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Inferential distance strikes again.
As some of the other comments here get at, there's at least a significant difference in YA-before-it-was-really-called-YA (your Nancy Drews, Hardy Boys, Outsiders, and so on; books aimed at tweens and teens that deal with heavier issues but don't contain content we'd judge unsuitable for a mind barely ready to know what sex is) and the 2010's style of YA that blossomed in the wake of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games (Divergent and so forth; books aimed more at literal young adults, who want the mature content and some of the pretension of the hard stuff); the former sort of book might typically be about groups of teenage friends getting into adventures and hijinks and learning some important lessons, the latter sort of book might typically be more about a Special Teenager being sorted into a faction, except they're so special they're above the concept of factions, and they're going to bring down the oppressive system and find themselves and all that feel-good jazz.
The above admittedly probably doesn't make a ton of sense if you were never on Tumblr in the 2010's.
What you're missing is that YA as a category is newer than Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, and so on, but much older than 2010. Publishing did not skip from 1967 to 2010, or even 1997. YA, like everything else, has become woke/tumblrized, but there's plenty of older stuff closer to your second category than your first. The Tripods trilogy comes immediately to mind.
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Yeah, ( @The_Nybbler ) this is what I was trying to get at. Probably half at least of the books listed by wikipedia as early YA (including The Bell Jar and of all things) would never be published as YA nowadays if they were published at all. I doubt even The Outsiders would make it. Pony Boy is 14 (strike one) and a boy (strike two) for starters.
Modern YA has become more of a genre than an age category, not in the least because a substantial chunk of its readers are in fact grown women and not teenagers. For a book to be classed and published as YA it is not enough for it to be about teenagers, it has to hit certain themes like you've mentioned, the fight against an oppressive and cruel 'adult' society (whether it be a dystopian sci-fi tyranny or just bull-headed teachers and parents), the narrative must be very introspective and feelings-y, the lead must be between 16 and 18 (15 and 19 are possible but really pushing it) and with very few exceptions female, there must be a love story B-plot, and it doesn't have to be written in first-person present but that's strongly recommended. There's also just a certain sine qua non 'feel' to YA prose that is hard to pin down but that I know when I see. It's not quite that it's usually linguistically simpler though that is part of it. There is a certain immediacy and immaturity (not necessarily in a bad way, though it can be, but just a sense that 'this is a kid talking') that is usually not found in adult novels. But I have read so-marketed adult novels that have made me think 'this feels like YA' and so-marketed YA novels that make me think 'this feels like an adult novel.'
That stuff is what YA as a "genre" and a publishing category has meant since the early 2010s or so. Gary Paulsen's Hatchet may be a young adult novel but it is not a Young Adultâ„¢ novel.
S. E. Hinton is a woman, so that ups the chance of it being published.
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