In Revolver, all his skill is compacted into something small and potent, controlled and devastating. Sedgwick has written across the age ranges, from children to adults, but it is his dark and atmospheric YA-branded work that best shows off what he can do. Hundreds of superb novels have been published for young adult readers. The worst of it is as limited as any bad writing, the best could thrill any readers willing to put themselves in the hands of expert storytellers and great writers. Young adult writing today contains everything. The best of it can be fantasy (dystopian, sometimes) or realism (gritty, perhaps, but not necessarily so) it can be genre-based writing or uncategorisable, funny or profoundly serious, cool or lyrical, domestic and quiet or virtuosic and surreal. It contains work that is derivative, shallow and lazy, to be sure, and writing that is urgent and bold and experimental and complex, just like the adult market. There is a Pullman the young adult category contains plenty of pulp and plenty of fine writing – as any spurious category will.
But the crossover book has encompassed writing of great sophistication and ambition, too.
Yes, we all know that vampire stories and teen cancer romances have sold in vast numbers on both sides of that imaginary dividing line. As I’ve been compiling a new companion to children’s literature, I’ve been thinking a lot about the limits of this category – and I’ve read so much about what we call “crossover books”, books with appeal both to teenagers and adult readers.
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