The Young Adult and Children's Books of Joyce Carol Oates

"Young adults do change rapidly; they are enormously impressionable, and subject to influences both good and bad. In this genre, I would never involve adolescent characters in the sort of extreme, often tragic situations that seem quite plausible, if not inevitable, in adult fiction."

"The young adult genre is for me an arena in which to dramatize ethical issues in a manner that would be too obvious or obtrusive for 'adult fiction'; also, it's a genre that allows for quite plausible happy endings/positive resolutions."

—Joyce Carol Oates, Interviewed by Greg Johnson, Michigan Quarterly Review