I think there’s always gonna be a gap for young people looking for images of themselves in the literature, and I think, partly, it’s because everything’s changing so quickly. I think at the same time, the essence of childhood doesn’t change.
What young people want are stories that deal with issues of them trying to figure out who they are in the world. They feel isolated, they feel like they’re the only ones like that, that their crazy family is the only crazy family like that, and that their longings are the only longings like that.
I think they’re going to they find their way. I was talking about this yesterday, young people are hungry, and their brains are huge, and they are going to find their way the way we found our way. And I think there’s going to be the literature that helps.
I think there’s always a need for more stories. I get constant emails about why there isn’t more literature targeted at gay/lesbian/transgender youth? Why isn’t there more literature targeted at biracial families?
More literature that’s targeted at single-parent families and parents. Of course, with all the foreclosures, what does it mean to suddenly lose your home and that whole issue of displacement which we weren’t dealing with so much in the ’70s and ’80s and ’90s as we are dealing with now.
How does the shaky ground keep them steady and how do they move with it? I think that there’s always going to be a hunger. They’re always going to have a hunger because that’s what adolescence is, and there’s always going to be a certain sorrow to their existence because they need to live in that world.