From an interview at Novel Novice, the author of a book I really need to make time to read (When You Reach Me), Rebecca Stead offers this answer to the question “What is the most rewarding thing about writing middle grade/YA novels?”
The freedom to ask big questions. At age eleven, I thought about unanswerable questions all the time. I thought about mortality, I thought about missed connections – what if this had happened? What if this hadn’t happened? I thought about who I would be at future points in my life, and whether I would in fact even be the same person. I thought about other paths my life might have taken, about the unknown people I would eventually love in my life and what they might be doing at that very moment. I don’t think I was a remotely unusual kid, however. Kids grapple with big stuff, and writing for kids allows me to tap that now-underused part of my brain.
Interesting, and I think this taps into something about why it is I enjoy reading well written young adult fiction as an adult.
