Frank Cottrell Boyce and the YA ghetto.

Over at Read Alert, Lili posted the passagefrom Frank Cottrell Boyce's recent review* that (understandably) has the YA community all het up.  In the comments, he responds.

More at Tea Cozy, Educating Alice and YA New York.  FCB has commented at all of those sites as well.

While his follow-up comments have made me understand his opinion and concerns a bit more clearly, I don't really understand why he's worried about YA becoming a genre -- it seems to me that it already is one.  A broad one, yes, but it certainly already has cliches and conventions.  If you compare the YA that was around when I was an actual YA to the YA that is around now, though, it's much more rich and varied than it was then.  So... yeah. 

*Of The Knife of Never Letting Go, a YA book.  The book sounds excellent, the review itself is very positive -- it's the comments on YA in general that people have taken issue with.