Independent Online Edition: The facts about teen fiction takes a look at some of the more powerful British books for teens and children. Featured authors include Marjorie Blackman, whose first book in her Naughts and Crosses series was released in the U.S. earlier this year, and Melvin Burgess, whose books usually get some eyebrows raised. The great part of the article is that it acknowledges that there are darker parts to these new novels, and finishes with this take on children’s literature:
“More remarkable than the upfront passions and terrors is its ability to win and keep readers with an amazingly wide range of forms and genres – from the grittiest kinds of “dirty realism” through every possible brand of fable and fantasy. Alongside its exploits and experiments, much of mainstream adult writing looks stuck in a drearily naturalistic backwater. So read Blackman, or Pullman, or Burgess, and be shocked: not by their ambitions, but by their adult counterparts’ timidity.”