“The teens I write for now are going to be politicians with Twitter accounts tomorrow. If some of our leaders read books about black kids as teenagers, we wouldn’t have to say Black Lives Matter — it would be understood. If they read about Latino kids, we wouldn’t be discussing walls. People assume I want to put a political agenda into kids’ heads. No. I want to instill empathy in them.” — Angie Thomas, bestselling author of The Hate U Give (made into a movie) and On the Come Up. (from Time magazine, Feb. 18-25, 2019, p. 112)
“I think [adolescence] is a great time of life to write about — a time of ‘firsts’ — first love, often first sex, first experimentation with drugs, alcohol, who you want to be… It’s a time when you’re figuring out the world and your place in it. It’s a time when you often lose some of your childlike innocence. I have powerful emotional memories from that time, and I think that’s partly why I choose young protaganists. That said, I’ve met a lot of adults who’ve read my work. Apparently one third of readership for YA is adults!” — Susin Nielsen, award-winning young-adult novelist, quoted in Canadian Children’s Book News Spring 2019, p. 14
“What do boys read? And why do they stop? These questions matter a lot in my world. I write for children. I’m male… There is a general feeling that YA fiction is the domain of the girl reader, with an emphasis on female character and (often) romance. Does that actually alienate boy readers as they hit their teens?… I wouldn’t be a reader today if it hadn’t been for Spider-Man comics. And as the books got longer in school, I found I could only follow them if I’d seen a movie version — such as the old animated Hobbit film. Those stories hooked me and I went on to study Victorian literature… But if the adults in my life hadn’t let me stick with the ‘easier’ texts, I wouldn’t be a reader or a writer today.” — Kevin Sylvester, author, illustrator and broadcaster, who has written more than 30 fiction and nonfiction titles. Quoted in Children’s Book News, Spring 2019, p17
(Aside to Kevin and the boys he interviewed in that article, on whether and what teen boys read: I hope you’ll check out my book, Jump-Starting Boys, and all my adventure novels, which are particularly popular with boys.) Pam Withers
“Why write for teens? Emotional honesty and intensity. High stakes—decisions really matter at that time in your life, and your protagonist’s decisions fuel your plot. There isn’t much extraneous material; even more than in most genres, every word needs to count. I could go on and on. It’s an exciting place to be writing right now, with great authors, vivid characters and passionate readers.” — Christi Corbett, award-winning historical Western romance author, per an interview with Jessica Morrell.
