Parental advisories (was Self-Evaluation)

[Tim Regan]

Hi All,

--- jillily3g (Beth) wrote:
> As the parent of a 14 year old, I am especially intrigued by 
> the "Young Adult" label. Who exactly is a young adult? 

By a strange piece of synchronicity the Philip Pullman interview I 
quoted earlier, on a different thread, touches on this.

The interview is at 
<http://www.avnet.co.uk/home/amaranth/Critic/ivpullman.htm> and I'll 
quote it here. His comments on the "Young Adult" label come at the 
end. (TB = the interviewer, PP = Philip Pullman, and the interview 
took place in Oxford so here = UK)

TB: The one of your books that's received most strong comment for 
its content is The White Mercedes, recently republished as The 
Butterfly Tattoo. 

PP: Yes, annoyingly. I wish they hadn't done that. 

TB: Why did they do that? 

PP: The idea was, it was originally called The White Mercedes, a 
story about teenage love, basically; it's a tragedy. When Macmillan 
republished it they said that the marketing people 
if you have a 
story with the name of a car in the title, girls won't read it. I 
merely report that! I goggled and said `what nonsense' and they 
said `well, can we think of another title?' I wasn't particularly 
keen on the title The White Mercedes in the first place, but they 
told me it would help sell lots more copies if we called it The 
Butterfly Tattoo. Being unmotivated by anything but the highest 
motives I thought `jolly good, more money!' so I agreed to it. But 
in fact it hasn't done as well as it did when it was called The 
White Mercedes, so I think they were wrong. .. Your question wasn't 
about the title, though, was it? It was about the content. 

TB: It's actually quite a graphic and unsettling tale of teenage 
love. 

PP: Yes. Not as graphic in this country as it was in the States. 

TB: Oh really? 

PP: It was – I won't say `censored' in this country, but they 
suggested I tone down the sex scene a bit in this country. So I did, 
because the story didn't entirely depend on the graphic qualities of 
the sex scene. But they didn't suggest that in the States. In the 
States, you see, they have this category called `Young Adult', 
and `young adult' books can be full of sex, violence, rude language –
 whatever you like. If they're called `teenage' books 
or `children's' books they have to be very much more fussy about it, 
but because it was marketed as young adult I could be as rude as I 
liked. 


Cheers,

Dumbledad.