Totally agree! I also think about like, Diana Wynne Jones, who basically raised a set of children into reading her books, and so kind of crosses a lot of these category lines.
And it's interesting too that unlike many other genre categorizations, where we might define them by being in conversation with each other, children's/MG/YA are often defined by the intended age range, which sits poorly with e.g. the evolution of YA into the YA trope situation it's currently in...
Though I think that children's books do tend to have protagonists a little older than the intended age, it's a very limiting way to look at a protagonist. Especially when publishing is going for diversity in other respects!
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And it's interesting too that unlike many other genre categorizations, where we might define them by being in conversation with each other, children's/MG/YA are often defined by the intended age range, which sits poorly with e.g. the evolution of YA into the YA trope situation it's currently in...
Though I think that children's books do tend to have protagonists a little older than the intended age, it's a very limiting way to look at a protagonist. Especially when publishing is going for diversity in other respects!