Eleven tapes brought me deep into the world of a developing geisha where I learned much, cared more, and painlessly plodded through the rudiments of holiday house cleaning hardly realizing my own efforts. After two days I was left with a shinning house and even brighter images of life within a secret world I'd never known about. This is rarely true in young adult novels. Part of the reason is there really isn't much hope of writing a children's book block buster. More likely this is due to the demands of an unforgiving audience.
Adults are polite, indulgent readers who give authors a lot of leeway.
Young adults are unyielding and authors know that it doesn't take much for an adolescent to close the covers of a book and put it aside forever. Readers demands produce a literature that must have a gripping plot, a character you care about almost immediately, imagery that sparkles, some kind of underlying emotion or psychology that moves you through the book, and endings that are satisfying. So on one had here's this fabulous literature being developed and the coverage is pitiful. The New York Times , for example, has two sections devoted to Children's Books every year, other than that the print space is short and spotty. When adult books are reviewed you'll see an entire column devoted to that book.