Young adult literature is apparently experiencing a "Golden Age" according this Seattle P-I article today. This is great news. When I was teenager, there was a huge gap between "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and adult-oriented fiction.

As a pretty avid young reader, my family friends used to buy me adult sci-fi novel, sometimes with horrifying consequences (not for me, for my parents). I remember being 11 or 12 and showing my dad the crazy oral sex passages I had marked in the latest book (which I had been given as a gift) I was reading. He was not enthused.

Thanks to Derek for the heads-up on this great article.

Quoted: "There has been an increase in the age of the protagonist, the complexity of the plotting and the content -- the gravity of the content," Koelling said. "I think it may be a reflection of a more sophisticated teenage population."