Catherine Ryan Hyde on writing for the teen audience vs. for the adult audience.
I didn’t remove the adult content, because it was not removable. It was essential to the story. (And I got very few complaints about it from the grownups who oversee YA fiction. Probably because it was essential to the story.) I didn’t change the tone or reading level, because, in my opinion, there’s no discernable difference between an adult and a teen reader in terms of reading level or sophistication. The difference seems to rest in issues of what themes are relevant to teen lives.