly hallows tattoos lmao
Man I grew up on the Redwall books such a legendary series. RIP Brian Jaques... I remember being twelve years old when Sorcerer's Stone released and our school library gave all the 6th grade classes a free copy. Considering I had just read The Hobbit for the first time that same year I always look back on that time in my life fondly.
You really can't have a discussion about how the YA target demographic transcended into the more 'older teen' audience we're accustomed to seeing without mentioning Stephenie Meyer's Twilight.
YA books originally got me into reading when I was younger and I think sometimes YA is put down simply for being targeted towards younger people. Things that teenagers and especially teenage girls like are being seen as lesser to adults interests which in my opinion is not good. We all need and are interested in different things at different times in our lives.
From what (admittedly limited) criticism I've seen, YA isn't put down for targeting younger people, per se, it's the claim that it out-right panders to teen-agers, which I can sort of see, in a way. I think the romance genre does this (very knowingly, in fact) for women and I would even claim that the old action-adventure genre did this for men (if I ever want some good second-hand embarrassment, I just browse the men's adventure section at the local used book store. Mack Bolan, we hardly knew ya...) This usually isn't a problem, but it can lead, IMO, to some folks getting stuck in that genre and never maturing/advancing (I know a not-insignificant number of people in their late-20s/early 30s who still gush about how much they love Harry Potter, to the point where you know you're wasting your time trying to talk about any other series or author. You feel kind of bad for them, honestly).
Society seems to hate teenage girls -- the music they listen to, the tv shows targeted at them, the clothes they wear, the language they use. Heck, even the colours they like. It's very sad, really. Even some teenage girls hate other teenage girls, because their interests are seen as immature or downright stupid. Definitely looked down upon. Why, though?
I read a couple of the books when I was a kid but never understood it. Were they animals? Were they people? What was it? Was there a chronology? It was a bit too much for twelve year old me.
I'm from 1978 and I remember when Harry Potter craze hit. To me it was mostly exhausting, because I could hear from the buzz that the books were just not my cup of tea, and I started getting a bit snarky on the subject, but a friend of mine who studied literary history at the time said: "These books get people who would never pick up a book, reading! It's an amazing feat, just think about it!" and I had to agree. I never boarded the HP hype train, but I started smiling and waving as it drove by me, because I focused on how many more people might also get to ready my favourite books, compared to before HP. I was not aware of the YA genre even existed when I was "YA age", but looking back I have read some. It's just that I've been reading adult literature too from I was like, ten. I've recently read the YA books surrounding Sword of Kaigen, and the Binti trilogy, and tbh I wish they were there when I was a nine or ten yo kid. I would have loved them for sure. They'd have slottet in fine next to McCaffrey's Pern stuff. I know at least one author who writes fiction that gets labelled YA, but who is actually not strictly writing with young people in mind. My understanding is that she's writing for adults who would just like to read something cool while feeling safe knowing that no PTSD symptoms or other nastiness will be induced. I think that is a very worthy cause and I love that there is a space for it. I don't enjoy a lot of YA myself (I am one of those masochistic Malazan fans! It can't get too grim for me!) but I really, really appreciate that those books are there for other people to grab them and seek thrills and comfort from.
Oh YA, as a past bookstore employee and writer I find this category well extremely interesting. In one way it is the bridge between childrens and adults books, but in another way a kind of no no section for some younger people. I have said this before bookstore employees are often required to say that some YA books contain strong trigger points for young adults that may be upsetting. Yeah I know many people with in this age range are mature enough to handle the content, but let's be honest some arn't quite ready for it. Now where YA really interests me is that it allows a book series to last a long time as characters can grow and age with its target audience or fans. For many authors that becomes such a benefit as one allows them to fulfil their dreams as a published author and two to keep them economically stable so they can support themselves and their families. Let's face it not all authors are in the same position as J. K. Rowling; many are scrapping at the bottom of the piggy bank to survive or working other jobs to keep a roof over their head. Truely many many book could be in YA category but publishers have motives to keep them in normal categories to avoid the YA stigma, but others jump at the chance to be known as YA. Some books are even weirder like Harry Potter these days often found in childrens, YA and its own shelves or display for both the original books and the illustrated versions, acting if it has transcend being in any category or genre. Anyways good vid and theories Dan I look forward to your ponderings in part two.
I do need to clarify that middle grade and childrens and kinda mixed together on shelves in Australian stores. Then there are young childrens picture books etc below. So childrens and middle grade is like 7 to 13 ish and then YA is kinda like 16 plus but some age over lap does occur depending on maturity level and parent acceptance.
I was hired as security for a bookstore back in '07 for the final Harry Potter release at midnight. I was 22 at the time but still a fan. The bookstore was nice enough to let me buy a copy after all the pre orders were picked up. I did go home and read the whole thing to prevent spoilers. Good times.
I'm an English teacher so i'm Hyped. YA is doing exactly what it should be doing. it is introducing young people to books. Also a lot of author's are making a living so win-win.
I was one of those parents who was very involved with what my kids were reading/watching/listening to. I had picked up Sorcerer's Stone for my oldest, who was 9 at the time, because he had really enjoyed other fantasy type books I had read to him or that he read. It turned into a nightly reading aloud to all of my kids very quickly (this was in 1998 so there were only two books...they were read A LOT). We were all enjoying the story so much that as each subsequent book was released, it turned into an event! We went to the midnight book releases, and had HP parties with my BFF and her three kids. I would buy one copy on release night which I read in one sitting, then it went to each child in order of age. No one said anything about the book at all until everyone was finished, and then there was a family discussion. I still have all of those books on my shelf. They are some of my most treasured items. And yes, I still love HP. When my husband and I decided we wanted to get married in 2015, we chose between a Harry Potter theme and a Middle Earth theme. In the end ME won out, but it was very close.
A bit similiar to my family :). I have an older brother and my mum would read aloud to us when a new book was out and in our possesion. It was a tradition, so we continued in that manner even when I was fully capable of reading it myself. So much so that even the 7th book was read aloud (to me only, my brother moved on by that time). I was fully awake and curious as to what is going to happen next while my mum was getting sleepy all the time 😂.
I was in secundary school when Harry Potter began, but I read it in university I think. I loved it, tho it was geared at a younger age, but at that time, I loved epic fantasy more. But it was something this nerd could read and discuss with even the people in my dorm who didn't like to read. We all read Harry Potter, heck we all had nicknames in our messenger referring to Harry Potter. I do like some of the newer YA books now, and I'm way to old to be the intended age group. Really enjoyed the Leigh Bardugo books I read, and many others. I don't care about the label, I care about the story.
To be honest, I think that you can classify a book as good or bad. And that's it. I've read YA books that are so much better than adults ones. That have better plots, characters and even writing. So I dont get whats this whole thing about YA. There are good and bad books. Just like with every genre/ age category
This pretty much somewhat true for all media. Books are art, and art is subjective so it'll always depend on perspective on what some form of media is good or bad or in between.
I’ve noticed most ya authors get extremely defensive when there’s a bad review even tho it’s literally just someone’s opinion and they didn’t even say anything bad about their book😅
The books that got me into reading were The Wheel of Time, The Dark is Rising, Alana The Lioness, A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Golden Compass, and others of that quality. My mom gave me The Sorcerer's Stone when it first came out and told me it was, supposedly, really popular. I honestly don't remember if I made it through the first chapter. I did eventually cave and read the whole series a couple years after the last book came out and I remember liking it but nothing about the actual plot or characters were particularly memorable.
I was in college when I heard about Harry Potter. The first 2 books were already out before I had even heard of it. I must have had my head under a rock! My boyfriend (now husband) and I read the first 2 books aloud to each other, and then we totally loved Harry and got to experience all the late-night release party craziness for the other books. So much fun and such great memories!
I noticed young ya is actually more about male protagonist and older ya is more with female protagonists. In Harry Potter, The Ranger’s Apprentice and Percy Jackson, the main character is 11/12 years old in the first book. Then in ya for girls the protagonist is 16/17 years old (Hunger Games, Twilight, Lunar Chronicles, TFiOS etc.) Is it because girls want to read about a protagonist older than themselves and boys about a protagonist the same age as themselves? Or is it because of other reasons? It’s interesting Edit: I just noticed female protagonists tend to be older than the popular male ones. Of course any gender can enjoy any book they want.
@Bai Bae Thank you for pointing that out! This is exactly what annoys me about adult fantasy books. You're hard-pressed to find fleshed-out female characters because apparently having only (white) male protagonists is more appealing and relatable to the whole readership.
This is also were target groups get mixed up. Percy Jackson I would categorize under Middle Grade, same as the first two Harry Potter books (though HP is a series that just overlaps due to the aging of the characters). And I wouldn't say that 16 to 17 year old protagonists are older than the peer group of ya. But if you're interested in recommendations for ya books with male protagonists, the booktuber Eliot Brooks has a pretty good video about that.
I think they’re from different eras though. Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and Eragon were from the first era of YA where it was more focused on kids going on adventures. Later YA’s were inspired by Twilight and had romance added in, and the Hunger Games which started the dystopia, overthrow the government trend.
@@nvwest For sure, I grew up reading Harry Potter. I was 8 when Sorcerers Stone came out and I was in those lines of people for every new release and pretty much the same for Eragon. I loved those books as a kid and teenager but wouldn't go out of my way to read anything geared toward a teenage or young "adult" audience at this point in my life. 29 years old and these kinds of books don't do it for me anymore.
@@RileyEffective Can't fault you there at all, everybody has their own reading habits and I'm sure that's a way to relax and read without having something too heavy or dark as a lot of adult fantasy.
At my library the Harry Potter series and all of Rick riordans mythical series are in the children’s (it’s sort of a middle school kids age) section and YA is back in a far corner with things like divergent, hunger games and twilight. So I never classified Harry Potter or riordan books as YA. it’s interesting to me to see how Harry Potter actually started this genre.
RL Stein was pretty big in the late 80’s early 90’s. His books featured teen sex. Then the Goosebumps series came along and that was for younger teens. Judy Blume was also big.
i think your research focused a lot more on mainstream YA, which is not necessarily bad. but the state of YA today, like the popular releases everyone is talking about, deserve a bit more of a nuanced conversation. YA is focusing a lot more on diversity, and non medieval europe fantasy settings, which i think is very important to discuss too.
I agree. 7 realms is very nuanced and have character diversity in it. Can you name the novels that you are thinking about when you mentioned diversity and none European medieval setting?
Bleach Soul sure! a few that come to mind are we hunt the flame, gilded wolves, criers war, the merciful crow, kingdom of souls, wicked fox, and there are a lot more!
I would agree! It's evolving in a very cool direction--it's gone from children's fantasy to wattpad like romances to deeper books with diverse characters and settings. I actually happen to love modern YA for that reason.
Thats fair but also understandable that research into the history of YA didnt include as much about the more recent stuff, if it can even be called that, I'd say its more like an emerging trend that hasnt fully emerged yet.
I just read 2 YA books and understood the pattern. An almost 17 year old-ish girl suddenly gets to know she is special and her world turns upside down and everything depends on her, she gotta save the world
I love it that your talking about release events and showing so much video of HP and Goblet of Fire release. I was at a Borders for the midnight release of that book, and it was nuts!
The thing is, I consider a lot of the books you mentioned as Middle Grade (ie. Percy Jackson, Eragon, Narnia, and Harry Potter. Maybe, the latter half of the Harry Potter books fall into YA but the first few, not really).
Man, I used to love Borders! They had a free membership program, and every week or so they would send out coupons for like 25% off books. I don't think in almost a decade I ever paid full price for a book at Borders-- and now I see why they shut down.
I got into reading when I was in middle grade because of YA, at that time I hated all the novels we read in literature class. Now I read adult, YA, middle grade and whatever else there is.
The thing about going into school the day after Harry Potter came out and seeing it in EVERY. SINGLE. HAND. was also my experience and one of the few strange memories I've retained of second grade. This video was fascinating, looking forward to part 2! - Bree
imo the best YA has to offer is Bartimaeus trilogy, Old Kingdom/Abhorsen (trilogy), and Harry Potter. I get as much enjoyment from those as any adult fantasy.
"It's a marketing genre" .... dang. You hit it right on the nose here. I'm at the point where I'm trying to publish and I'm not sure if I jump into the marketing genre simply because no one polices self-published authors and I could totally do that or if I actually go with the themes and content of my book and label it appropriately as New Adult. Honestly, the concept that I even have to concern myself with this at all, because it could effect my finances is ridiculous. Marketing genres need to go so I don't have to have an ethical debate with myself every single time I want to write something.
I was a bit older, near twenty, when HP exploded. Had been reading adult fantasy for nearly a decade and it never caught my attention, it was just the next silly kids' hype. As a fantasy lover I liked the attention it brought to the genre, while at the same time being frustrated that bookstores often dedicated as much shelfspace to HP as *all* other fantasy. To this day I only ever read one book - by necessity - and watched some of the movies.
I have always read a lot, but when I hit puberty and discovered ya, my reading habit exploded! I read an enormous amount of books and it was amazing. I still have a soft spot for ya fantasy even though my reading tastes have matured. But i remember feeling that it was a hard transition into adult fiction, when I first started to venture out of the comfortable ya.
out of pure curiosity i made a list comparing the blurbs of most of the popular YA 2017-2019 releases by new authors trying to figure out what wasn't working for me in YA anymore. i found are a few key words in almost every synopsis that try to make the book sound like a sarah j maas novel, or appeal to the romance readers, or readers looking for diversity and strong female characters. all blurbs started sounding the same to me because they all follow the same formula, like when we had the post hunger games dystopia craze
sofia and her books I’m a teen librarian so I read a lot of YA for work and we joke about this. Every book is now pitched as the new SJM or Six of Crows set in the Middle East/space/France/West Africa/wherever. The new trend coming down the pipe is witches, covens, and girl gangs. So many iterations of the same dumb plot line or setup - I’m sure there are some gems in there, but they market them to all sound the same. It’s such a turn off.
SamanthaPlans that's interesting to heat coming from a librarian! and yes i agree, if you read many YA fantasy blurbs from recent releases they all start sounding the same
YA is still booming in the USA, but not so much in other countries. In the UK and especially in The Netherlands (where i'm from) the 'genre' is plummeting in sales and in NL the books are even being marketed towards adults in hopes to get more sales out of them.
I think it’s interesting how the concept of YA altered the level of sophistication in vocabulary and writing style in books for young readers. I grew up in the ‘80s, and back then there were kids’ novels, and there were adult novels, and nothing to bridge the two. That’s what led to me reading A Wrinkle in Time at age 8 and Stephen King’s IT at age 13. But today, you go back and read something like A Wrinkle in Time, or Island of the Blue Dolphins or Hatchet, and you realize how sophisticated the writing was. They were written for kids, but they were written with the assumption that kids were very, very intelligent. This then set a high bar, which kids had to strive to reach. It pushed their bounds. I don’t see much in the YA category today that does that. It’s hard to say, though, if that’s because it’s more about making money than putting out good literature, or if writers of books for younger audiences simply aren’t as talented anymore, or if there is an assumed need to set a low bar for kids today, or whether publishing houses are just so focused on money that they want the packaging more than the content. Or, in all likelihood, if it’s a combination of all those factors.
Same, I remember reading the Hobbit and LotR in elementary and middle school for the 'read x number of pages a week' exercise. Granted I also devoured every HP book when they came out, but I was there perfect she to grow up with Harry, so 🤷♀️
I think it’s because in modern YA, it’s often written so that the character’s voice and the plot and characters themselves are more important than complexity of the prose. I don’t think Percy Jackson would be the same without the additional little quips Riordan adds in. I think that’s also why a lot of YA is written in present tense first person. That way you get to hear the character’s thoughts and jokes as the events happen, like you’re listening to them think.
Katie Schaefer Same here. I first read The Hobbit in the 4th grade and LotR in middle school, and I wasn’t alone. Many kids were reading those books at that time. And The Hobbit was truly supposed to be a kids’ book. It certainly isn’t written on the level of LotR, but it’s far above the level of anything written in the YA category today.
I saved up my paychecks when I was working in high school to got o Borders when I knew they were having sales on books that I would like. My sister and I made a day of it. We would both take home a haul and then try to find room on a bookshelf somewhere. Usually they ended up piled on the floor around the bed. Good times.
I’m 25 and just now moving out of the YA section 😅 I found the adult fantasy section a bit daunting and most of the well known books had Male leads, there’s nothing wrong with that but obviously I’m going to connect more with a female lead so I stuck to YA where majority of the fantasy books had female leads.
I feel the same - thankfully I've seen a ton of modern day fantasy books breaking the traditional: "Fantasy and science fiction are only for men" trope. Binti, The Fifth Season, the Lightbringer, etc. are a few examples of how fantasy and sci fi are becoming more inclusive, but there still remains what I like to call, "The old boys club of fantasy lit" where you still have traditional male leads and sexualized side female characters. Historically there have always been women in fantasy, but they often had to publish under a male name because publishers didn't think a woman could sell in a "male dominated" genre.
Sometimes I feel like YA needs to be split into two genres Teenage Fantasy, or teenage horror ect, and then have Teenage romance. lots of the hate towards YA is valid, it is just Teenage Romance with fantasy elements, and most of the time it’s done badly with horrendous male characters who growl every three seconds, but that’s a personal gripe. Honestly I can’t remember a YA Fantasy where the central conflict was actually a protagonist vs antagonist situation, the romance is instead always in the foreground and that’s what gives YA a bad name. Also it’s generally a lot softer that adult fantasy. I’ve read YA series that are seven books long with ten POV characters, three of them are Mary-Sues, and they end the last book with a 200 pages battle sequence where EVERYONE lives! And has a boyfriend! I don’t hate YA I just think it has lower standards for fantasy because it appeals to a younger audience I guess? But there are still some amazing gems in YA Fantasy, I’m looking at you Six of Crows.
The "problem"with Teen Romance novels is that despite the authors' actual ages they read like they were written by a teen girl trying to satisfy the fantasy of every other teen girl. It should be it's own ganre, but then it wouldn't sell as well, so that isn't going to happen.
Lol true in part. But let me introduce you to Rick Riordan the author who killed off plenty of characters in his last three Percy Jackson books (I mean the first series, but ToA also has character deaths).
Wow, so true. Happily there are some ways I found to avoid those YA romances with fantasy elements (no problem with them, just not my taste). If there is somewhere in the synopsis a 'super hot/dangerous but attractive' person (not necessarily male) mentioned I mostly avoid it. Gladly gems like Six of Crows or Strange the Dreamer are discoverable judt by reading deeper into their synopsis 😊
Merphy made a great video on what makes a book MG, YA, adult beyond the protag's age. Basically, she claims that MG is about finding your place in a community and fitting in (misfit Harry discovers he's a wizard and finds the wizarding community is where he belongs and finally fits in) while YA is coming of age and discovering who you are as an individual and your individual role in your community (Harry learns he's the chosen one destined to destroy or be destroyed by Voldy). Adult is kind of just everything else and can have any of the other themes. It is a marketing term, but there is a little bit more to it (usually) than just age.
I was born in 1990, and I lived in a very small town lucky enough to have a movie theater with 2 screens. On the release night of the second or third film my mother and I went to go see it and I think I cried because the tickets were sold out for the whole day at our theater. My mom, a single parent going to school and raising me, drove around to nearby towns and we stayed up until early morning to view the movie. Growing up with the series was awesome, reading it then seeing it. My mother and I read the series together as I grew up and it brought us closer. 10/10 would do again.
I always think of the Twilight books at the milestone where YA 'grew up' into what it is now. I worked at a library at the time and our YA section BLEW UP after the Twilight books were so popular.
Ahhh, I remember driving to Borders for the Half Blood Prince in a storm where I couldn't see 10 feet in front of the car like, a week after I got my license... How am I alive
I picked up Mistborn because it was in the YA section which is where I primarily got my books from in high school and it introduced me to the adult fantasy genre, so I'm really glad they rebranded it like that :)
Hey daniel, I just wanted to say thank you so much for making this video. It made me think of YA fiction i had read and loved as a child and youn man. iwanted to check when alan garner had begun his Weirdstone series. I was delighted to Discover that after a nearly fifty years pause he ahs written the final part to the trilogy. i wont say that I have worries about the fate of the charachters a lot since i first read these books 40 something years ago, but it has often been in my thoughts. So thank you for this fine video.
Ya is perfect for younger audiences to get into reading more books it happend to me if i didnt read Harry Potter i think i wouldnt be as obsessed with books as Iam now
I'm not allowed to say my favorite recent YA Fantasy book is "The Lies of Locke Lamora?" It's an excellent coming-of-age story of young guys in a harsh world reminiscent of the Artful Dodger. Starting when Locke is a young preteen through his young adulthood.
I was recently looking for some YA books but I forgot the title of "YA", so I searched "teen fantasy" instead. Let me tell you, not what I expected to see.
Yeah I was the perfect age (12 - 14) when YA really became YA so I was able to experience the Percy Jackson, Harry Potter wave and then as I got older, YA became more mature with more serious elements. So i guess I've been reading YA for most of my life!
My seventh grade teacher was obsessed with HP. He had all of us take the test to give us our houses and split his class by HP houses. I love all of the books and movies so much!
I remember the teen section in my small Waterstones go from two bookcases next to the 9-12 cases, to and entire corner of the shop that merged with sci-fi fantasy, and next to general fiction. It was awesome, and it encouraged browsing. End of. between the two
I read mostly YA books. The lunar chronicles got me really into reading. Percy Jackson became my obsession. Then the Shadowhunter books became my life. If I’m in a book slump, I’ll read all the Shadowhunter books in a month and boom I wanna read a ton. Ya fantasy is so fun and fast moving u get addicted
I do want to point out I have lumped in Middle Grade with YA. That was intentional and will be addressed in Pt2. Before reacting too strongly one way or the other, please wait for the video where I break down my actual "Problem"
Thanks for clarifying. I think of them as separate things, though obviously there's going to be overlap.
Glad you said this, because they are drastically different in my mind. There are tons of middle grade books that are so good and most YA is nothing but trashy, unrealistic, unhealthy romance. There is some good stuff in there but it’s hard to find. Then they mess around and put YA on something that has enough open door stuff to be landed firmly in adult romance. Looking at ACOTAR. I loved it but it has NO business in YA. I was in high school when HP started. It was calm and quiet at first. And then Goblet of Fire came out. And the world went insane. I’d never seen anything like it. I didn’t even read them until that one came out. Lol. I needed to see what all the fuss was about.
Totally agree with the lumping, it helps with series like Percy Jackson (and that whole universe) that have actually aged with the original audiences a bit, with each additional series.
About the YA re-branding of WOT, that is actually how I started reading them. I got the two-part version of Eye of the World for either Christmas or my birthday. I probably would not have picked up the books on my own, not because I didn't like fantasy but because I rarely bought books for myself.
I’m glad you clarified this. In my head, Middle Grade and YA are two completely different worlds with a tiny bridge in between. Or perhaps a portal.
Man really loved Harry Potter so much he put on an invisibility shirt
Hahahahahahahahahahhahhahahahh 😂😂😂
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Jajaja
Good one.
That green screen shirt effect is killing it.
It's killing it as Daniel Greene has no abs to show off, Lol
Don’t you mean Greene Screen
Maybe it's a transparency metaphor lol
He's got a piece of invisibility cloak.
You'll probably enjoy Karl Smallwood then.
I never understood the term "Young Adult". To me, that means something like 18-25.
To be a "young adult", you still have to be an adult.
Well there needs to be a teenager category but like there isn't one
I think it's a marketing thing- more kids who actively like being considered "adult" than adults who would be willing to read books labelled "teen"
Adult is determined at different ages in many different cultures, your argument is subjective.
@@brewwin Quite obviously, we are talking about markets in which the term "Young adult" is used.
That limits us to English speaking countries, as well as countries that frequently sell books. That would be the US, Canada, Australia, UK.
Maybe I missed some, but you will notice that in those countries, people are considered adults when they turn 18.
@@kayla4551 in my country they market books for teens that way, but by "books for teens" i mean "books for kids 10-12 year olds, with a protagonists in their early teens showing them how cool is high school" or smth. So publishers and bookstores would put "THE NEW TEEN HIT BOOK" on the book or smth, or like "EVERY TEEN READS THIS" to the point where it's incredibly cringe
My problem with YA fantasy is mostly because of how so many of those books do romance. It’s 2020. We need to stop telling girls that the asshole they’re crushing on will change for them and become a wonderful person.
True,
maybe it's personal experience, but I feel like Twilight had (sadly) a bigger impact.
After Twilight I saw so many book stores suddenly having a "Twilight" section, which most of the time was summed up as "supposedly generic girl falls in love with pretty boy, but there is much more to him than it seems. Also them being together causes problems somehow."
I also never heard about YA before Twilight not even during the Harry Potter craze, then again maybe it wasn't just that big in my home country.
@@metalbyakkoLP agreed. I'm really surprised he didn't talk about twilight.
AMEN 🙏
totally agree, also a problem with fantasy books aimed at adult women too.
Yep yep yep. It's not even so much that them having romance arcs is an issue, but so many of them depict such unhealthy, even abusive relationships. I'd also just love to see more YA books in which romance isn't a centerpiece, or the romance doesn't work out perfectly, especially since it's catering to a demographic notorious for having skewed and unhealthy views about romance and feeling utterly worthless if they aren't in a relationship. I, personally, would also ADORE seeing an aromantic protagonist who has to grapple with people falling for them when they just don't feel the same way and never will, especially since explicit aro representation is next to none and I've never seen an aro protagonist *ever*, and I think it would be really helpful to aromantic teens who are going through the same alienation and feeling broken that I was to see that hey, they're not alone, and you can still live a meaningful and fulfilling life without romance--especially in a genre so saturated with the theme that romance fixes all your woes.
"It's not really a genre"
As a YA writer, I agree with that. I've tried to look up the requirements so many times, because I'm trying to figure out how to brand myself - literally all I can find is "main protagonist must be a teenager or young adult". There are no other major genre restrictions, that I can find.
For gods sake avoid the angst and toxic relationships
Please don't write trash. You'd have a lot to compete against.
Well, yeah, it's not a genre, it's demographics of your target audience. Japanese editors invented it way back with manga magazines, which were marketed towards young boys, or young girls, or older teens, pretty much adult guys and girls. You can buy a magazine and find all kind of stories in there, comedies, adventures, detective mysteries, horror, romance, only restricted by age and gender of their audience. So I guess you just write freely whatever you like, only considering mc demographics and possible age restrictions.
@@poppypollen4362 Yeah, I really don't know why western audiences (or maybe just Americans) don't understand that fundamental truth. It's literally in the name YOUNG ADULT. It's not that complex. It's a target audience, like a family movie or children's cartoon. The media can actually be anything or unintentionally appeal to anyone, the point is that for marketing purposes it's TARGETING X age group or generation. They will naturally exhibit similarities are studies are done to show X age group likes Y in a story, but that's just demographics (which are a different problem, but hardly a genre). It's the same thing with trying to explain how cartoons or western animation are medium and not all are targeting kids or fit into a genre. Like tell, me why I still have to explain to people that ANIME or MANGA are a freaking medium and refer to an animation or drawing style and culture's artistic representation (like Manga literally translates to Japanese comics) and not a gosh darn medium. Like how many times do I have to draw circles within circles to get this across?!
Does that make one piece into a YA novel?
I’m 40 and still read some”YA”. If it’s well written, it doesn’t matter to me if it’s marketed to high school and college kids
100% agree
I agree and I'm in my sixties. I even read books markeded for middle grade every now and then. A good story is a good story, and I love well written charaters. Last winter I read the Charlie Bone series by Jenny Nimmo and loved it.
Same. A good book is a good book.
Same! I am still in “ya age” and sometimes my family tell me that i will grow up one day and stop liking it but i am just like why? I like ya because there are good books, not because i am a teen... this reduction of the genre is so offensive to me especially when non-ya readers say it
GE Gamst I never finished it!
I still love Percy Jackson, Percy Jackson is what got me into reading and gave me a place to go to whenever I had problems or something was going on, I will forever love it.
Percy Jackson is one series I always love to recommend to people who are looking for a series that isn't a straight kids book but isn't quite adult/teen yet. Hell, I recommend it to parents and adults all the time too at my store.
Zachery Morrison Same, but if they’re used to adult fantasy and stuff like that with complex characters, i would tell them to expect something different or read it with low expectations so that they’ll know what they’re getting into. Lots of booktubers have read it with low expectations and ended up loving it!
Agreed. I just wish we had movies like HP
Same for me!!
me too! it didn't get me into reading but instead of harry potter, percy jackson was my childhood (or, well, roughly ages 10-14 actually) i only got to reading harry potter when i was 15, later than most kids at the time (and thoroughly enjoyed it). but pjo was and still is a really cool series to me. i was the kid who sparked the pjo obsession in my class and we'd all have a great time discussing it lol
Without YA books, I wouldn’t even read books at all. Now I read anything fantasy from middle grade to adult.
Also: Thank you for including 6-7 Rick Riordan books in the thumbnail 😂
dobliviate I don’t know if he made that thumbnail background or just found a convenient image off google but I liked it too. Perhaps he’ll give PJO another chance sometime.
@@keegszzz8356 I see very difficult Daniel giving it another try to READ it, but Im sure that he would give it to the possible adaptation uncle Rick is trying to give us (I hope as an animated series). He's reviewed Middle Grade-YA animated series like ATLA and The Dragon Prince soo...
Thanks to Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, I wouldn't have gotten into reading in the first place.
I think that is how it is supposed to work, you start with children's books, move on to YA and then on to adult literature. When people just read YA only forever it makes me wonder.
I actually love that they reskinned adult fantasy as YA. Those YA versions of The Eye of the World were what first introduced me to Wheel of Time!
It's funny how the covers of the books in the children's section in Barnes & Noble tend to be bright & colorful. Then you walk to the other side of the store, where readers are several years older, and books in the YA section have dark and dramatic covers, lots of black and red colors.
They put the children’s section on one side, tons of normal fiction including the classics and literary fiction and really grungy super adult stuff in the middle, and YA on the opposite side of the store.
Sounds like Netflix... I wonder if they'll stop ruining my childhood with dark and gritty reboots.
what about percy jackson where every cover is a bright bold colour?
Man, Harry Potter release days where somethin else, never have I seen that many ppl desperate for a book. Specially for the final book, stores everywhere around me opened early so people could go to the bookstores, there would be police at the line up spot and at cash register. People where terrified of the book stores selling out before they got a copy.
I'll never forget walking through a dark mall at 6 something in the morning, surrounded by a huuuge group of ppl of all ages wearing wizard robes, all beyond excited. All for one single book.
I’m gonna cry reading this. Man I wish I was old enough to experience those magical times 😭
I think a large problem with YA is marketing. Books that really should be marked as Adult (Sarah J. Maas I'm looking at you) are given to teens. But at the same time books are put into YA that are really more middle grade! The fact that the YA age range is considered 12-18 is insane. YA has improved greatly imo but I'm not as well read in it anymore tho.
True, and not only the case with fantasy. I recently saw Dan Brown's The Davinci Code in the YA/Middle Grade section of my local bookstore and was highly disturbed
When I was in high school a court of thorns and roses was still classified as YA and it was at my school library and was I think in 10th grade and picked it up and was like this is good and then first sex scene and I was like this isn’t YA at all and was like why is this at school.
I think the thing is, YA has become more than an age group, it has become a set of conventions and topics. People want to write and read stories that feature the YA conventions but with older characters, and that space hasn't been created yet (new adult is a different conversation because it's usually just porn). As long as that space isn't created YA will continue to be a weird middle ground.
I think you’re totally wrong. When I was 16 and 17, those sex and drug concepts helped me understand the world I was walking into. And I was aware enough to realize it was actually an immature view of reality. An aberrant sort of fantasy.
For me I don’t think we need to age gate info. What we need to do is provide context with the info to make sure it isn’t the only story, or the whole story, or even a good story. That was a decade ago for me.
Yukino Aguria XD Dan Brown released a YA edition of The Da Vinci Code, which has been met with some controversy because the intended demographic sees it as a step down from the original novel. Almost as if it has to be “dumbed down” for them
Hey where did you buy a shirt that makes you invisible.
He's the invisible shirtman.
Yea, that shirt was an amazing innovation. Not only did I not know it was possible its existence I never saw coming....
He stole Harry's invisibility cloak ans made it into a t-shirt obviously!
Right I would like to buy one
From the harry potter section duh
The original Percy Jackson pentalogy will always be my favorite series. That franchise could have been the next Harry Potter if the movies were better and if the book releases were more staggered so as to build up hype.
@Hans Hanzo The Riordan universe got a little too progressive, in my opinion. His attempts to include characters of every marginalized demographic should not have extended to religious diversity. It still doesn't make sense to me how Sam could practice Islam while her dad is literally a polytheistic god.
Bob Fanatic 👏👏👏
Hans Hanzo A book's politics have nothing to do with whether it's good or not.
@@metsfanovan like idk that just doesn't make sense. I'm all here for Islamic representation but like Greek gods, like.... WHY
@@metsfanovan I mean, her mom could've converted to islam after hooking up with a god 🤷🏻♀️ or she was just always muslim that just happened to hook up with a norse god 🤷🏻♀️🤣
Percy Jackson and the Rangers Apprentice books are still my shit.
@Horacio Nelson Well it is a children's book
@Horatio Nelson I reread it and I still love it as much as I did back in the day, I really liked the nostalgia
@Horatio Nelson I kinda agree, but there is something so pure and wholesome about rangers apprentice. It's a comfort read for me
To me, Rangers Apprentice is the perfect series. It's someone everyone can enjoy- no matter what age. Also I can't read depressing books they make me depressed and so-
I love how ranger's apprentice is technically fantasy, but most of the world and a lot of the details are based on real history. Obviously some mature parts of the time period are left out because it's for kids but the realistic world building for each faction was great. I've always been into history so I loved those books as a kid
As the YA genre becomes more A than ever to meet the desires of its grown readers, something odd is happening, where the themes, dialogues, and personalities no longer match the 12-18 age gap. You showed Six of Crows on the background, which clearly only kept the ages of the characters bellow 20 for the book to be marketed as YA, when actually all of them read as above 20 (ok, Wylan could be 18). Fans make some mental gymnastics to explain they behave maturely because of the world they grow up, but in reality, it just reads more mature than YA was meant to. Similar issue with A Court of Thorns and Roses, where explicit sex is included in every book of the series, yet, given the young female lead and focus on romance over usual fantasy themes (magic system, world-building, etc), it was basically forced to be marketed as YA, because there is no in-between genre or better, age group.
I personally believe that a better rating system should be implemented, there were short-lived efforts to star a New Adult rating in traditional publishing, which did not ultimately work, I believe bc New Adult is often confused with erotica. So perhaps a similar system to movie ratings? However, YA has come to mean more than the age-group it targets, we know that a YA fantasy, compared to adult fantasy, won't just be more "clean", it will also be likely more focused on character over plot, a smaller cast of characters, focus on friendships, romance, first experiences, etc. So I guess the challenge remains on how to still direct the audience to the books they wish to read if the YA label isn't attached to it.
To your last sentence, even before reading anything about the book, I found that you can almost always tell from the covers lol. It shouldn't be so easy, but literally any cover that has fancy, swirling designs or a young model posing for the cover or the onscreen adaption, is YA. YA books can have simple covers, but adult books are never as fancy as books written for audiences who want to buy pretty books (young adults, mostly).
@@Sky-bu1jj soo... Judge a book by it's cover?
I think it's more that adults almost always underestimate the maturity of teens
@@SidPil not all popular sayings are correct. Definitely judge a book by its cover. One that is excessively fancy and catches your eye first is either high fantasy, a good enough book to have a collector's edition published, or the newest YA novel. More than half the time it's the latter.
it was never 12-18
I read the first harry potter book when I was 7.
can you imagine an 18 year old man reading Warrior Cats?
c'mon
It's really annoying to see books marketed as YA when they should be NA. I love Six of Crows but those characters should not have been 17
I loved Six of Crows, but Bardugo should've done research on how teens work, they felt like adults in mind, but in a teenage body.
They're all adults. No one can tell me otherwise
I read the books when I was around 16 to 17 and I have to disagree. I think it's one of the cases where the environment and the things happening made the characters in their personality seem older than they actually were. They had to grow up faster. Still, someone like Wylan (who's trauma was more recent than for example Kaz' or Inej's) felt actually like a teen to me. And if you compare Kaz with for example Tommy out of the Peaky Blinders TV show (not 100% but still in a lot of ways similar) you start to notice the age difference far more
Yep.
Ugh yeah I think Inej's and Kaz's backstory was so messed up, I will have to agree.
I wish I had been able to get on board the Harry Potter hype train when I was a kid. But my parents wouldn't let me read or watch it cause they thought it glorified witchcraft and satanism.
Well you can read it to your kids if you ever have any in the future maybe?
My parents got me the books but they also thought it had a demonic influence over me because I'd get moody and annoyed when they interrupted my reading.
I mean, Harry Potter led me directly into the service of Satan and taught me how to use magic.
I pre-screened it for my nieces at the time, for that reason. I was more troubled by the constant rule breaking / swearing / making out in the later books. The "magic" here is just make believe. The point is made & explicitly stated at one point that you can't solve your personal problems through magic. It's got great lessons on friendship, family, love, self sacrifice.
This is why it's important to check things out for yourself (or pre-screen for your kids) instead of just going by what others say.
@@Yesica1993 Teenagers are generally like that though. Rebellious, hormones all over the place and swearing when adults aren't about. So.... It wasn't inaccurate or a bad influence really, it was just a mirror to what teenagers are actually like. They grow up eventually. It's just a phase.
I read both YA and adult fantasy and I find that both have their pros and cons. As an adult I find myself generally enjoying adult fantasy more, but there are gems within YA that outshine even most adult fantasy(imo).
Lena Zeller agree. YA yields much lot eye rolls and frustration but they also get pretty creative because Ya is so saturated. Sometimes adult can be too slow but usually is worth it.
Can you recommend any good YA? I use to read them... But growing up I became very desilusioned with. I have come to hate Sara J mass and Cassandra Clare (the last one very much). So any good book?
Joe Half a King is great. Silo series could be. Lunar chronicles. Darker shade of magic.,
@@joecourtney8552 Darker Shade Of Magic is adult. She uses Victoria Schwab when writing ya/middle grade. V.E Schwab for adult :)
Joe the arc of a scythe series
This man wields the green screen maliciously like a weapon and I love him for it
For every book after The Sorcerers Stone my mom had to go out at midnight and get three copies, and the next day my sister my dad and I would lock our doors until we were done. My dad was such a nerd that when the first movie came out he convinced a drug rep (he was a doctor) to buy out a theater so we could see it a few hours before it came out. One of my best childhood memories.
So personally- I am 19 and I am female. Logically, a lot of what I have read has been YA because I mean, when I was in high school our library was filled with it. I started branching out into adult books in high school as well and that's when I noticed the differences. When I was just 15 I couldn't explain this well but my reaction to picking up a lot of adult fantasy was summed up with, "This is a great but like...where are all the women?". I don't want this comment to be pegged as hate. There are plenty of books I love that do not have a lot of female characters or really well written ones. To be completely real, I relate to female characters easier- there are just a lot of struggles that as a woman I relate to more then what a man goes through. I don't hold it against a guy at all if he relates to a man easier, there is nothing wrong with that. But I think their needs to be a a bigger discussion on how (from my perspective at least) a lot of adult fantasy (that is targeted towards men) is taken more seriously overall as a narrative then what's targeted towards women. Like, I think it speaks volumes that New Adult spawned, just to essentially lump in even more female driven narratives so they didn't have to market it as Adult. Not a big fan of this book series but The Court of Thorns and Roses Series is a excellent example of this.
LovelyLDragon I agree with you. So much adult fantasy is geared towards older men, and I think the popularity of YA fantasy with female characters have shown publishers that women want fantasy too!
Lorin Paterson I know! Women want fantasy! Lol. I think we are just in this weird stage where publishers have realized this but they don’t how to market or are just scared. I think they just need to go for it like damn YA is so lucrative. Trust me TOR fantasy -the women will show you they want some fantasy with their wallet lol
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Understandable. Fortunately we are getting much more female atention too, more and more. Sanderson for one has characters like Shallan, Jasnah, Vin, etc. all awesome and cwntral characters, especially Vin. Jojo Part 6 Stone Ocean is mainly women cast and the main protagonist Jolyene is fuvking amazinggg, The Poppy War, etc.
But the examples are still too rare and far inbetween. We will get more though, Im sure.
LovelyLDragon I think the problem with the specific example of ACOTAR is that that particular series is more romance than fantasy. At least from what I remember of it. Yes there was some interesting fantasy elements and I enjoyed the world, but a large emphasis was put on the romance. And I think a lot of adult fantasy readers want their books to be mainly fantasy with a dash of romance mixed in. Whereas fantasy in YA is dominated by romance heavy stories. I think as a story ACOTAR fits in way better to YA and it wouldn’t have been as marketable in the adult section even if it’s themes lean toward an older age.
I read Percy Jackson when I'm ten. Those times it really warmed me up to the fantasy genre moreover it was really fun and exiciting story to read. I don't know If I read now I can feel the same things for the PJ but for beginners this kind of books makes really good beginning for the new fantasy readers.
My dad worked for FedEx during the Harry Potter mania and he had people following him while delivering around bookstores at some point they had to have special deliveries so people wouldn’t try to rob the delivery drivers.
Wtf💀
I remember when HP 5 came out, I think I was 15 or 16. I went to the bookstore straight out of school to pick up my pre-order. I had never ordered anything before.
I read all afternoon and after dinner, and halfway into the night, until I finished it.
Completely failed my exam in school the next day due to not having studied and barely had any sleep 😂
😂😂
that sounds like a good memory :)
I exist in a superposition of thinking YA has no merit yet also reading it constantly
amen
I really like YA fantasy/sci-fi, as long as it isn't dumbed down. In my opinion, YA fiction is much more willing to approach the emotional sides of life directly than a lot of other fiction is, which though not always done amazingly, I appreciate.
I think a lot of the transition YA went through (female protag, more mature themes) might have come from Twilight’s boom.
People tend to give Twilight a lot of sh*t, but one cannot deny its influence.
I think Harry Potter proved YA could sell, and Twilight proved the market wanted female protagonists and more mature themes. A lot of times people are writing things but publishers hate to be the one taking a gamble. Once someone takes that gamble and wins, they latch onto it.
Kim E Harry Potter isn’t even YA tho it’s middle grade
Alivia Haven I think it grows into YA personally. Around book 3 or 4.
@@richa4847 sure, but something being good doesn’t influence trends. It’s what’s big and what people are exposed
too.
I remember when "The Son Of Neptune" by Rick Riordon came out and it was everywhere in school! I thought it was so cool, but I was also sad cause I had to wait till Christmas to read it haha
i remember waiting a year for Blood Of Olympus and it KILLED me haha
I remember back when I was reading the heroes of olympus books, my mom bought me The Son of Neptune but would only let me read it on the condition that I finished reading my summer reading assignments, which I was slouching on. I finished both books I needed to read in a week just so I could get to TSoN, which I then also read in less than three days. I was *hungry*
My issue is that things that were labeled as YA that had more mature themes were still marketed towards young teens/preteens. When I was in grade 5/6 I read books that had really mature themes that I wasn't ready for, but I didn't know going in because they were in my middle school library. It's not a problem that YA is growing up, but grown up YA should be marketed to high school and college students, not preteens.
Sorry for awaking a dead post but I disagree. That won’t fix the issue because super gore-filled and depressing books are marketed towards children. I grew up on Warriors and the rest of Erin Hunter’s work when I was in elementary and reading that as an adult now, holy crap is that stuff dark! Very sure the reading level is still marked as 6th grade. I also read Watership Down in middle school but I already knew what I was getting into. Maybe it’s a YA or something but the early movie is marketed and rated for children even though I’m sure some scenes will be scarring for them.
The biggest issue for lower level schools, bookstores, and second hand stores is not properly labeling or warning about more intense topics. I’m not sure if they just look it up and slap the label on but my mom would have been pissed knowing I picked up an erotic dragon fantasy novel from a goodwill that was labeled for children (I didn’t check the back, I was just happy to see a dragon book).
Agreed. There should be a distinction between YA and Preteens and the line is drawn way too loose atm.
@@Thenoobestgirl Well, it's literally called Young ADULT, if pre-teens are reading it it's their own fault when they encounter something too mature.
@@MicukoFelton The problem is, YA is a MARKETING genre, aimed at a very big age gap, preteens included in the marketing age gap. The gap is too big! There isn't a category for preteens, really. There is only YA, were preteens are INCLUDED.
Bayza Warrior Cats isn’t really dark though, it’s edgy but not dark.
to be brutally honest, every ya book i know falls into one of three categories:
-the harry potter wagon, with percy jackson, eragon, his dark materials -tho this came a lil before - , artemis fowl, lemomy snicket, miss peregrine's etc
-the twilight wagon, with mortal instruments, vampire academy, beautiful creatures, fallen, hush hush, house of night, shiver etc
-and of course the hunger games wagon, with divergent, maze runner, uglies, legend, delirium, matched, selection etc
☕☕☕
i mean literally....fight me for all i care
TBH.... You're not wrong here. 🙃
I agree with your second 2 categories, but I don't really understand your first one.
What about John Green, The hate u give, the book thief, perks of being a wallflower, and the whole Lara Jean series, that Georgia Nicholson series, etc?
just a girl Fun action and adventure
Alcatraz and Skyward kinda stands out in that regard
''part 1'' Oh dear time to buckle up, this is gonna be interesting.
Brace yourself, Daniel Greene inserts Brandon Sanderson's Skyward & Starsight.
I'm around the same age as you, so the explosion of YA is what got me into reading (Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games) so I really respect the genre and I think it creates a safe space for teens to get into reading. BUT I also hate that it really is just a marketing technique that places restrictions on a lot of books that are harmful to the story (like you argued with Scythe) and i find it really frustrating a lot of the time, because so many things are marketed wrongly as YA or adult and chunks of audiences miss out on it, or people refuse to picks things up because its YA. Personally, it's a genre/section of the book shop that my tates don't really align with anymore, but it's still one I'll always respect
Once I got into twilight I also got into vampire academy when that was a thing
@@AikiraBeats yep! Twilight ignited a Vampire loving phase, for me it was House of Night and Vampire Diaries 😂 I still love vampire stories
Leigh bardugo's ninth house was a phenomenal book, shadow and bone didnt cut the mark for me and I totally loved six of crows, but I do agree with people who are saying that the characters shouldn't have been 17.
How mature do you think someone needs to be to read SOC vs Ninth House? Because I loved SOC and want to read Ninth House but don’t know if I should yet lol
Ninth house isn’t ya though, it’s very much adult
@@maddenmckenzy3011 Ninth house is 18+ there are a lot of trigger warnings
@Madden Mckenzy I read it when I was 17 and hadn't even read SOC, at that point. It lies in the adult genre and not typical "ya" so proceed with that in mind
@Rakiya Jinadu yep its very much adult
Omg 😂 people driving around shouting HP spoilers out loud haha that makes me laugh
I wish I could’ve witnessed that… except unwound be running any from them to protect my ears🙉🙉🙉
@@wham1984 no we would literally come to school crying and be emo all week because we got spoiled in the line at the book premiere 😂 it was a wild time, pretty silly looking back, and not everyone was that diehard, but it was like the whole world to those of us who cared 😄 hence why u see so many millenials with like deathly hallows tattoos lmao
I hiked to the top of a tall mountain in 2007 and someone had written a fake Book 7 spoiler on the shelter at the summit.
Man I grew up on the Redwall books such a legendary series. RIP Brian Jaques...
I remember being twelve years old when Sorcerer's Stone released and our school library gave all the 6th grade classes a free copy. Considering I had just read The Hobbit for the first time that same year I always look back on that time in my life fondly.
He came to my town when I was super little and really into his books. I missed meeting him but I did get an autographed book.
You really can't have a discussion about how the YA target demographic transcended into the more 'older teen' audience we're accustomed to seeing without mentioning Stephenie Meyer's Twilight.
Kill it with FIRE!!!!!
Twilight? Never heard of it.
YA books originally got me into reading when I was younger and I think sometimes YA is put down simply for being targeted towards younger people. Things that teenagers and especially teenage girls like are being seen as lesser to adults interests which in my opinion is not good. We all need and are interested in different things at different times in our lives.
From what (admittedly limited) criticism I've seen, YA isn't put down for targeting younger people, per se, it's the claim that it out-right panders to teen-agers, which I can sort of see, in a way. I think the romance genre does this (very knowingly, in fact) for women and I would even claim that the old action-adventure genre did this for men (if I ever want some good second-hand embarrassment, I just browse the men's adventure section at the local used book store. Mack Bolan, we hardly knew ya...)
This usually isn't a problem, but it can lead, IMO, to some folks getting stuck in that genre and never maturing/advancing (I know a not-insignificant number of people in their late-20s/early 30s who still gush about how much they love Harry Potter, to the point where you know you're wasting your time trying to talk about any other series or author. You feel kind of bad for them, honestly).
Society seems to hate teenage girls -- the music they listen to, the tv shows targeted at them, the clothes they wear, the language they use. Heck, even the colours they like. It's very sad, really. Even some teenage girls hate other teenage girls, because their interests are seen as immature or downright stupid. Definitely looked down upon. Why, though?
Yo, I read Redwall when I got detention once. That shit was dope.
Redwall is one of my favorite book series.
I read a couple of the books when I was a kid but never understood it. Were they animals? Were they people? What was it? Was there a chronology? It was a bit too much for twelve year old me.
@@mikeymullins5305 They're animals with swords, bruh.
my 5th grade teacher read it to me
Finally someone mentioned Redwall lmao
I'm from 1978 and I remember when Harry Potter craze hit. To me it was mostly exhausting, because I could hear from the buzz that the books were just not my cup of tea, and I started getting a bit snarky on the subject, but a friend of mine who studied literary history at the time said: "These books get people who would never pick up a book, reading! It's an amazing feat, just think about it!" and I had to agree. I never boarded the HP hype train, but I started smiling and waving as it drove by me, because I focused on how many more people might also get to ready my favourite books, compared to before HP.
I was not aware of the YA genre even existed when I was "YA age", but looking back I have read some. It's just that I've been reading adult literature too from I was like, ten.
I've recently read the YA books surrounding Sword of Kaigen, and the Binti trilogy, and tbh I wish they were there when I was a nine or ten yo kid. I would have loved them for sure. They'd have slottet in fine next to McCaffrey's Pern stuff.
I know at least one author who writes fiction that gets labelled YA, but who is actually not strictly writing with young people in mind. My understanding is that she's writing for adults who would just like to read something cool while feeling safe knowing that no PTSD symptoms or other nastiness will be induced.
I think that is a very worthy cause and I love that there is a space for it.
I don't enjoy a lot of YA myself (I am one of those masochistic Malazan fans! It can't get too grim for me!) but I really, really appreciate that those books are there for other people to grab them and seek thrills and comfort from.
Did you ever read them?
If GRRM ever finishes The Winds of Winter it might create a line or two.
Hope not, with the current sitiation.
I was thinking the same thing. He’s the only one who can come close
Lol games of thrones will have a new standard cover for the whole série that look quite ya
*Shows the front cover of Redwall*
*Nostaliga intensifies*
Eulaliaaaaaaaaa!
@@revpembroke3082 gah, FINE! I WILL BUY THEM ALL AGAIN! I hope you are happy with yourself.
@@littlegravitas9898 Redwall! Redwall! Strike for Redwall!
Logalogalogaloooggg!
Sorry I'm in a mood right now. Ignore my quoting.
A rope with a knot at the end....best weapon in fantasy ;).
Oh YA, as a past bookstore employee and writer I find this category well extremely interesting. In one way it is the bridge between childrens and adults books, but in another way a kind of no no section for some younger people. I have said this before bookstore employees are often required to say that some YA books contain strong trigger points for young adults that may be upsetting. Yeah I know many people with in this age range are mature enough to handle the content, but let's be honest some arn't quite ready for it.
Now where YA really interests me is that it allows a book series to last a long time as characters can grow and age with its target audience or fans. For many authors that becomes such a benefit as one allows them to fulfil their dreams as a published author and two to keep them economically stable so they can support themselves and their families. Let's face it not all authors are in the same position as J. K. Rowling; many are scrapping at the bottom of the piggy bank to survive or working other jobs to keep a roof over their head.
Truely many many book could be in YA category but publishers have motives to keep them in normal categories to avoid the YA stigma, but others jump at the chance to be known as YA. Some books are even weirder like Harry Potter these days often found in childrens, YA and its own shelves or display for both the original books and the illustrated versions, acting if it has transcend being in any category or genre.
Anyways good vid and theories Dan I look forward to your ponderings in part two.
I do need to clarify that middle grade and childrens and kinda mixed together on shelves in Australian stores. Then there are young childrens picture books etc below. So childrens and middle grade is like 7 to 13 ish and then YA is kinda like 16 plus but some age over lap does occur depending on maturity level and parent acceptance.
I was hired as security for a bookstore back in '07 for the final Harry Potter release at midnight. I was 22 at the time but still a fan. The bookstore was nice enough to let me buy a copy after all the pre orders were picked up. I did go home and read the whole thing to prevent spoilers. Good times.
I was finishing high school when Deathly Hallows came out. Good times.
Daniel is just a floating head and hands. Change my mind.
He looks like the Dad from Onward
Yep, he it's pretty much the wizard of OZ
I'm an English teacher so i'm Hyped. YA is doing exactly what it should be doing. it is introducing young people to books. Also a lot of author's are making a living so win-win.
Me: Ooh cool. This looks like a promising fantasy Ya novel.
[cheesy and toxic romance]
Ight imma head out
... paper Princess....
..shatter me series..
...a court of thorns and roses...
I love your youtube name. My wife is Mexican and real Mexican food is rich and complex, I love it
@@charlottejruthauthor at least a court of thorns and roses has a good rest of the series. Either way, I still find it a good book.
Just found out that Daniel is 4 years younger than me.
I feel so old.
I was one of those parents who was very involved with what my kids were reading/watching/listening to. I had picked up Sorcerer's Stone for my oldest, who was 9 at the time, because he had really enjoyed other fantasy type books I had read to him or that he read. It turned into a nightly reading aloud to all of my kids very quickly (this was in 1998 so there were only two books...they were read A LOT). We were all enjoying the story so much that as each subsequent book was released, it turned into an event! We went to the midnight book releases, and had HP parties with my BFF and her three kids. I would buy one copy on release night which I read in one sitting, then it went to each child in order of age. No one said anything about the book at all until everyone was finished, and then there was a family discussion. I still have all of those books on my shelf. They are some of my most treasured items.
And yes, I still love HP. When my husband and I decided we wanted to get married in 2015, we chose between a Harry Potter theme and a Middle Earth theme. In the end ME won out, but it was very close.
A bit similiar to my family :). I have an older brother and my mum would read aloud to us when a new book was out and in our possesion. It was a tradition, so we continued in that manner even when I was fully capable of reading it myself. So much so that even the 7th book was read aloud (to me only, my brother moved on by that time). I was fully awake and curious as to what is going to happen next while my mum was getting sleepy all the time 😂.
I was in secundary school when Harry Potter began, but I read it in university I think. I loved it, tho it was geared at a younger age, but at that time, I loved epic fantasy more. But it was something this nerd could read and discuss with even the people in my dorm who didn't like to read. We all read Harry Potter, heck we all had nicknames in our messenger referring to Harry Potter. I do like some of the newer YA books now, and I'm way to old to be the intended age group. Really enjoyed the Leigh Bardugo books I read, and many others. I don't care about the label, I care about the story.
To be honest, I think that you can classify a book as good or bad. And that's it. I've read YA books that are so much better than adults ones. That have better plots, characters and even writing. So I dont get whats this whole thing about YA. There are good and bad books. Just like with every genre/ age category
Vitoria Assunção whats an example?
The Raven Boys, the Hunger Games and even Harry Potter for instance
Generally, I find them to be too one-dimensional and lacking in subtlety. But then again, plenty of adult novels have these issues as well.
I agree
This pretty much somewhat true for all media. Books are art, and art is subjective so it'll always depend on perspective on what some form of media is good or bad or in between.
I've noticed some YA authors tend to be quite rude when it comes to responding to bad reviews, even to the extend of cyberbullying.
I’ve noticed most ya authors get extremely defensive when there’s a bad review even tho it’s literally just someone’s opinion and they didn’t even say anything bad about their book😅
Cyberbullying 🙄🙄🙄
The books that got me into reading were The Wheel of Time, The Dark is Rising, Alana The Lioness, A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Golden Compass, and others of that quality. My mom gave me The Sorcerer's Stone when it first came out and told me it was, supposedly, really popular. I honestly don't remember if I made it through the first chapter. I did eventually cave and read the whole series a couple years after the last book came out and I remember liking it but nothing about the actual plot or characters were particularly memorable.
I was in college when I heard about Harry Potter. The first 2 books were already out before I had even heard of it. I must have had my head under a rock! My boyfriend (now husband) and I read the first 2 books aloud to each other, and then we totally loved Harry and got to experience all the late-night release party craziness for the other books. So much fun and such great memories!
I noticed young ya is actually more about male protagonist and older ya is more with female protagonists.
In Harry Potter, The Ranger’s Apprentice and Percy Jackson, the main character is 11/12 years old in the first book.
Then in ya for girls the protagonist is 16/17 years old (Hunger Games, Twilight, Lunar Chronicles, TFiOS etc.)
Is it because girls want to read about a protagonist older than themselves and boys about a protagonist the same age as themselves? Or is it because of other reasons? It’s interesting
Edit: I just noticed female protagonists tend to be older than the popular male ones. Of course any gender can enjoy any book they want.
But the hunger games is not FOR girls. Its for everybody. Just because a book have a female protagonist doesn't mean it's only target towards girls.
@Bai Bae Thank you for pointing that out! This is exactly what annoys me about adult fantasy books. You're hard-pressed to find fleshed-out female characters because apparently having only (white) male protagonists is more appealing and relatable to the whole readership.
This is also were target groups get mixed up. Percy Jackson I would categorize under Middle Grade, same as the first two Harry Potter books (though HP is a series that just overlaps due to the aging of the characters). And I wouldn't say that 16 to 17 year old protagonists are older than the peer group of ya. But if you're interested in recommendations for ya books with male protagonists, the booktuber Eliot Brooks has a pretty good video about that.
I think they’re from different eras though. Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and Eragon were from the first era of YA where it was more focused on kids going on adventures. Later YA’s were inspired by Twilight and had romance added in, and the Hunger Games which started the dystopia, overthrow the government trend.
@@bananahat3350 the hunger games were and still are incredible though
YA is perfect for a certain type of audience, it's just not for me.
Agreed. No good or bad. It's just preference and what we can relate to the most
Used to be for me. Grew out of it, but would reread some of my favourites from time to tome though
For me it is more a sort of 'reading mood'. Sometimes I just don't want to read heavy or complex books. In those cases I tend to gravitate towards YA.
@@nvwest For sure, I grew up reading Harry Potter. I was 8 when Sorcerers Stone came out and I was in those lines of people for every new release and pretty much the same for Eragon. I loved those books as a kid and teenager but wouldn't go out of my way to read anything geared toward a teenage or young "adult" audience at this point in my life. 29 years old and these kinds of books don't do it for me anymore.
@@RileyEffective Can't fault you there at all, everybody has their own reading habits and I'm sure that's a way to relax and read without having something too heavy or dark as a lot of adult fantasy.
I love a lot of YA books and I’m a lot older. But you’re right it’s not a genre. It’s an age range with a lot of different themes.
"The Emperor's New Clothes" might hire you for live action so good luck :)
At my library the Harry Potter series and all of Rick riordans mythical series are in the children’s (it’s sort of a middle school kids age) section and YA is back in a far corner with things like divergent, hunger games and twilight. So I never classified Harry Potter or riordan books as YA. it’s interesting to me to see how Harry Potter actually started this genre.
RL Stein was pretty big in the late 80’s early 90’s. His books featured teen sex. Then the Goosebumps series came along and that was for younger teens. Judy Blume was also big.
i think your research focused a lot more on mainstream YA, which is not necessarily bad. but the state of YA today, like the popular releases everyone is talking about, deserve a bit more of a nuanced conversation. YA is focusing a lot more on diversity, and non medieval europe fantasy settings, which i think is very important to discuss too.
I agree. 7 realms is very nuanced and have character diversity in it. Can you name the novels that you are thinking about when you mentioned diversity and none European medieval setting?
Bleach Soul sure! a few that come to mind are we hunt the flame, gilded wolves, criers war, the merciful crow, kingdom of souls, wicked fox, and there are a lot more!
@@sofiaamm children of blood and bone too!
I would agree! It's evolving in a very cool direction--it's gone from children's fantasy to wattpad like romances to deeper books with diverse characters and settings. I actually happen to love modern YA for that reason.
Thats fair but also understandable that research into the history of YA didnt include as much about the more recent stuff, if it can even be called that, I'd say its more like an emerging trend that hasnt fully emerged yet.
I just read 2 YA books and understood the pattern. An almost 17 year old-ish girl suddenly gets to know she is special and her world turns upside down and everything depends on her, she gotta save the world
I love it that your talking about release events and showing so much video of HP and Goblet of Fire release. I was at a Borders for the midnight release of that book, and it was nuts!
The thing is, I consider a lot of the books you mentioned as Middle Grade (ie. Percy Jackson, Eragon, Narnia, and Harry Potter. Maybe, the latter half of the Harry Potter books fall into YA but the first few, not really).
Man, I used to love Borders! They had a free membership program, and every week or so they would send out coupons for like 25% off books. I don't think in almost a decade I ever paid full price for a book at Borders-- and now I see why they shut down.
Nice! I had been waiting for this one! Also, love the shirt, haha
Gooooooood I remember the Harry Potter Car Spoiler Fiasco perfectly 😂
I got into reading when I was in middle grade because of YA, at that time I hated all the novels we read in literature class. Now I read adult, YA, middle grade and whatever else there is.
The thing about going into school the day after Harry Potter came out and seeing it in EVERY. SINGLE. HAND. was also my experience and one of the few strange memories I've retained of second grade. This video was fascinating, looking forward to part 2! - Bree
imo the best YA has to offer is Bartimaeus trilogy, Old Kingdom/Abhorsen (trilogy), and Harry Potter. I get as much enjoyment from those as any adult fantasy.
Bartimaeus was awesome, I should reread those some day.
Stroud made a prequel involving Solomon.
you need to read six of crows
"It's a marketing genre" .... dang. You hit it right on the nose here. I'm at the point where I'm trying to publish and I'm not sure if I jump into the marketing genre simply because no one polices self-published authors and I could totally do that or if I actually go with the themes and content of my book and label it appropriately as New Adult. Honestly, the concept that I even have to concern myself with this at all, because it could effect my finances is ridiculous. Marketing genres need to go so I don't have to have an ethical debate with myself every single time I want to write something.
I was a bit older, near twenty, when HP exploded. Had been reading adult fantasy for nearly a decade and it never caught my attention, it was just the next silly kids' hype.
As a fantasy lover I liked the attention it brought to the genre, while at the same time being frustrated that bookstores often dedicated as much shelfspace to HP as *all* other fantasy.
To this day I only ever read one book - by necessity - and watched some of the movies.
Omg this is taking me back to queueing outside WH Smith’s for the HP GoF release - it was absolutely epic!
I have always read a lot, but when I hit puberty and discovered ya, my reading habit exploded! I read an enormous amount of books and it was amazing. I still have a soft spot for ya fantasy even though my reading tastes have matured. But i remember feeling that it was a hard transition into adult fiction, when I first started to venture out of the comfortable ya.
out of pure curiosity i made a list comparing the blurbs of most of the popular YA 2017-2019 releases by new authors trying to figure out what wasn't working for me in YA anymore. i found are a few key words in almost every synopsis that try to make the book sound like a sarah j maas novel, or appeal to the romance readers, or readers looking for diversity and strong female characters. all blurbs started sounding the same to me because they all follow the same formula, like when we had the post hunger games dystopia craze
sofia and her books I’m a teen librarian so I read a lot of YA for work and we joke about this. Every book is now pitched as the new SJM or Six of Crows set in the Middle East/space/France/West Africa/wherever. The new trend coming down the pipe is witches, covens, and girl gangs. So many iterations of the same dumb plot line or setup - I’m sure there are some gems in there, but they market them to all sound the same. It’s such a turn off.
SamanthaPlans that's interesting to heat coming from a librarian! and yes i agree, if you read many YA fantasy blurbs from recent releases they all start sounding the same
YA is still booming in the USA, but not so much in other countries. In the UK and especially in The Netherlands (where i'm from) the 'genre' is plummeting in sales and in NL the books are even being marketed towards adults in hopes to get more sales out of them.
Total opposite in Germany 2 years on from your comment. We don't just have YA shelves we have NA sections in most bookstores.
@@milchreis9554 what does na mean?
@@sumbunny2009 New Adult
I think it’s interesting how the concept of YA altered the level of sophistication in vocabulary and writing style in books for young readers. I grew up in the ‘80s, and back then there were kids’ novels, and there were adult novels, and nothing to bridge the two. That’s what led to me reading A Wrinkle in Time at age 8 and Stephen King’s IT at age 13. But today, you go back and read something like A Wrinkle in Time, or Island of the Blue Dolphins or Hatchet, and you realize how sophisticated the writing was. They were written for kids, but they were written with the assumption that kids were very, very intelligent. This then set a high bar, which kids had to strive to reach. It pushed their bounds. I don’t see much in the YA category today that does that. It’s hard to say, though, if that’s because it’s more about making money than putting out good literature, or if writers of books for younger audiences simply aren’t as talented anymore, or if there is an assumed need to set a low bar for kids today, or whether publishing houses are just so focused on money that they want the packaging more than the content. Or, in all likelihood, if it’s a combination of all those factors.
Same, I remember reading the Hobbit and LotR in elementary and middle school for the 'read x number of pages a week' exercise. Granted I also devoured every HP book when they came out, but I was there perfect she to grow up with Harry, so 🤷♀️
Exactly. :)
I think it’s because in modern YA, it’s often written so that the character’s voice and the plot and characters themselves are more important than complexity of the prose. I don’t think Percy Jackson would be the same without the additional little quips Riordan adds in. I think that’s also why a lot of YA is written in present tense first person. That way you get to hear the character’s thoughts and jokes as the events happen, like you’re listening to them think.
Katie Schaefer Same here. I first read The Hobbit in the 4th grade and LotR in middle school, and I wasn’t alone. Many kids were reading those books at that time. And The Hobbit was truly supposed to be a kids’ book. It certainly isn’t written on the level of LotR, but it’s far above the level of anything written in the YA category today.
This is exactly why I could never get into YA. I tried several times but no.
There are people here who don’t remember Borders?
Now I feel old.
I remember borders. I miss it.
Who?
I saved up my paychecks when I was working in high school to got o Borders when I knew they were having sales on books that I would like. My sister and I made a day of it. We would both take home a haul and then try to find room on a bookshelf somewhere. Usually they ended up piled on the floor around the bed. Good times.
I miss Borders so much. I liked it way more than B&N, mostly because they were cheaper, lol.
I’m 25 and just now moving out of the YA section 😅 I found the adult fantasy section a bit daunting and most of the well known books had Male leads, there’s nothing wrong with that but obviously I’m going to connect more with a female lead so I stuck to YA where majority of the fantasy books had female leads.
I feel the same - thankfully I've seen a ton of modern day fantasy books breaking the traditional: "Fantasy and science fiction are only for men" trope. Binti, The Fifth Season, the Lightbringer, etc. are a few examples of how fantasy and sci fi are becoming more inclusive, but there still remains what I like to call, "The old boys club of fantasy lit" where you still have traditional male leads and sexualized side female characters. Historically there have always been women in fantasy, but they often had to publish under a male name because publishers didn't think a woman could sell in a "male dominated" genre.
Sometimes I feel like YA needs to be split into two genres Teenage Fantasy, or teenage horror ect, and then have Teenage romance. lots of the hate towards YA is valid, it is just Teenage Romance with fantasy elements, and most of the time it’s done badly with horrendous male characters who growl every three seconds, but that’s a personal gripe. Honestly I can’t remember a YA Fantasy where the central conflict was actually a protagonist vs antagonist situation, the romance is instead always in the foreground and that’s what gives YA a bad name. Also it’s generally a lot softer that adult fantasy. I’ve read YA series that are seven books long with ten POV characters, three of them are Mary-Sues, and they end the last book with a 200 pages battle sequence where EVERYONE lives! And has a boyfriend! I don’t hate YA I just think it has lower standards for fantasy because it appeals to a younger audience I guess? But there are still some amazing gems in YA Fantasy, I’m looking at you Six of Crows.
The "problem"with Teen Romance novels is that despite the authors' actual ages they read like they were written by a teen girl trying to satisfy the fantasy of every other teen girl. It should be it's own ganre, but then it wouldn't sell as well, so that isn't going to happen.
are you hinting at the throne of glass series?
Lol true in part. But let me introduce you to Rick Riordan the author who killed off plenty of characters in his last three Percy Jackson books (I mean the first series, but ToA also has character deaths).
justandforver me yeah I was very angry with the ending of that particular series
Wow, so true. Happily there are some ways I found to avoid those YA romances with fantasy elements (no problem with them, just not my taste). If there is somewhere in the synopsis a 'super hot/dangerous but attractive' person (not necessarily male) mentioned I mostly avoid it. Gladly gems like Six of Crows or Strange the Dreamer are discoverable judt by reading deeper into their synopsis 😊
Boy, am I so glad I was in my mid-twenties when Harry Potter came out. The whole thing just passed me by.
Merphy made a great video on what makes a book MG, YA, adult beyond the protag's age. Basically, she claims that MG is about finding your place in a community and fitting in (misfit Harry discovers he's a wizard and finds the wizarding community is where he belongs and finally fits in) while YA is coming of age and discovering who you are as an individual and your individual role in your community (Harry learns he's the chosen one destined to destroy or be destroyed by Voldy). Adult is kind of just everything else and can have any of the other themes. It is a marketing term, but there is a little bit more to it (usually) than just age.
I was born in 1990, and I lived in a very small town lucky enough to have a movie theater with 2 screens. On the release night of the second or third film my mother and I went to go see it and I think I cried because the tickets were sold out for the whole day at our theater. My mom, a single parent going to school and raising me, drove around to nearby towns and we stayed up until early morning to view the movie. Growing up with the series was awesome, reading it then seeing it. My mother and I read the series together as I grew up and it brought us closer. 10/10 would do again.
In many bookstores here in the Philippines, SF/F shelves barely exist anymore, though sometimes I can still find Drizzt sitting next to Percy Jackson.
him: mentions john green
me (without glasses): huh I thought he was john green
I thought he was related to him😂
I always think of the Twilight books at the milestone where YA 'grew up' into what it is now. I worked at a library at the time and our YA section BLEW UP after the Twilight books were so popular.
Ahhh, I remember driving to Borders for the Half Blood Prince in a storm where I couldn't see 10 feet in front of the car like, a week after I got my license... How am I alive
I picked up Mistborn because it was in the YA section which is where I primarily got my books from in high school and it introduced me to the adult fantasy genre, so I'm really glad they rebranded it like that :)
Hey daniel, I just wanted to say thank you so much for making this video. It made me think of YA fiction i had read and loved as a child and youn man. iwanted to check when alan garner had begun his Weirdstone series. I was delighted to Discover that after a nearly fifty years pause he ahs written the final part to the trilogy. i wont say that I have worries about the fate of the charachters a lot since i first read these books 40 something years ago, but it has often been in my thoughts. So thank you for this fine video.
Daniel Greene wearing a green shirt in front of a green screen, that’s a lot of green🧐
Ya is perfect for younger audiences to get into reading more books it happend to me if i didnt read Harry Potter i think i wouldnt be as obsessed with books as Iam now
Harry Potter got me into reading and fantasy.
Wheel of Time made me fall in love with reading and fantasy.
I'm not allowed to say my favorite recent YA Fantasy book is "The Lies of Locke Lamora?"
It's an excellent coming-of-age story of young guys in a harsh world reminiscent of the Artful Dodger.
Starting when Locke is a young preteen through his young adulthood.
I was recently looking for some YA books but I forgot the title of "YA", so I searched "teen fantasy" instead. Let me tell you, not what I expected to see.
Yeah I was the perfect age (12 - 14) when YA really became YA so I was able to experience the Percy Jackson, Harry Potter wave and then as I got older, YA became more mature with more serious elements. So i guess I've been reading YA for most of my life!
My seventh grade teacher was obsessed with HP. He had all of us take the test to give us our houses and split his class by HP houses. I love all of the books and movies so much!
Omg That is so cool 😭😭😭
@@matildetome ya it was super fun and a good way for us to try to do better because of house points
Before there was YA fantasy, there was Diane Duane’s most excellent Young Wizards series.
I remember the teen section in my small Waterstones go from two bookcases next to the 9-12 cases, to and entire corner of the shop that merged with sci-fi fantasy, and next to general fiction. It was awesome, and it encouraged browsing. End of. between the two
I read mostly YA books. The lunar chronicles got me really into reading. Percy Jackson became my obsession. Then the Shadowhunter books became my life. If I’m in a book slump, I’ll read all the Shadowhunter books in a month and boom I wanna read a ton. Ya fantasy is so fun and fast moving u get addicted