After Nick Hornby wrote Slam, his first novel for young adults, he discovered the Young Adult section of the bookstore and became an enthusiastic advocate for the books sequestered there. Defending the idea that the Young Adult (YA) readership shouldn’t be limited to teenagers, Hornby wrote in The Believer:

…dismissing YA books because you’re not a young adult is a little bit like refusing to watch thrillers on the grounds that you’re not a policeman or a dangerous criminal…

My internet hero, Cory Doctorow, has a new YA book out called Little Brother that is getting great reviews. Doctorow has been a champion of YA novels for years on his blog Boing Boing. The author/tech guru notes:

Living in a space that no one watches too closely is one of the secret ways that people get to do excellent stuff. Science fiction’s status for decades as a pariah genre meant that writers could do things with literary style, theme, and political content that their mainstream counterparts could never get away with (games, comics, early hip-hop, mashups, and many of the other back laneways of popular culture have also enjoyed this status). These days, a lot of the coolest stuff in the universe is happening in the kids’ section of your bookstore…

You can see what he’s talking about first hand by checking out Little Brother for free before buying it. As a PDF file, you can read it at work - if you’re capable of that sort of subterfuge.

Unrelated: Little Golden kids’ books that never made it to print