The purpose of this investigation was to develop and test a scale to measure metaphorical complexity explicitly to aid teachers in the selection and sequencing of young adult (YA) novels in the English curriculum. The development and testing of the scale involved two stages: (1) a questionnaire was used to determine if differences in the metaphorical complexity of examples selected from YA novels were perceived by college educated readers and (2) instrument reliability was tested and the metaphorical complexity scale developed from the responses of nine judges. Rater intercorrelation of the instrument was of high magnitude (.87 to .96). The high correlation showed that raters could reliably classify and rate occurrences of metaphorical language. Subsequently, three raters assessed the metaphorical complexity of 30 YA novels; the readability of each novel was assessed on the Fry Graph. These data were compared by a Spearman coefficient of correlation. The correlation was of low magnitude and not significant (rho = -.27). An analysis showed that: (1) when the metaphorical language was classified by the raters there was a high consistency in the application of the metaphorical terminology, (2) when the metaphorical complexity scale was employed by the raters there was a high consistency in the numerical values assigned the individual samples, and (3) when the metaphorical complexity scale was applied to the novels there was a high consistency in the total metaphorical complexity estimates. (Donna Congleton)