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Our side of the Fence: the sand in the oyster.

Article Excerpt
Where is the border between young adult literature and adult literature? What are the characteristics that define the books that belong on our side of the fence, and why does that border seem permeable only in one direction? Who are the guards who stand at the gates and exchange the currency of one readership and critical standard for the coinage of the other? What about the tourists who try to cross over without learning the language and customs of the other side? Should this wall exist at all, or do its boundaries classify literary identity in an aesthetically useful way?

As we set out to identify the location of that border by defining how young adult literature differs in essence from adult, we are not talking about readership. The question of what young adults read is an entirely separate matter, and one that is perhaps of more practical importance, at least to practitioners of the great art of bringing kids and books together. Teens read some adult novels and nonfiction and children's picture books, graphic novels and magazines and the backs of cereal boxes, and none of that print matter is necessarily categorized as young adult literature. In this column I am trying to isolate some definitive characteristics of the genre, playing the critic's game of literary form, of shape and standards and what is and isn't a young adult novel. Nor am I even talking about YA appeal. A book can be a dusty shelf-sitter and still undeniably be a young adult novel. Both teen appeal and literary excellence (which may or may...

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