Adult Literature; Coming-of-Age
Young Adult Literature
This is a no-brainer: We've got a thirteen-year-old boy who's just coming into his own as a young man. He's into this older girl who isn't so into him, but that doesn't stop him from yearning for her. In fact, he does what he can to impress her, and even gets jealous when his best friend gets along with her.
Talk about young adult issues, right? Teenagers… It's not just about growing up: It's about managing hormones, romance, and friendship, too. And that's M.C.'s life, as we know it.
Coming-of-Age
Okay, so what if M.C.'s only thirteen? He's a young teenager who might as well be a young man. He's already in charge of all his younger siblings, after all, and he's starting to view girls as real romantic partners.
Most importantly, he's the one who not only comes up with the idea of building the wall to keep the spoil-heap from falling on his house, but he's the one who starts building it. Not his father, not Mr. Killburn, not James K. Lewis—the plan to save the mountain is all M.C.
Though the book takes place over only three days, M.C. goes from wondering how to convince his dad to leave the mountain to committing to spending his life there and figuring out how to save the mountain. So though he starts and ends the story at the ripe old age of thirteen, in plenty of ways M.C. definitely becomes a man in this book.