All About The MG

I've been neglecting the YA side a bit lately--sorry to my YA fans. My current WIP is a middle-grade, so that's what I'm reading, and busy with. I'm all about the MG these days.

And I thought I had it all worked out: YA is for high school kids, MG for the middle-schoolers. Simple, yes?

Well, no. As it turns out, many of my high school students are raving fans of MG series (which of course I'm not about to point out to them). In turn, some YA books turn out to be great for the middle-grade crowd. It's confusing me. I learned something new, now that I've crossed the line to MG: there is no clear line. There are aspects that make a book clearly MG or YA (usually sexual content), but otherwise...

Dunno. I would like to blame booksellers or publishers, but in this case, it's clearly the reader that makes up whether a book is MG or YA. There are no clear rules, it seems. Great for the reader in me, confusing for the writer.

On the upside: I'll keep reading until it all makes more sense.