Chris Barkley has started a Facebook discussion page for the Young Adult Book Hugo Award Proposal where he calls on fans to contact Loncon 3, the 2014 Worldcon, and ask the committee to exercise its right under the WSFS rules to create a one-time Best YA Book Hugo Award.
Barkley’s appeal reads —
Please tell the Loncon Three Committee how is vitally important that the viability of this category should be tested (as the Graphic Story and Podcast Hugo awards were before their inceptions as regular categories) and that authors, editors and that publishers of young adult fantasy and science fiction should be recognized and honored on an annual basis by one the premiere awards in genre literature.
He also reminds readers that the 2013 Worldcon Business Meeting appointed a YA Hugo study committee with Dave McCarty as Chair scheduled to make recommendations at Loncon 3.
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The constitution also includes:
Section 3.12: Exclusions. No member of the current Worldcon Committee or any publications closely connected with a member of the Committee shall be eligible for an Award. However, should the Committee delegate all authority under this Article to a Subcommittee whose decisions are irrevocable by the Worldcon Committee, then this exclusion shall apply to members of the Subcommittee only.
I have not found any indication that Loncon3 has set up such a subcommittee, but if it has not, it almost certainly will. And this subcommittee will therefore be responsible for the decision on an additional Hugo. Further the chair of the subcommittee is probably (/ is likely to be) the staff member listed under Hugos, i.e. Dave McCarty. (He is described as the Hugo Administrator, a title not recognised by the constitution but generally the subcommitee chair)
Robert Heinlein wrote in one of the letters in Grumbles from the Grave that Podkayne of Mars fit into a Young Adult market of a sort that was recognized in — I think he said Sweden but it was certainly in Europe — which was in age between the market he wrote for with the Scribner’s juveniles and standard adult-reading-level novels. (He just referred to adult novels, but today one can’t use that phrase without qualifying it.)
It seems to me that it cannot hurt to see if there is enough interest in this category to get a reasonable number of nominating ballots, nominees, and final ballots by the usual Hugo voters. I wouldn’t have thought way back when that there would be enough interest in voting for retro-Hugos, yet it’s a popular category.