And they do, except now there's Lauren St John's Laura Marlin, an 11-year-old detective who solves mysteries with her trusty companion, Skye, the three-legged husky. They shouldn't be reading about brutal, bloody murders, they should be charging around with magnifying glasses and drinking lashings of ginger beer. I think most people who grew up with Nancy Drew and Scooby Doo, as I did, assume that crime for children is more wholesome. If Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus, which I read myself recently, is a GCSE text, why wouldn't teenagers want books that are as compelling, as beautiful?īut when it comes to crime, do they want the same thing as adults? And let's not forget that these teenagers are reading Shakespeare and Seamus Heaney at school. After all, teenagers only care about split ends and beautiful, brooding vampires, right? But teenagers read as widely as adults and yes, they love books like Twilight and The Hunger Games, but to assume that's all they want to read because they're bestsellers is to assume that all adults want to read is Stieg Larsson and Fifty Shades of Grey.

It's easy to dismiss books for teenagers as books about teenagers. Why? I take it you're looking for an answer more profound than: because they're brilliant. As someone who has been reading YA for years, long before I sat down to write a book of my own, it was less of a surprise and more of a relief to read that, according to a Bowker Market Research survey published earlier in the month, 55% of buyers of YA books are over 18.

The long weekend savita kalhan