 Stephen King is a master of literary craft. His debut novel, Carrie, which came out in 1974, was an instant success and made King a household name. Though Carrie is listed as horror, very little of the story's focus is actually on horror elements. The story itself is a coming-of-age novel about a young girl who has been sheltered the majority of her life by a religious zealot of a mother and learns of her telekinetic abilities while trying to make her way in the new world of teen drama. It's only at the very end of the book when Carrie is drenched in pig's blood at the school prom that the novel begins to transform into a horror story. Since King's debut, he's written nearly 100 stories that fall into a wide variety of categories, mostly dark fantasy and coming-of-age. But somehow, he's been given the title of Master of Horror, though he's only written a handful of horror stories. Out of all the stories he's written, though, and all the different classifications, none have been considered Young Adult Literature until very recently when Amazon listed King's short story The Body as YA. Young Adult Literature has a very broad definition. This can lead many to interpreting the concept of YA in a variety of ways. Something that YA literature and all of its definitions and interpretations has in common, however, is its use of coming-of-age stories. While not all young adult books are considered coming-of-age stories, the vast majority of coming-of-age stories are considered YAL. Because of this, we have to ask, since a large number of Stephen King stories are considered coming-of-age stories, why is King himself not considered an author of Young Adult Literature? Coming-of-age stories are when the main character of the story goes through something that causes them to bid farewell to the simple joys of childhood and begin to take steps into adulthood with all its complex drama and adventures. The main characters of these stories are often adolescents themselves and experiencing that very thing. They begin the story with innocence and childish ideology, but as the story progresses, they begin to view the world in a whole new light with not quite adult-like eyes, but no longer childish innocence and ignorance. That's what makes these stories so great. They present the audience with adult issues and language, but from a child's perspective, Stephen King has built his entire career on coming-of-age stories, from it to the body, rage, apt pupil, carry, and beyond. His works often get mislabeled as horror, but King has in reality written very few horror books, most fall into the realm of dark fantasy and suspense. So why isn't he labeled a YA author and his stories YAL? Why does the mere mention of such a thing provoke so many into fits of laughter and others to aggressive monologues of strongly held beliefs against the idea? I proposed this in a Darcy Coates Discord earlier this year. Sure, Darcy Coates isn't Stephen King. She's a gothic horror author, often writing about haunted houses, but her audience is made up of King fans. She herself is an avid reader of Stephen King, and the author is mentioned often in the Discord. A few members of the Discord responded to my query, with one being an agreement that King is mostly a YA author, but another, who is a self-appointed expert on YA literature, completely disagreed with the idea that King could possibly be considered anything close to a young adult literature author. It for instance has content that's definitely not acceptable for YA, but ultimately the publisher published it as adult, and it's adult. If they'd wanted to publish as YA, they could have, but they'd either need to edit to make it acceptable for YA or face backlash for it, not being appropriate for most YA readers. The poster explained. The officially recognized beginning of the YAL classification came about after the publication of S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders in 1967, even though the idea of literature directed toward a younger audience has been around much longer, but it was the outsiders that officially changed the landscape and gave the narrative its own distinct category. Different publishers, librarians, readers, and experts all have their own varied definitions of what makes a book YA. According to The Atlantic, who interviewed former Young Adult Library Services Association president Michael Cart, the term young adult literature is inherently amorphous. For its constituent terms, young adult and literature are dynamic, changing as culture and society which provide their context change. And Distell and Godrich, literary manager and vice president Jim McCarthy said, I don't know that there's a real technical definition of what YA is. Essentially, it's just literature for and about teens, there to bridge the gap between children's and adult's books. It can be subdivided into the same genres as adult books, romance, paranormal, mystery, horror, literary fiction. Those are certainly quite broad definitions that I believe many adult books fall into, including much of Stephen King's work. The titles in King's catalog have completed works that should be considered YA due to their use of adolescent main characters and of the YA perspective are as follows. Carrie, It, Rage, The Long Walk, Firestarter, The Body, Apped Pupil, The Institute, Fairy Tale, The Gwendi's Trilogy of Books, Joyland, The Girl Who Love Tom Gordon, Later, The Skeleton Crew, and Others. Considering King's catalog contains at least 66 individual book titles and even more short stories and collections, it's difficult to name every single one that would fit the category. Though his books contain adult language and situations, those presented as coming of age stories are written from the perspective of the adolescent characters in each situation. Perhaps many of King's earlier novels that are considered coming of age may have been considered too adult for adolescent readers when they came out in today's society and with books like R.L. Stein's Fear Street Collection which describes murder and other very adult situations which adolescents get into and the absolute true diary of a part-time Indian which uses foul language and descriptions of death, masturbation, and abuse, how are King's coming of age stories any different? The truth is they aren't. Most horror movies which are rated R or MA are actually directed toward a young adult audience. Films like Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, and so on were specifically made to appeal to a young adult audience even if parents groups and censors disagree. But those movies are one of the things that made sleepovers as adolescents worth having. Even before adolescence, I and many within my generation watched slasher movies on the regular. I remember being eight years old and enjoying Freddy's Dead the Final Nightmare or binge watching the Friday the 13th movies as sleepovers. Those films are far more graphic than anything Stephen King has put out, even the most criticized part of his book It, where the friends run the train on Beverly after defeating Pennywise the first time, went less into detail than Sherman Alexi did when describing why God gave junior hands. So why don't King's coming of age stories get marketed as what they actually are? Young adult literature, especially when so many adolescents start with King's stories when venturing into the realm of adult literature. King gave an interview in 1993 which may help to explain this very thing. He said, prior to Mel Brooks blazing saddles, no one had ever heard a fart in a movie or on television before. It was something that had previously been forbidden. We all know about it, we all know the people pass gas, but nobody had ever put it on the big screen before. For instance, in Pet Cemetery, I said something we don't usually talk about. People sometimes have kids who die. There are terrible things that happen and sometimes a child will die young. I followed the family through the grieving process, and then the father goes out to the graveyard and digs his son up and tries to bring him back to life. And that can't happen. That is a total make-believe thing. And I like to say that fiction is a lie, but good fiction is the truth inside the lie. Similar to the forbidden fart on the big screen, King isn't currently considered YAL because he delves into the forbidden that we all know about, but don't want to expose our children to. Similarly to Hollywood and parents groups rating slasher films as R or MA and saying they're for adults, even though adolescents receive more enjoyment out of them than adults. With adolescents, there's that suspension of disbelief. We don't think things like that can happen to us at that age, so we know it's fiction, but for adults, it's something else entirely. We know that serial killers exist in real life, and that murder, rape, school shootings, and so much other types of horror do actually exist, and it can happen to us. King's stories with all their fantastic elements get extremely real on so many levels, and we as parents, as adults, as guides for adolescents, want to keep that real life horror away from younger readers for as long as possible. But we are coming into an age where even if King's stories weren't originally published as YAL, things are blending together so much in today's society that stories like Rage, The Body, and It may eventually be labeled as YAL. It all comes down to time. What was considered adult 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30, 40, 50 years ago is considered YAL today. King himself rejects all labels associated with his writing. He doesn't write to a specific audience. He doesn't go into a book with the idea that he's writing to adults. He just writes. He tells a story, and that story finds its audience, whether it be adult, young adult, etc. It's up to the reader themselves. So to answer the question, is Stephen King a YA author? The answer would be, it depends on who the reader is. If the question is, should King's books be categorized as YA? The answer would be, it depends on what year it is now. 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