Young Adult Literature; Tragedy
Young Adult Literature
The narrators are all teens, the setting is a high school, and the plot takes place during one school day, in class, in the hallways, and in the lunchroom. The internal dialogue each character is pretty representative of how teens think, meaning a self-centered, slightly skewed perception of reality. And the mini-conflicts of the day are all teen drama: grades, nails, looks, etc. In other words, this book is one hundred percent written for young adult readers.
Tragedy
In extras at the end of the novel, Williams-Garcia says that she sees Jumped as a sort of Greek tragedy with flawed characters. So what's this mean? Greek tragedy usually deals with morality; it often presents a situation in which a hero falls from grace. But in Jumped, the characters all start out fallen in their own ways. Like it's Greek origins, though, Jumped is designed to inspire big, hard feelings in the audience. Whereas a classical tragedy aims to ultimately leave the audience free of these feelings, though, we think Jumped is more of a cautionary tale.