perhaps this should be categorized as YA, but the facts are that 1) Golding wrote this for an adult audience 2) his publisher sold it to an adult audience and 3) the YA category didn't even exist back then!
anyhow, it's often read in highschool (i didn't - we were assigned john Knowle's A Separate Peace) but ds was reading it for a writing critique so i picked it up as well.
it's got some archaic vocabulary, and long descriptive passages so i can see how it might dovetail into middle school boys hating to read. i was also surprised at how piggy was described. knowing that his death was to be a pivot point of the novel, i expect a more compassionate account of him (thru either the author's or the protagonist's eyes) but he's actually quite easy to dislike. then again, that may be the point. a kid you tease, bully and even hate still is not deserving of death. maybe the pivot point is supposed to happen in the reader's mind.