(1)Why are books not rated?

With more books becoming movies it is easier to see what an author can put into a book targeted at a younger audience and get away with. 

Two good examples are Twilight: Breaking Dawn and Hunger Games.  Both of these books are popular with the eleven to twenty something crowd.  Acceptably both of them attract mostly girls with some boys mixed in although I would think that Hunger Games is going to pull in more boys than Twilight.  Also, I have read the entire Twilight series and the fist book of the Hunger Games Trilogy (waiting for the other two in the mail)

In Twilight: Breaking Dawn we have a rather violent and provocative sex scene between Bella Swan and Edward Cullen.  Now, in the book there are not a lot of descriptors about the scene and it is left mostly to imagination.  As a movie goer one of the main reasons I go to movies is to have these scenes that used to only exist in my head be played out on the live screen for me.  Even if that scene is played out as it is in the book one of the final scenes involves a rather large scale battle in which lots of vampires die.  Maybe an argument could be made that they are not really human but lets be real about this, they are being played by people and they still die... rather violently as is the nature of the vampire.  So unless the object of the movie it to leave the movie goers imagination fully intact so they can perceive most of the action, or at least the aftermath I am not sure how this movie can get anything but a "R" rating despite the assurances by the director and studio that it will only be "PG-13" just like the other movies.

Hunger Games is in an entirely different realm of movie.  At the very core of this book is a violent game, if you can call it that, that children ages 11 - 18 are forced to play by an oppressive government.  I don't want to go into too much detail to avoid spoiling it for those who may not have read it but the premise is this: 24 children enter an arena of sorts and only one leaves alive in what the government calls the Hunger Games, which is where the book gets its title.  On top of that there are several scenes in the book where the main character who is female is either in just her underwear or completely naked.  Even if these scenes are able to be shot around, which is very possible based on the descriptors in the book, there is still the death scenes to consider.

I am not against these books in any manner.  I actually like Hunger Games and while I would probably not reread the Twilight series I am glad that I did it once and I think it was well worth the read.  This is not about banning books at all.  I think that any book on any topic should be permissible to be written.  This is about rating books; and I think it should be done for several reasons.

1. Allows parents to use the rating system when they don't have time or patience to screen everything their child may read
2. Allows schools and libraries to use a rating system to determine where a book belongs in the library instead of just assuming that because it has a younger person as the main character or characters that it is automatically a Young Adult (YA) book
3. Allows books to be categorized based on a common criteria instead of individual decisions for each book based on random criteria like popularity and if its going to be made into a movie or not.

Most other forms of media have a rating system.  Video games have the ESRB, Movies have the MPAA, and TV even has the TV Parental Monitoring Board.  All of these are voluntary rating systems that adequately give a guideline for people to follow or not.

In the end its important to give guidelines but no reason to ban.  With the content of books and what a YA author can get away with verses what is put into movie is somewhat astonishing. 

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One more time just for good measure.  I am not picking on either of these books, as I like them both, but they are very popular right now and relevant to the topic at hand.