Kathe Koja Quotes

I rarely read children's books.

I read very, very little fiction as a kid. All the books I can remember are junior science books.

Some of my favorite books to read are young adult books.

I have a passion for children's literature. Young adult literature. I love it. I've always loved it.

I'm not a reader of young adult fiction for the simple reason that these novelists are writing for adolescents, so they are not writing for me.

When I was a teenager, I was a voracious reader of crime fiction, but only contemporary books. I was not interested in reading 'The Glass Key' or 'The Maltese Falcon' - stuff that was 40 or 50 years old.

All I can say is, I don't encourage younger kids to read my books, and actually, the biggest age group on my Facebook page is 25- to 35-year-old women.

People like Ian McEwan and Jonathan Franzen completely bore me.

As a kid, I became a total SF geek. It started in the 5th grade with Asimov's 'Lucky Starr' series of what would now be called 'young adult' novels of adventures in the solar system.

I've never been a great fan of crime fiction. I read Agatha Christie in my youth, but that's all.

I have read the 'Divergent' series. I obviously read 'Harry Potter.'

I read 'Carrie' when I was younger and that's one of my favourite books.

I didn't read much of anything till I was 15, except Alistair MacLean and Michael Moorcock - the sword and sorcery novels - when I was about 13 or 14.

To be honest, and this is terrible to admit, I hardly read any teen mystery books at all.

As far as I know, no kid ever bought a children's book himself with his own money, but they'll buy comic books. So we better make them good.

I'm pretty omnivorous - in fact, I don't think of books in terms of genres. J. K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter' books are no more Y.A. reading, to me, than John le Carre's 'Smiley' novels are spy stories.

I don't read many young adult books.

I wanted to write a book specifically aimed toward young people. I wanted to write a book that anybody can read and enjoy, but I did want to aim it at young people and, even more specifically, urban young people.

I still have a YA-genre-series type of a book in me that I really want to tell.

I think that's what distinguishes YA from adult fiction - it's not just the age of the characters, but it's the sense of hope. Because I don't think I've ever read a YA book that feels completely hopeless at the end.

There are people out there who would enjoy my books but wouldn't pick them up because they think it's not going to be for them. I find it infuriating.There's a lot more going on in my books than just romance.

I think so much of young adult literature sort of gets ghettoized - the title 'young adult' makes people immediately discount it. And just like with books that get written for adults, there is plenty of young adult literature that is bad. But there is also plenty of young adult literature that is brilliant.

I think Hallmark is doing this really exciting thing right now, where they buy a series of books, they're books for young adults, or adolescents, and they're really fun Agatha Christie-style mysteries. I actually signed on for three of them.

I started writing my first book for young people when I was in college. I was only a couple of years out of my teens when I began; I felt closer to that experience than I did as an adult. But I've always been drawn to stories about young people.

There's a difference between children's literature and all-ages literature. One is written expressly for children. The other is written for everyone, including children. And the difference usually manifests in not talking down to kids.