The New York Times interviews a bunch of notable YA/sff authors (and one academic) on what they think is driving the “dystopian trend” in current YA fiction.
It struck me as being a little bit silly that they didn’t interview any actual young adult readers, but it’s still interesting to see the varieties of cynicism and optimism represented.
– E
I think Bacigalupi hit it right on the head. Teens are far more aware of their world than most adults give them credit for (I can remember the passionate debates we had over the Iraq war in my hs freshman humanities class, for instance) and the news that they hear is almost uniformly bad. Twinkly fairies and cupcakes just aren’t going to cut it.