“Adults don’t like it when children point out that they might be wrong. We have a tendency to say, as does one of Dahl’s great villains, “I'm right and you're wrong, I'm big and you're small, and there's nothing you can do about it.”

If Morrison is unhappy to see young adult literature exploding the pieties of his generation and pointing to the flaws in their plans, he is supposed to be. He’s not the audience. He’s the guy at the head of the classroom lecturing about what’s good for you, and young adult literature is the wisecracking kid who just stole his audience. Perhaps if Morrison were not so unthinkingly certain that he is right and young adult fiction is wrong, that he is big and they are small, there might be something he could learn from these novels. Maybe there are some lessons in these books about the fears and the hopes of the generation that is growing up while we watch.”