Age Appropriation

When I was touring the different avenues of humor, I came to realize: Adult Humor. Admitedly, it is inappropriate for all ages. I wasn't planning on including suggestive humor in my book, but I was struck by the difficulty it is to write to a specific age group, particularly when that age group is younger than the author/authoress.

I just finished reading Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightening Thief. Now, if the picture at the back of the fly-cover is acurate, the author has to be at least fifty years old. And yet, when I read the book, I truly felt like I was reading a story from a younger person's perspective. Now, the book is written from the perspective of Percy Jackson, a twelve-year-old boy. I did feel like Percy was too mature for his age, like he was closer to being fifteen or sixteen than twelve... Then again, I was a very immature twelve-year-old. But Riordan did a fabulous job of lowering his scope of perspective even that much! I felt it was brilliant.

Question after question bombards me when I ponder how Riordan accomplished such a task! Of course, I, personally, am in the process of maturing into a responsible adult, so it's difficult to mature upwards in real life and downwards in fantasy. That was, at first, my goal. I wanted to write for middle-school age. But as I've written, my stories have taken on a more mature setting. Scenes of violence and romance (neither of which are explicit in any way, shape, or form) are not as rare in my book as I had originally planned.

Then again, I don't really want to write for middle-school age anymore. I find it much less.... honest.... if that's the word I'm searching for.... Life is cruel and heartless at times. I'm not saying that such cruel scenarios cannot be present in that audience's spectrom, but that they should be presented at a lower level of explicitness (At least, I do not wish to write in such a way to such an age group). This, however, is not the case. The violence of war cannot be masked when one is trying to describe a battle-field, strewn with rotting bodies. And how can one best describe the intimate love a man has for a woman except by conveying the intrinsic details of a perfect kiss?

Now.... My being me.... I won't be getting into details of either a violent or romantic nature. I don't want to be explicit. However, the content is there. I'm just struggling with how much to actually describe. As I've written, my book has evolved from being written to middle-schoolers to high schoolers. However, there are still several younger people I have in mind I would like to benefit from my writing as well, and I don't want to write in such a way as would deny them the ability to read it. So.... what do I do????