Frank Kogan

Well, no, "young adult" is a marketing category, so in some sense I'm letting the publishers and the market define it (and librarians as well; at DPL there's "young adult" section that's separate from the "juvenile" section, which is separate from the "picture book" section). But obv. it will vary from time to time and place to place over the last 50 years (not to mention over the last 200 years). But I'd say when I was a kid it was officially aimed "10 to 14," which means for me it was more like 8 to 12. I have a feeling that they've pushed the upper end older these days, with Twilight and such, though I've not read them. Some manga ends up in the Young Adult section, too. John Marsden, whom we've been talking about, was probably aiming at actual teenagers. (The Tomorrow series was published in the '90s.) But for me, something like Heinlein's Red Planet, which was written specifically for the Young Adult market, was something I read at age 9 or 10, but even then I was veering towards the grown-up science fiction (Against The Fall Of Night, I, Robot, Illustrated Man, Day Of The Triffids) which I'll bet actually sold a lot to teenagers. But I still hadn't quite given up on the Hardy Boys, either, which aimed younger. At age 10 to 11 when I lived in Rome I was within a long walk of the British consulate, which had a library: I read a whole hunk of G.A. Henty (aimed at the young adult market) and C.S. Forester (aimed at grown-ups, supposedly).