PF as YA

JBarach at aol.com · 15 Apr 2009, 22:15 · from 2009-April.txt.gz

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From: JBarach at aol.com (JBarach at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:15:43 EDT
Subject: (urth) PF as YA
Message-ID: <c2e.50550f33.3717b68f at aol.com>

Jon writes:

> For those of you who suggested that Pirate Freedom
> was a YA novel, does your definition of that genre
> include an element of didacticism?

I'm baffled.  Why should a YA novel include "an element of  didacticism"?  
Some YA novels have that, I suppose, but hardly all of  them.  Read, for 
instance, Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief (and  sequels).  Or, going a bit 
older, John Bellairs' novels, which are entirely  fun and not at all didactic.  
I don't know if you'd say there's a didactic  element in, for instance, N. 
D. Wilson's recent 100 Cupboards and  its sequel Dandelion Fire.

If you find a didactic element in these novels, I suppose you could make  
just as good a case for saying that adult novels include "an element of  
didacticism."  In fact, it would be easy to make that case for Flannery  
O'Connor or Walker Percy or G. K. Chesterton or C. S. Lewis.  Or Gene  Wolfe, whose 
books frequently (and especially recently) seem designed to teach  wisdom 
and spur the reader (as well as the characters) toward maturity.   That's 
something you see pretty strongly in Short Sun and Wizard Knight, for  
instance, the latter of which especially is about a boy becoming a man and a man  
becoming a true knight.

John

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