A thousand words, beautifully written, will create thousands of pictures in the mind, pictures so powerful and so personalised by the imagination that they can stay with the reader for life. And we're off to Middle Earth, seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, as we make our way to the dragon's lair. It's words that take us there. And, my God, they're challenging. Those who take the patronising view that writing for young people is easier than writing for adults are talking hogwash.
Young people are the most complex creatures in the world.
They're a boiling mass of metamorphoses. Teenagers undergo more physical, emotional, sexual, psychological and intellectual changes between the ages of 13 and 16 than at any other time in their lives. They have one foot in childhood and one foot in adulthood. They can be sophisticated and vulnerable, bolshie and sensitive, confident and fearful, and they can smell bullshit at a hundred paces. It means recognising both the child and the adult within the child.