Classic children's library: teens
Melvin BurgessBuilding a children's library
Monday 17 April 2000 17.10 BST
Last modified on Saturday 5 July 200813.25 BST
One minute they are children, the next they are adults. One minute they are reading Frances Hodgson Burnett and the next Angela Carter. Five years ago, most bookshops didn't even have a young adult or teenage section. Now they are bursting to the seams with TV tie-ins and spinoffs and fantasy horror novels. More encouragingly, the last few years have also seen a huge increase in quality writing for young people. Writers such as Melvin Burgess and Phillip Pullman are not simply writing bridging books, but novels that stand alone in their own right and deserve to win prizes in any category of fiction. From these books it is no leap at all into the big pond of adult fiction, merely a swallow dive.