(Updated December 17, 2009 – Thanks for the feedback via e-mail, Twitter and comments!)
For those unfamiliar with the acronyms, MG = “middle grade” and YA = “young adult.” But what’s the difference? I’ve come across different opinions, including some authors who don’t like to slot their books into a particular categorization because they’re worried about excluding readers.
Part of the reason for differentiation is marketing, but labels are inescapable. What if an editor or agent asks you if your novel is more MG or YA? Bookstores will want to know where to shelve your book and that means that publishers will be categorizing it as well.
There will always be exceptions to the general guidelines, of course, but as Chuck Sambuchino pointed out in his Word Count for Novels and Children’s Books: The Definitive Post article, you cannot count on being the exception; you must count on being the rule.
Anyway, I decided to investigate this issue online.
If you just want the summary, you can skip down to the end of this post.
Wikipedia says…
Here’s an excerpt from the definition of Young adult fiction from Wikipedia:
“The vast majority of YA stories portray an adolescent as the protagonist, rather than an adult or a child. The subject matter and story lines are typically consistent with the age and experience of the main character, but beyond that YA stories span the entire spectrum of fiction genres. The settings of YA stories are limited only by the imagination and skill of the author. Themes in YA stories often focus on the challenges of youth, so much so that the entire age category is sometimes referred to as problem novels or coming of age novel. YA novels are often as short as 16000 words.”
I couldn’t find a Wikipedia page focused on the definition of “middle grade.”
An editor says…
According to Stephanie Lane Elliott, Senior Editor, Delacorte Press, every aspect of a MG story needs to be appropriate to an eight-year-old, the youngest in that category. There’s also a difference in plot:
Storywise, too, I think you see a difference between YA, where the characters are old enough to be pretty independent and get into trouble on their own, and middle grade, where kids’ lives are still fairly controlled by their parents—and so you see a lot of fantasy and magical realism. In middle grade, I think a lot of the action tends to come from imagination, whereas in YA, it’s tends to be a little more gritty and realistic.
Stephanie says that in a YA book, it should feel as if the teenager is experiencing the story him- or herself, else it isn’t a YA book.
How long is a MG vs YA book?
According to the Word Count for Novels and Children’s Books: The Definitive Post, MG novels tend to run 20,000-45,000 words, while YA is 55,000-69,999 words. From Chuck Sambuchino:
The word round the agent blogosphere is that these books tend to trending longer, saying that you can top in the 80Ks. However, this progression is still in motion and, personally, I’m not sure about this. I would say you’re playing with fire the higher you go. When it gets into the 70s, you may be all right – but you have to have a reason for going that high. Again, higher word counts usually mean that the writer does not know how to edit themselves.
A good reason to have a longer YA novel that tops out at the high end of the scale is if it’s science fiction or fantasy. Once again, these categories are expected to be a little longer because of the world-building.
Concerning the low end, below 55K could be all right but I wouldn’t drop much below about 47K.
Lucienne Diver makes a good point about the cost/risk factor to publishers. From her blog post about YA/MG:
Middle grade generally hovers around 50,000 words and thereabouts. YA is generally more like 55,000 to 80,000 words, although we can all think of notable exceptions. If you’re just starting out, though, you’re going to want to keep your novel trimmed to a reasonable word count, because publishers like to keep the cover price down so that readers will be more willing to take a chance on an unknown quantity. In other words, the more the publisher has to spend on paper and printing, the more they have to charge. Also, the bigger the book, the fewer the bookstores can shelve in the allotted space.
YA author Melissa Petreshock feels wordcounts for YA are flexible:
Personally, I write YA and I’m not sure that the word count guidelines hold true anymore. I mean, look at Harry Potter or Twilight. Neither of those book series held anywhere close to the word count you’re talking about for YA. My book is just over 98,000 words and is a YA paranormal romance.
Jennifer Jensen says that YA novels generally run 40,000-75,000 words, but you’ll find books on either side of that. Her advice:
Write the story in the length it takes to tell it, and then check publishers’ guidelines.
From Pimp My Novel (written by someone in the sales dept. of a major trade book publisher:
The word count for MG is around 20,000 – 40,000, whereas it’s 50,000 – 75,000 for YA (as Jessica Faust notes here, these numbers are a little fuzzy, so take this with a grain of salt).
Who reads MG and YA books?
From Pimp My Novel:
MG is chiefly read by late elementary/middle school students; YA is chiefly read by high school students and up.
Adrienne Kress writes about the “new YA” in her blog, The Temp, The Actress and The Writer. Adrienne says MG is written for young people 8-12 years old, but that you can also have divisions within MG:
Within Middle Grade you can also have Upper Middle Grade which can be read too by 13 and 14 year olds (that awkward tween stage of literature).
From Jennifer Jensen in Young Adult Novel Guidelines:
Young Adult readers are generally 12-18 years. The younger portion of this age group is often reading books that their parents would remember as teenage novels. But by the middle of the adolescent years, and sometimes earlier, most teens are reading adult novels. They get pulled back to YA novels with stories that relate directly to their own deep concerns, books that help them figure out their place in the world in a sensitive way.
Apparently one reason that the YA category is growing so quickly right now is because more adults are reading books that are classified as YA.
How old is the protagonist?
According to Laura Backes from the Children’s Book Insider, it can be difficult for a writer to know whether they’re working on a MG or YA story. If the protagonist is under 12 years old, it’s usually MG; over 12 usually means young adult — but the differences are more complicated than that.
Lucienne Diver advises writers to make their protagonist an age near the top range of that category, to maximize readership. For a MG, this would be 12 years old. The theory: while an 8-year-old would have no problem reading about a 12-year-old protagonist, a 12-year-old may be reluctant to read a book about an 8-year-old.
Lucienne’s advice re: YA protagonist age: “You’re best off having your hero or heroine 16, 17 or 18 to give yourself a decent sized readership.”
Librarian Babette Reeves starts her Young Adult section at about grade 9 or 13-15 years old “because that’s when adolescence begins.” She runs her YA section up to about age 20 to cover some of the edgier YA. Babette admits this is unorthodox but says it works for her community.
What are MG and YA books about?
From Pimp My Novel:
MG plots tend to center on the protagonist’s internal world, whereas YA plots are more complex and are more concerned with the protagonist’s effect on his or her external world.
Laura Backes says that middle grade readers are beginning to learn who they are, what they think.
Children in the primary grades are still focused inward, and the conflicts in their books reflect that. While themes range from friendship to school situations to relationships with siblings and peers, characters are learning how they operate within their own world.
YA novels have more complicated plots than MG, and the change in a protagonist is triggered by external events, fitting into a bigger picture.
Adrienne Kress says that pretty much anything is allowed in YA as long as the book adheres to the following rules:
1. The main character has to be a teenager.
2. The plot must have something to do with coming of age.
Her theory is that YA is actually a new genre, and that YA years ago was actually MG.
From Cheryl Klein’s A Definition Of YA Literature:
1. A YA novel is centrally interested in the experience and growth of
2. its teenage protagonist(s),
3. whose dramatized choices, actions, and concerns drive the
4. story,
5. and it is narrated with relative immediacy to that teenage perspective.
From Jennifer Jensen in Young Adult Novel Guidelines:
The underlying themes, regardless of genre or topic, allow teens to examine deeper issues in a safe way: what their role in life is, the difference one person can make, the importance of relationships, coping with tragedy of any sort, etc. The younger set of YA readers can cope with scary subjects when they are at a distance—the character’s friend is doing drugs, not the character himself.
Jennifer also mentions a subcategory of YA called “edgy YA,” which tackles formerly taboo subjects with an intense perspective. These books are aimed at older teens:
Instead of a friend or acquaintance having issues, the main character is the one being abused, cutting, considering suicide, etc., or it’s a family member or best friend of the main character. The viewpoint is very close, the bond and introspection and questioning are strong. Overall, teens can identify keenly with the character’s feelings, if not the situation.
In her blog post, Middle Grade or Young Adult–What’s the Difference?, librarian Babette Reeves says that YA books deal with developmental issues of adolescence:
One is the search for identity. Young Adult novels have protagonists who are trying to figure out who they are as an individual. They try on this and then that, not sure what really fits them. Middle grade novel protagonists are developmentally more into the concreteness of life–friends, siblings, the mean teacher, the lost dog, fairly ordinary (to an adult eye) daily difficulties.
Babette says that finding a set of values one can call one’s own is another major adolescent issue.
GENERAL SUMMARY:
After reading over the various opinions, the basic differences seem to boil down to the following list, but with the understanding that there are always exceptions.
Middle Grade fiction:
- Used to be 20,000-40,000 words, some say around 50,000 words with notable exceptions. Different publishers have their own category wordcounts; check their guidelines.
- protagonist 12 years old or younger but should be close to 12 to give yourself a good readership
- material should be appropriate for an 8-year-old (youngest in the category): no sex or drug abuse, for example
- characters are learning how to operate within their own world
Young Adult fiction:
- Lucienne Diver: “YA is generally more like 55,000 to 80,000 words, although we can all think of notable exceptions.” Different publishers have their own category wordcounts; check their guidelines.
- Rarely goes above 90,000 words.
- YA readers are usually 12-18 years old.
- protagonist over 12 years old (Lucienne Diver: “You’re best off having your hero or heroine 16, 17 or 18 to give yourself a decent sized readership.”)
- action tends to be more gritty and realistic
- themes tend to focus on the challenges of youth and coming of age
- characters are learning how to influence and be influenced by the outside world
- the teen’s choices, actions, and concerns drive the story
Useful resources:
YA versus Adult: the Difference? (BookishGal)
MG vs YA (Author2Author)
Wordcount: focus on adult books but literary agent Jessica Faust includes comments re: YA wordcount.
A Definition Of YA Literature by Cheryl Klein
Wordcount For Novels & Children’s Books: The Definitive Post
On word counts and novel length: Colleen Lindsay posting to The Swivet
Middle Grade or Young Adult–What’s the Difference? by Babette Reeves
Stephanie Lane Elliott, Senior Editor, Delacorte Press
Lucienne Diver discusses YA/MG
Young Adult Guidelines from Suite 101
Writing the Middle Grade Novel by Kristi Holl
Laura Backes: Difference between MG and YA
Wikipedia entry on young adult fiction
Adrienne Kress: The new YA
Disagree or Agree? Feel free to comment below!
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Personally, I write YA and I’m not sure that the word count guidelines hold true anymore. I mean, look at Harry Potter or Twilight. Neither of those book series held anywhere close to the word count you’re talking about for YA. My book is just over 98,000 words and is a YA paranormal romance.
Good point, Melissa. I’ll update this post.
Hi Debbie:
Not sure about the action in MG tending to come from imagination…Lots of that, for sure, but lots of reality-based action as well, I think.
Debbie,
I enjoyed this and think you made some great points. It is hard to categorize these when there are so many “exceptions.” It’s kind of like the English language rules of “i before e, except after c. . .”
Thanks for this!!! I wish stores the Barnes and Noble would put the label “Middle Grades” on the shelves instead of “childrens” with the age/grade below. I teach 7th graders and I know they are turned off from anything even hinting at “childrens”. And interestingly they don’t label Young Adult, YA – they label it Teen instead! How confusing. I agree with the one statement sayting that the old idea of young adult was actually Middle Grade. As the genre as grown, the edges have been pushed creating a grouping more for teens and a grouping more for middle school.
Thanks for the article. I’ll be bookmarking it for sure!
I was just having this discussion with myself the other day. I have written a book where the protagonist is 12-13 yrs old and it is not centered around the imagination. It only comes in around 25K and I have had a heck of a time figuring out where to market it. I think it is most definitely MG after reading this article. Thanks.
I love how thorough you are with this. There really is a distinction between the two and the lines are becoming distinct.
Yes, YA really is a new subgenre emerging and I think it’s reflective on how kids are wanting books that deal with the issues that they are have.
I’m also wondering if we’ll see a trend in this YA genre to expand into college years like up to age 21. So many adults are reading YA now. It wouldn’t surprise me.
It was an interesting read, even though these categories cannot be found in Germany – there the books are labeled “for beginners” and then “from six” “from eight” “from ten” “from twelve” and “youth”. No intelligent child (and parent) will confine themself to the correct “correct” category – intelligent children can also read more “mature” books, and in a lot of intelligent people’s biographies you will read that they have browsed their parents’ bookstore when the parents were far away.
What I missed – but this is probably not your fault but the fault of the sources you found – is some comment on language. When I worked as a reading mentor, I found that language is one of the key problems for readers.
What I found most fascinating, and probably true, is the difference in focus: About looking inward, and being occupied with the “small world” of family, school and friends, and of the “big world”. In my experience, the change comes at a later age than claimed by the authors you quoted: Rather at fourteen than at twelve, and only at sixteen they can really deal with the outside world. (From fourteen to sixteen they are in some weird no-man’s-land.)
I will definitely bookmark this!
susanna
There’s a few books I can remember from when I was that age, but it sometimes feels that I jumped straight from Swallows and Amazons to Babel-17.
My brother’s in Educational Statistics, and some of the things he’s said about developmental psychology suggests that there’s a key stage more or less at the MG/YA boundary. Maybe several. Our ancestors might not have had the book-learning, but religion and law seem to have settled on the same rough age, whether it’s a bar-mitzvah or a definition of criminal responsibility.
Coming into that, perhaps in a don’t touch it with a bargepole sort of way, are such things as age-of-consent laws. What might be lawful in Spain might not be in the UK, just to pick two European countries where a family might move from one to another.
Now I’m thinking about it, I remember a novelisation of the historial removal of Norwegian gold reserves form German-occupied Norway. My gut sense it that the story was MG, maybe with a bit of magic realism. Even if kids did carry some gold past German sentries on their sleds, was it as significant as the book made out?
And, for old-fashioned YA fiction, how about R,M Ballantyne?
Hypothesis: YA was around pre-WW1, and then got swamped by pulpish adventure until it re-emerged significantly after WW2. How do such things as Heinlein juveniles fit in? It was certainly possible to combine dramatic adventure with YA growing-up plot-threads.
Anyone out there going to try a 21st-century-friendly version of The Young Fur-traders? Animal furs are going to be a problem.
When I wrote the novel Dangerous Days, I attempted to produce a book that would fit into both moulds, by telling the whole story in four separate easier to read parts of roughly 35,000 – 40,000 words each. And given the current financial crisis, it also makes the four stories cheaper to buy
I remember a panel “What is ‘Young Adult’ fiction” at the 1987 Worldcon (included Joy Chant[1] among other panelists[2]), and the only conclusions they came to (apart from “it doesn’t exist, can we go now?” and “it’s a marketing fiction”) were:
1) If the protagonists are children, and they stay children (innocent), it’s a children’s book.
2) If the protagonists are children and they grow up / mature, it’s a Young Adult book.
3) If the protagonists are children and they get corrupted, it’s porn.
There was a push here in the UK to put age ranges on books, which was opposed by most authors. The narrower the age range the smaller the market gets, because either children aren’t allowed to read outside their age (as in your cartoon), they aren’t bought the books (because relatives buy for that age), or they don’t want to be seen reading books “too young” for them. Since I, and most fans I know, started reading things like the Illiad and Lord of the Rings (both ‘adult’) as young (if not pre) teens, and we also still like reading Dr. Seuss and Narnia at over 50 (but these days don’t dare go into a ‘children’ or ‘YA’ section of a library because we’ll be labelled perverts), such age ranges don’t help. (The same goes for games and toys labelled “Ages 3-8″ or whatever — an awful lot of the 50+ year olds I know still like playing with Lego!).
[1] Who used to work in a children’s section of a library, and had a number of horror stories about what got sent down there. Including a “comic book” which was sent there because it was pictures — it was indeed a “graphic novel”, ver ‘graphic’ indeed and not at all suitable for children! But every time she sent it back up it came back “comics are for children”, until she actually took it and showed it to the hean librarian who was most embarassed that they even had such a book…
[2] I can’t now remember who else was on that particular panel. I have a vague feeling that it may have been the one where Terry Pratchett was the “token male writer”.
About the age of the protagonist –
In the first Harry Potter book, Harry was only eleven years old. But the book is pretty clearly young adult — and obviously plenty of adults are reading it.
I’m fretting over this because I’m currently writing a fantasy where the protagonist is twelve (and she needs to be twelve), but I think that the book is young adult and not middle grade. The book is about 70,000 words. Will agents and publishers see the age of my protagonist and reject my book on that the basis that she’s too young for YA, but the book is too long for MG? What price Harry Potter?
Very interesting article.
Personally, I write a comic series, and I find that categorization gets even more convoluted. There’s this confusion between what is “teen” and what is “older teen.” What happens when your characters grow up and encounter more mature situations? What if you want to tackle issues like teen pregnancy, drugs, and bullying? There can be a dark side to all of those, but I think they are well worth covering.
On the site for my comic, I suggest a reading age of 13 or older as I expect to get to more sensitive or mature topics later; but I’m sure readers younger than that can enjoy the story now. The only reason I set a guideline was because I don’t want the pretty art and fantastic setting to make it seem as if everything is wonderful all the time.
When I try to describe it in the shortest way possible: it’s a commentary on real life for teen girls set in a fantasy world.
I think what’s been mentioned about the extra readers you can get is interesting too. I know there are quite a few adults reading my series and enjoying it, in addition to teens. I hope my readers can identify with the realistic personalities and situations, regardless of age.
I’m an older reader, not a writer, so all this is news to me. As a kid & teen my grandmother bought me a lot of books, and I read my parents’ books too. So Nancy Drew was mixed up with Ivanhoe and War and Peace, and Anne of Green Gables. My absolute favorite was Treasure Island. I read it first time at age about seven, and every year at least once till I was about 20. I only realized after reading this discussion that it is a kid book by these criteria. Where would I find it in the bookstore if it were a new book today?
In response to one commenter’s post about the length of the Harry Potter and Twilight books, I don’t think most new writers should use either of those as a measuring stick (Sambuchino discusses this in the very post you referenced). These are definitely exceptions, and to compare a new writer’s work to those is as taboo as saying you write like Rowling or Meyers in a query letter. Recipe for disaster. (Or rejection, anyway.)
Thanks for such a comprehensive look at both of these!
Best,
Ricki Schultz
http://www.rickischultz.wordpress.com
I love your post! It has definitely decided the genre of my first book.
I am writing a Trilogy right now, of which the first book is definitely in the YA genre. I have wondered whether each book can be classified separately, or does the fact that it is a trilogy mean that all three books must stay in the same genre. I plan my story to span over 4 or 5 decades. It is generational, so while my protagonist will be aging in each book, I’m not sure how to market it.
Any advice would be very helpful, as to which direction I proceed with my story.
Thank you so much!
This is a terrific post and I appreciate the time you took to find all the additional resources. As a YA author whose first book in a series comes out next year, I struggled with some of the classification issues myself. I even bumped the ages of my characters up to make sure less people were potentially freaked out (although the teen experiences are spot-on from my time teaching the age group–and having been a teen long, long ago
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I struggled with the word count issue, too. My contract said approx. 70K and my first novel was 6-7K more. I’m in copyedits now and they want me to add a little more…
I think the exciting thing about YA is that there is so much flexibility inherent in the label. Genres blend, target audiences merge, and really, most people just seem to want a good book with characters they can somehow relate to. I think YA gives us room to test the boundaries a bit–and isn’t that a big part of the adolescent experience anyhow?
Very interesting post. I teach 4th grade so I wanted to share a thought from that perspective.
Re: Ms. Diver’s perception that older was better than younger within the age range.
“while an 8-year-old would have no problem reading about a 12-year-old protagonist, a 12-year-old may be reluctant to read a book about an 8-year-old.”
I do agree in theory, but I’ve also found that my students really want to read about other 4th graders. They easily identified with the characters in Fourth Grade Rats (Jerry Spinelli) for example. Yes, they do like to read about older characters, please don’t ignore the need for younger ones too.
In teaching them to be good readers, we teach them to make connections between the book they’re reading and their lives. They develop their comprehension skills, but they also develop a real love of reading when the experiences are ones they understand or share.
Great post! Very informative. Thank you.
On the point of word counts and books like Harry Potter and Twilight that are over the general guidelines, what I’ve read on numerous editor and agent blogs is that those guidelines generally apply to debut authors. Like in the post, more words means higher cost and more risk, and publishers will be more willing to take on this risk with writers who are already established. The first Harry Potter book was much slimmer than the later ones in the series. Also, fantasy is allowed some leeway because of world-building. But generally, debut writers should try to stick with the guidelines as much as possible to tell the story well. Going way over can look like the writer isn’t very good at self-editing, because the editors know roughly how many words these kinds of stories can be told in. Of course there are exceptions, but those exceptions more easily make it onto shelves when they’re from established writers.
On protagonist age and content, this post cleared up some stuff for me. I always thought, 12 and under was MG, but it’s interesting to hear that at 12, it can go both ways depending on the content. I thought Suzanne Collins’ Underland Chronicles series was MG, but it has some very vivid death scenes that I thought might be a bit too scary for kids under 12. Then an editor told me she considers it YA, which kinda makes more sense from the basis of content.
Thanks again!
Wow, you guys really covered this topic thoroughly! Thanks for all the guidelines and links. Very helpful.
Thank you for a great post. My critique group has had this discussion. One of us has a MG and two of us a YA, except that my partner’s MS could appeal to MG as well as YA. Your post summarized many key points that I will use as a reference in the future. Thanks again.
Great discussion! A while back, I was at an authors panel that addressed this question and Laurel Snyder said something really fabulous: “In MG fiction, the main character is look out at the world and trying to figure it out, whereas in YA, the main character is looking inwardly, trying to figure himself out.”
I think that’s a great insight into how kids grow through this stage and how that can translate into your writing.
Thanks for some great ideas!
Thank you so much for this fantastic post!
I am absolutely certain that my novel is not MG, but I wasn’t sure if it was YA or Adult, because it’s so gritty. Now, that I know that some YA novels deal with the bleaker side of being a teen, I can classify it.
Thanks again!