Shane Peacock on Plot

After the course at the Banff Centre, I’ve been thinking about what makes great kids books. I think this quote from Shane Peacock defines it really well:

“Plot is of utmost imporance in YA Lit and yet, if you want your YA novel to be a work of value, it ALSO has to do all those wonderful things great adult novels do in terms of meaning and interesting structure and style. Authors writing for adults should try that sometime – write a novel that never once, not for even a single paragraph, sways from the plot, and yet is as layered and insightful as it would be if they put their plot on hold in order to explore their subtext. They would find such writing, I think, quite a difficult exercise, perhaps almost an impossible one for even the greatest of them to pull off.”

http://www.openbooktoronto.com/speacock/blog/kids_lit_vs_adult_lit

The trick, of course, is to do it.

Maureen