I don’t know about you, but when I started getting into reading, I got confused about the various categories books fell under. Like, what’s the difference between Adult Fiction and New Adult books? Or what age stops being a Children’s book and instead becomes a Young Adult?
If you’re also curious, we’re here to help! We’ve developed a handy little guide to make it a little easier because I, for one, love a good graphic.
Children’s Books
These books are typically for children ranging from 0-12 years old. They usually focus on themes such as friendship, building relationships, family, school, facing fears, and adventure. These books typically include very little violence, if any (often bullying or something of that nature), no explicit sexual content, and little to no swearing.
This category also has many sub-categories, such as:
- Board Books – picture books for babies, ages 0-3
- Picture Books – ages 3-8
- Chapter Books/ Easy Readers – ages 5-8
- Middle Grade – ages 8-12
Young Adult
These books are geared toward 12-18 year-olds. They typically focus on themes such as coming-of-age, first love, self-identity, and mental health. These books usually focus more on the emotional/mental impact of situations, but may include sex, violence, and substance abuse, though not usually in graphic detail.
YA books tend to focus on the emotional journey of relationships and self-exploration.
New Adult
These books are geared toward 18-30 year-olds. They typically focus on themes such as establishing and maintaining independence, career building, and more serious mental health issues. These books usually feature more explicit sex/intimate relationships, heavier/darker themes, and more detailed portrayals of substance abuse.
Unlike YA, NA books tend to focus on the physical, explicit, and nuanced aspects of sexuality rather than the emotional journey. And they’re more focused on establishing independence and managing responsibilities vs finding their identities.
NA books are typically about the adults who are branching out into adulthood for the first time – starting college, building a career, finding love, etc.
Adult Fiction
This isn’t as commonly used as YA or NA, at least not with the books I’ve been reading. However, I have seen Adult Fiction pop up once or twice, so I wanted to address it.
While NA books are typically for readers up to 25 or 30, Adult Fiction is for those aged 25 and older. The themes are similar to NA books, but typically cover a more broad spectrum of life experiences such as marriage, divorce, and deep-seated systemic issues. The sexual content may also be more explicit and may deal with the more mature and complex aspects of the intimacy.
Adult Fiction books are typically about the adults who have already branched out and are now in established relationships, completed college, are settled into a career, etc.
It’s also important to note that many books aren’t broken down into New Adult or Adult Fiction. Many will just simply be labeled “Adult”.
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