I don't really see any barrier between teenage fiction and adult literature.

Sex and death, the magnetic poles of fiction, attract us children's writers no less than adult authors, but we have to be more leery of their pull.

I'm not a great reader of historical fiction; it's not my favourite genre.

I tend to boycott all teenage reading while I'm trying to write my own stuff.

The surprising thing is that so many teenage cancer novels are very good. John Green's 'The Fault in Our Stars,' recently published by Penguin, was voted Time Magazine's book of the year in 2012 ahead of Hilary Mantel and Zadie Smith.

I worry about children not having a sense of any direct connection to the past.