So, I actually managed to learn why one of the writers wrote in their summary that their story was 16+ or something equivalent. It comes down to the fact they've confused the rating and target audience, which makes me wonder how many other writers have done so.
And I'm also wondering how many are operating under a particular myth within the publishing industry regarding the Children's Fiction and Young Adult target audiences. Actually, a few myths now that I think about it.
Let's start off by going into what a rating is and what it isn't.
Ratings are a set of guidelines that help determine whether something is age appropriate. Age appropriateness has nothing to do with whether a work will interest a particular reader or not, particularly since younger readers are actually often interested in reading works that aren't age appropriate because doing so makes them feel older and more mature.
There is a different term used in publishing and broadcasting to denote who would be interested in watching something, and that term is the target audience. Children's Fiction and Young Adult are literature categories determined by the target audience, as is the Adult Novel. New Adult works could be argued as one as well. Still, there is also a question of whether this category is needed, particularly since New Adult works are known for being based on a publishing myth rather than on the target audience elements.
The myth I'm talking about is this idea that readers, particularly children, are only ever interested in a protagonist that is the same age as them or three years older than them, that they're never interested in reading anything else. This, of course, ties into the idea that "you can't relate to a character unless they're like" you myth that's been floating around, which has been the justification for racebending the characters, rather than the justification used for, say The Wiz, that the characters were already relatable. Still, they wanted to have a different take on the original work.
The age of the protagonist actually has nothing to do with the differences between the Children's Fiction, Young Adult, and Adult Novel categories, but to help people understand the categories better, originally, works were divided into just Children's Fiction and Adult Novels, with Harry Potter which in turn came about because Harry Potter ended up being a best-seller on the Adult Novel list. People realized an in-between category for classifying books was needed.
So, if Harry Potter helped define what would be Young Adult, that means the categories are definitely defined by the age of the protagonist, right?
Actually, this is a misconception because the creation of the Young Adult category had nothing to do with the age of the character but more to do with the fact Harry Potter wasn't what certain adults were looking for when it came to their next read, whereas Lovely Bones was. Meaning the issue these adults had with Harry Potter had nothing to do with the age of the protagonist but something else.
And it comes down to how books were categorized as Children's Fiction and as Adult Novel, with Harry Potter revealing a weakness - that there were books that fell in between these two categories, books that librarians and publishers long debated whether they should go into the children's section of the library, or the adult section, to which the young adult section ended up being created. So, what is it that would place a book in either of these categories?
Effectively, Children's Fiction was books where the target audience was younger readers, and Adult Novels were older readers, while Young Adults introduced the idea of an in-between reader level.
Meaning, yes, whether a book is Children's Fiction, Young Adult, or Adult Novel completely has to do with the reading level of the book first and foremost.
