On the Classification of Age Ranges in Literature

[caliburncy]

No: HPFGUIDX 32556

Returning from my bout of silence, I begin by sadly challenging the 
assertions of many of my favorite people on list.  I trust they will 
still love me in the morning, right?  :-)


NOTE: Throughout this entire post, especially the essay at the 
bottom, I will use "children's book/literature" to also include 
(without distinction) those books that are considered YA (Young 
Adult), simply because this is most efficacious and seems to be in 
keeping with the way previous discussion here has treated these terms.


--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "cindysphynx" <cindysphynx at h...> wrote:
> If she pulls [an effective tragic ending] off, her work will stand
> apart from a great deal of other fiction I've read, and no one
> could ever make the claim that HP is a children's book.

Hmm . . . why is that?  A tragic ending and children's books are not 
mutually exclusive.  I can think of some counter examples.  We need 
to be extremely careful how we make our categorical deductions here.  
In order for something to be a *reason*, it must be more than simply 
statistically supported: it must show INHERENCY.  Whatever standard 
you use to determine the age range for a book, it must show that that 
standard really does have some inherent bearing upon the age range.  
I know of only one standard that might be able to do this for age 
ranges.  More on that later.


--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "rachelrenee1" <rachelrenee1 at y...> wrote:
> Hummm, so assuming this is a regular children's book (as I
> didbefore The Man With Two Faces chapter)  I just take the bait and
> figure, sure, why not?  It must be Snape and he *is* Voldemort.
> <snip> Then, bang, it is Quirrel. <snip>
> The biggest red herring [HP] has going for it is that it is
> labeled "Childern's Fiction."

Same thing as above.  Can we really say that HP is "too advanced" 
or "too good" with its plot twists to be a children's book?  Isn't 
that a tad patronizing to children's literature?  We probably have 
stastical support that the plot twists in adult fiction are more 
advanced than those of children's fiction, but we will always have 
exceptions.  Where there are exceptions, there cannot be inherency.


--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Tabouli" <tabouli at u...> wrote:
> Voldemort hardly seems up to much as a foe in encounters to date,
> on-stage he's a comic book villain, another marker which
> says "children's series" to me

Though it pains me to have to argue with one of my fellow Staunch 
Defenders of the Merits of Children's Literature, I must take issue 
with this statement as well.  The nature of the villain is a flawed 
determinator for the age range of a book.  If it were not, the entire 
James Bond series would be designed for children.  There's no 
inherency here that I am aware of.

***

So it seems to me that there are a lot of misconceptions floating 
about: and perhaps not so much about children's literature itself as 
about the standards we can use to determine it.  Too often we analyze 
things with certain standards, but forget to analyze those standards 
*themselves*.  Sometimes our standards are flawed for objective uses 
(though they still work fine for subjective use), but we've never 
looked close enough at them to notice.

Which brings me to Penny's comments:


--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Penny & Bryce <pennylin at s...> wrote:
> For those who are subjectively inclined to view the HP books as
> childrens' books, I'd be curious to hear your reasons.  Is it the
> age of the main characters (and if so, at what age would a later
> book cross the bridge into something other than childrens' lit for
> you)?  Is it the fact that the books are marketed to children?
> Something else?

No, no, and therefore by default yes.

I wrote an essay on this quite a while back (during one of the 
earlier debates on age ranges) that has been sitting on my hard drive 
ever since.  I was reluctant to post it then, and I'm reluctant to do 
so now.

But here it is.  I hope everyone can overlook when it gets a bit 
pedantic--I have not had opportunity to rewrite it.  In any case it 
was not and is not my intention to play teacher or be insulting, only 
to foster discussion.  If I failed in this, please forgive me.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

On the classification of age ranges in literature:
An overblown and ridiculous analysis courtesy of yours truly

First off, I would like to make the point that all classification 
regarding creative works is ultimately an act of folly.  The intended 
purpose of such categorizing is simply to serve as one element in the 
understanding of a work's greater place, but (like the Mirror of 
Erised) it can "give us neither knowledge nor truth" about the work 
itself.  For example: genre.  The existance of genre is the outgrowth 
of two things: 1) the inherent drive of the human consciousness when 
given two things to compare them and 2) marketing, plain and simple.  
The reason classifications such as "Fantasy" exists is basically on a 
false premise: If you like Book A, which is a member of Genre 1, you 
might also like Book B because it belongs to Genre 1 as well.  In my 
experience, this is hardly a firm case.  For every book you like, 
there exist two in that same genre that you wouldn't touch even after 
borrowing someone else's ten-foot pole, let alone using your own.  
Why?  Because all genre is ultimately a superficial imposition and 
the factors that cause you to enjoy or despise a particular book have 
more to do with those things that are common to all of our favorite 
fiction, regardless of categorization of any sort: a compelling story 
with characters that we can identify with or that we are fascinated 
by; themes that resonate strongly with us or cause us to consider a 
new perspective; escapism into the world of homo fictus rather than 
the world of homo sapiens, where life is simply a great deal more 
concentrated and poetic.  We very well might find patterns in our 
preferences that point toward particular genres, but that does not in 
the end make that genre in literal alignment with our own 
sensibilities.  Also, the books within that genre are often written 
with little to no consideration given by the author to the genre in 
which it will appear, except as practical matters of publishing and 
the like demand.

The same is ultimately true of age ranges in literature.  Books may 
be written with particular audiences in mind and they may not.  But 
to deem a work to apply to this age range or that is such an 
inordinate waste of time when it comes to actually understanding that 
work that I think it is best left to the folks at marketing, who are 
at least getting paid for it.  Whether Harry Potter is a children's 
book or an adult's book or a cross-age book is a point that is 
rendered moot when used in an attempt to garner any truly 
*meaningful* information about the books whatsoever.  "That which we 
call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet" and all that 
Shakespearean jazz.

Nevertheless, it is a good question of what kind of standards we can 
use to classify a book's age range when practical matters demand it.  
For example, what kind of standards were available to the publishers 
when they classed Harry Potter?  And not just which ones were 
available, but which ones are most telling?  Of course, deciding 
which ones are most telling will ultimately be a matter of my 
interpretation and opinion, so take it for what it's worth and no 
more.

The possible standards that I thought of are:

1) Readability and complexity of syntax
2) Appropriateness of content
3) Author's intention
4) Worldview and thematic complexity
5) Thematic relevancy

There are some other standards that I intentionally did not include, 
such as "The age of the protagonist" and other such things, because I 
feel these are very, very fallible and fundamentally misapplied.

So let's examine each of the standards in turn:

1) Readability and complexity of syntax

This standard holds that the age range of a book can be determined to 
some extent by how difficult it is to read.  There is logic in 
this . . . up to a point.  For example, books which are written for 
very young children have simpler language just because it is a 
prohibition of legibility: very young children would not understand 
books written for adults from a *mechanical* point of view.  They 
can't sound out the more complex words or comprehend the more 
difficult sentence structure.  But the older the age of the child, 
the hazier this distinction becomes, until the prohibition no longer 
exists.  There are many books written for adults that could easily be 
understood by ten year olds from a mechanical point of view--that 
doesn't mean the book isn't an adult book.  So what does that mean 
about this standard?  It only works one way.  We can class a book's 
*lower* age limit based on readability and complexity of syntax, but 
no upper limit.  A true classification would need boundaries on both 
sides--not because people who exceed the upper limit can't read and 
appreciate the book, but because it does not hold them as the target 
audience.  Otherwise, "The Little Engine That Could" might just as 
well be considered an adult book as a children's book, simply because 
adults are capable of reading it--and while many people might say 
that it is worthwhile for an adult to read "The Little Engine That 
Could", I know of no one who has ever argued against the idea that it 
is, at heart, intended primarily for children.  So we need an upper 
limit, too, for the classification to function--one that this 
standard does not provide us.

And besides, this standard can't work in exclusion anyway.  If we 
looked at John Grisham's writing style, it's probably legible to an 
older child.  That doesn't necessarily mean I would make the lower 
age limit for that book a ten year-old--there are other prohibitions 
that might need to be considered that would up the lower age limit a 
bit.

So, personally, I never bother with this standard at all.  It makes 
sense, but it doesn't pan out, in my opinion.  It's a little too 
muddled, and I think there are better.

2) Appropriateness of content

This standard holds that the age range of a book can be determined to 
some extent by what ages are old enough to be exposed to the subject 
matter contained therein.  Although I am against general censorship, 
I am also in favor of letting parents make their own decisions about 
what their child reads, so I think this standard is useful to them 
for that purpose, and they should make their own personal opinions 
about where the line is drawn.  But I don't think this holds out as 
an objective standard, because like the standard of readability and 
complexity of syntax it only imposes a lower age limit, not an upper 
one.  And where to draw the line in any event?  Personally, I was 
surprised out of my mind to see people claiming that GOF was too dark 
for children.  I've seen much darker books intended for about the 
same age range.  I suspect this came about as the result of some 
parents realizing, "Oops!  Whether it's a kid's book or not, it was 
certainly never designed for SIX YEAR-OLDS, which is who I was trying 
to read it to."  Indeed not.  In terms of appropriateness alone, the 
books probably have a lower age limit of eight or nine, though it 
depends *heavily* upon the individual child.  But again, where's the 
upper limit?  Otherwise, we're not talking classifications, we're 
talking ratings.  Star Trek: The Motion Picture was originally rated 
G--is it a children's movie, just because there is nothing 
objectionable in it?  Doubtful.  Most kids would be Bored To Tears 
watching that film (most adults too, because it's not very good, but 
that's another story), because it really isn't something they will 
understand or have any reason to show interest in.  It wasn't 
designed with them in mind.

So while appropriateness of content is an important factor for 
parental decision-making, I'm not personally convinced that it can be 
used as an accurate and objective standard of classification.

3) Author's intention

Ah, now we're getting into the interesting stuff.  Is the author's 
word on his/her intended audience the final one?  Perhaps in a 
perfect world, it should be.  Perhaps even in this *imperfect* one, 
it still should be.  I'll be honest: I'm not sure.  On the one hand, 
it appears to be a good, even seemingly infallible standard to use 
when it's available.  On the other hand, getting at the author's 
intentions through his/her statements can be surprisingly difficult.  
For example, take Philip Pullman and the "His Dark Materials" 
trilogy.  On the one hand, Philip Pullman wrote an entire acceptance 
speech for the Carnegie Medal talking about "The Golden Compass" (the 
first book in the trilogy) as if it were a children's book.  On the 
other hand, he has also said in interviews that he did not write the 
trilogy with a particular audience in mind, or rather, he wrote it 
imagining an audience that included a little bit of everyone.  So 
which is right?  Probably it works like this: he really did write it 
with a general audience in mind, but was quite aware that from a 
pragmatic publishing perspective he would have to put it in the 
children's market.  Okay, fine.  But that doesn't really help us 
classify it at all, in those (thankfully rare) circumstances when 
practicality really does demand it.

Now take "Harry Potter".  JKR has said that she wrote "Harry Potter" 
for herself.  And people have extrapolated from this and similar 
statements that JKR, being an adult, therefore wrote Harry Potter for 
adults.  Which may or may not be true in conclusion, though the 
evidence strikes me as counterintuitive.  But anyway, there's 
complications.  Notice she says in the Houston Chronicle: "I write 
for myself. I did not write for imaginary children: 'What would they 
need to learn now?'"  She doesn't even acknowledge the existence of 
adults in her intended audience in this statement, though context may 
be responsible.  Later in this same article is the following 
quote: "Rowling says that if she should ever write an adult novel, it 
will not be because she thinks she has to do so to be taken 
seriously. 'I've never seen writing for children as second-best,' she 
says."  This last statement again seems to indicate that she might 
identify "Harry Potter" as a children's book.  In the Scholastic 
interview she says, "I really wrote it entirely for myself; it is my 
sense of humour in the books, not what I think children will find 
funny, and I suppose that would explain some of the appeal to 
adults."  Again, there's alternate interpretations here, but it looks 
to me like she considers the adult appeal more unintentional and 
secondary.  Later in the same interview she says, "I didn't write 
with a target audience in mind. What excited me was how much I would 
enjoy writing about Harry. I never thought about writing for 
children - children's books chose me."  Notice that in the 
statement "children's books chose me" she doesn't deny "Harry Potter" 
as a children's book.  There are all sorts of little implications 
like this throughout her statements, and also the fact that she 
appears to generally prefer her child fans to her adult ones.  But 
none of this is conclusive either way.  It doesn't prove that she 
thinks of "Harry Potter" as a children's book or as an adult book.  
So the most likely truth is that JKR, as she has stressed several 
times, considers a good book a good book, and age ranges are a non-
factor.  I concur with this very much.  But again, that's not helping 
us classify it in those rare instances that it has to be classified 
one way or the other.

4) Worldview and thematic compexity

This standard holds that the age range of a book can be determined to 
some extent by how complex and realistic its portrayal of themes, 
morality, worldview, etc. is.  Okay, I will reveal to you all 
straightaway that I am heavily biased against this standard, because 
it sounds very patronizing to children, probably to a greater degree 
than they deserve to be patronized.  But, doing my best to take bias 
out of this equation, let me explain why I'm not sure it works.  The 
problem with measuring the complexity of a worldview is: what do you 
compare it to?  There's no fully objective standard for Absolute 
Truth (whatever you call it), and anyone that thinks they possess it 
in entirety exposes themselves as, well, a fool.  So, while it is my 
opinion that a view of the world in a uniform shade of gray is 
superior to a view of the world in shades of gray, which is in turn 
superior to a view of the world in black and white, I really don't 
know any of that for sure.  I can't prove it.  So who am I to condemn 
a book that has a black and white portrayal of good and evil, and 
exalt one that has a gray one?  I may *Strongly Prefer and Agree 
With* the gray perspective, but I can't prove that it's superior and 
more correct.  Therefore it seems to me that this standard is highly 
subject to the individual person's own beliefs, which is perfectly 
fine for the purposes of that one person deciding what is and is not 
appropriate for a certain age range, but like the use of 
appropriateness of subject matter, it cannot really hold up as an 
objective standard that applies to everyone.  And therefore, it 
doesn't work as a standard for our classification system here.

5) Thematic relevancy

Exposing my bias again: let me say that this is the standard I use 
and therefore I obviously prefer it.  But it's not like I've been 
using it forever--I decided to use it because I found it more 
revealing than any of the above standards.  Still, even though I may 
give this one the "hard sell", you are certainly at no obligation to 
adopt it yourself.

This standard uses the themes that the book espouses and determines 
what audience they are most relevant to, in order to classify a 
book's age range.  The quick and dirty example being that a book 
about children may have themes about growing up, in which case it is 
primarily targeted at people who are growing up (mostly children)--or 
it may have a nostalgic or otherwise retrospective look at childhood, 
in which case it is primarily targeted at people who have already 
grown up.  This seems to work for just about everything: I have never 
seen a book for which it failed to make logical sense.  Every book 
that becomes questionable in light of the above four standards 
becomes instantly clear when viewed in light of this one--and that's 
why I prefer it so heavily.

Notice that this standard, unlike the others above, also holds some 
promise of possible inherency.  We can explain, beyond and without 
statistical support, exactly what it is about these themes that makes 
them inherent to certain audiences.  It works to identify the cause, 
rather than the symptoms, and that's why it is less fallible.  Notice 
it also exposes and explains the shortcomings of other flawed 
systems.  For example, some people try to determine the age range of 
a book using the age of the protagonist.  This is so obviously a 
flawed system that I eliminated it immediately, rather than 
explaining why it is not an objective determinator.  But using themes 
we can explain: 1) why it appears to be statistically supportable 2) 
why there are exceptions.  The reason the age of the protagonist is 
often comparable to the age of the intended audience is that those 
themes are usually applied via the main character.  To recycle that 
earlier example, the book with themes about growing up will almost 
inevitably require a protagonist who is (gasp!) growing up.  So you 
can see why this standard *appears* to have some validity from a 
statistical point of view.  But you can also see why it is inherently 
flawed and why there are exceptions.  Again, recycling the example, 
the book with a nostalgic or otherwise retrospective look at 
childhood will also require a young protagonist in order to function, 
but unlike the book with themes about growing up, it will be targeted 
at an older audience.

So how does this thematic relevancy apply to Harry Potter?  Well, if 
you believe the Alan Jacobs article
(http://antithesis.com/reviews/potter.html)
where he explains his view that "the Harry Potter books are of course 
a multivolume 'Bildungsroman'--a story of education, that is to say, 
of character formation" then you must also acknowledge that these 
sorts of themes hold as their primary relevant audience none other 
than children, who are still having their character formed.  This is 
NOT to say that the themes hold no relevancy to adults, but that 
their relevancy is secondary to that of children.  There are other 
overarching themes that apply to just about anyone, however, such as 
the struggle between "good" and "evil", which is an additional reason 
why the books hold such a universal appeal beyond their audience in 
terms of thematic relevancy.

***

So, bringing it all together: the final verdict.  For 99% of 
circumstances, it seems to me perfectly reasonable to not bother 
classifying the age range of "Harry Potter" at all--what difference 
does it make?  For 0.9% of circumstances, we can probably stick to 
the idea that it has, in practice, strong CROSS-GENERATIONAL appeal--
something that, to my extreme disappointment, the folks at the New 
York Times Book Review seemed quite happy to ignore just because it 
suited their purposes.  It is this standard of cross-generational 
appeal that I would like to stick to whenever possible, simply 
because it has proven itself to be true in practice (take a look at 
the book sales), and if something has cross-generational appeal, why 
not acknowledge it as such?

But in those 0.1% of circumstances that we have to draw a line one 
way or the other, children vs. adult and no other options: assuming 
you agree with my assessment of the above five possible standards, 
then we must use the fifth standard most heavily, and by this 
standard "Harry Potter" intends children as its primary audience 
(and, by default, adults as its secondary).  But again, that's purely 
for the somewhat objective analysis--for subjective purposes you may 
use whatever standard you wish and I don't see what difference it 
makes.

In the meantime, "Harry Potter" is "Harry Potter" and whether we call 
it this, that or the other doesn't change the things that make it 
what it is.

-Luke