Bernard Beckett (on Writing Teen Novels)

...there’s a sense of possibility, of freshness and urgency, that defines the teenage audience, and in a perfect world this will infect the writing. The very best writing for children manages to capture that magical aspect of childhood that the adult reader instinctively understands is lost to them, and makes the reading of such books a bittersweet experience. So too, the finest teen writing should fill the adult reader with a sense of loss and longing (and the teen reader with a sense of celebration). YA fiction should exist not because there’s a market for it, but because it can tell stories that no other genre can. If we can’t make that true, then we have no business writing it.
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New Zealand author of teen novels, Bernard Beckett, at http://writingteennovels.com/2013/01/16/teen-fiction-a-definition-by-bernard-beckett