This week's WTF?: The YA Ghetto

Frank Cottrell Boyce's review of Patrick Ness's The Knife of Never Letting Go has got everyone all in a kerfuffle. Read on down to the part that starts out with, "If I have one quibble...." The young adult ghetto? Really? This reminds me of the review of Jenny Downham's Before I Die, in Entertainment Weekly, last fall. The talk of "handicapping" the book and "ghettoizing" it to the YA section inspired me to write the magazine an irate letter. Boyce (whose books I really enjoy) calling YA a "disaster" and "depressing" makes me angry. What do you think about what he has to say? (For more posts about this topics, and comments including some from Boyce himself, see blogs like A Chair, A Fireplace, and A Tea Cozy, YA New York, Read Roger, and probably many, many others.)