YA Novels

I have been reading two "YA" books.

The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor
and
Eragon by Christopher Paolini.

I finished The Looking Glass Wars this morning. It was very good and fun to read. The story moved at a fast pace, almost too fast. That's really my only complaint. There are parts of the story I wish he would have spent more time developing. The pace seemed to fluctuate between really fast and what I would consider a normal story pace. The character development was spot on though.

It is the first YA novel I have read in a while, which is fine by me. There is a lot of great young adult fiction out there.

I am trying to figure out what classifies a novel as YA. Is it young main characters, or the publisher saying, "This is appropriate for young readers"?

One of my favorite novels is Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. Ender is a boy, who by the end of the novel, is just a teenager. The book was not published as a YA novel, yet the YA edition of it out sells the "adult" edition. There are no textual differences, just a more cartoon like cover.

Ender's Game is violent in parts. It is a dark story. It has some vulgar language. Yet, it is a successful YA novel.

As I am writing this I realize that a YA novel is a YA novel because the publisher says so. So I guess I figured that out.

So uhh... now I am debating publishing this post. It's not really a well written post. I have some issues with it. Like, how I didn't go into greater detail about the book I read. What was I thinking? Then, I asked a question that I answered in a few paragraphs, and not really to my liking. There is nothing informative in this blog. Other than the fact I named the blog Dumb Stuff I Wrote, which appears to be appropriate. This is some really dumb stuff.

So since this is dumb stuff, and the blog is called Dumb Stuff, I will publish it.

Two questions I had answered by myself in one post. That has got to be a record.