writermag.com • The Writer | 27requires a different strategic approach
in order to effectively understand, con-
nect with, and serve them. In addition,
the needs and developmental abilities
of younger teens ages 13 to 15 vary
from those of older teens ages 16 to
18.” Take this even a step further dur-
ing those awkward preteen years when
bodies begin to change, childhood
interests evolve, and longtime friend-
ships often dissolve when new friends
come into the mix.
Much of INB fiction covers these
themes as well, but also hits that afore-
mentioned gray area by showing us the
protagonist’s perspective of the exter-
nal while delving a little deeper within
the character to handle the transition
from child to teen. Not to mention
INB authors also tackle the challenge
of trying to traverse the cavernous gaps
in levels of reading proficiency and
emotional maturity in these transi-
tional years.
That’s what children’s librarian
Kristy Pasquariello writes about in an
article for BookRiot concerning INB
after she took over a middle-school
book club. She cites books like Roller
Girl by Victoria Jamieson and Ghost by
Jason Reynolds as good examples for
transitioning readers. Roller Girl fea-
tures best friends who choose different
paths, one in roller derby and one in
dance, for a summer of new adventures
and relationships. In Ghost, four mid-
dle-school kids from varying back-
grounds are selected to be on an elite
track and field team with the goal of
reaching the Junior Olympics. I like to
think of INB as the kind of book that a
librarian or bookseller could broadly
recommend to an aunt asking what
title to get her niece or nephew for
their sixth-grade graduation.Amid this changing dynamic, how do
authors decide upon the audience for
their writing?
When Kathryn Miller Haines, Edgar
Award-nominated author of the Iris
Anderson mystery series, began her
initial series in the early 2000s, sheT
wo years ago, during the Writing Popular
Fiction MFA winter residency at Seton Hill
University, a discussion broke out
amongst my students in a critique work-
shop geared toward young adult (YA) writ-
ers: They didn’t think YA novels were really
written for teens anymore, or at least early
teens, yet most middle grade (MG) fiction
felt as though it belonged more in the
chapter book and younger reader category.
Much of this concern was prompted by the idea
that more adults were now reading YA than teens
were. Just look at the most recent Nielsen stud-
ies, which show that at least 80% of worldwide
sales for YA novels are by adults for adults.It was understandable that many of
my students are now worried that what
they were writing wasn’t edgy enough
for this new YA trend toward mature
readers and wondered if truly age-
appropriate fiction, where there was a
younger teen protagonist, should actu-
ally be geared toward the MG audi-
ence. They weren’t the only ones
concerned. I had just started plotting a
science fiction series for younger read-
ers, which, as Aladdin and Jasmine
sing, was “a whole new world,” having
established my fiction career by writ-
ing adult novels.
So, I did what all good university
types do – I immersed myself in
research. That’s when I found out
about the In-Betweeners (not to be
confused with the raunchy British
comedy The Inbetweeners!). What I
discovered were the same types of
discussions among industry, library,
and educational professionals. It
seemed lots of people were taking this
paradigm shift in YA and the new
void of In-Betweener (can we unoffi-
cially call it INB?) fiction quite seri-
ously, and it prompted me to teach an
entire class about it that next year for
our MFA program.
First things first, what exactly is the
difference between YA and MG?
Dr. Uwe Stender, president of Triada
US Literary Agency, sums it up neatly:
“I still believe in YA being for teens,
thus I define the target audience as
13-19 years old, with protagonists typi-
cally being in that age group or even
more specifically between 15-18.
When I rep a YA novel, I am excited if
it resonates with younger AND older
audiences, but I believe it should be
most appealing for the 13- to 19-year-
old group.” Dr. Stender says MG is
more for “the tween years 8-12, both in
audience and character age.” This is the
consensus in most of the industry, but
as Publishers Weekly contributing edi-
tor Shannon Maughan wrote in an
April 2018 article: “As with most things
pertaining to children’s books, there
are gray areas to consider and oft-
debated exceptions.” It was those oft-
debated exceptions that brought about
INB in the first place.
According to the website for the
Young Adult Library Services Associa-
tion (YALSA), a division of the Ameri-
can Library Association, “Teens are not
simply ‘older children’ – they have
reached a developmental stage that