"The ideas that children and young adults are only capable of digesting mush, or that the only way to discuss sophisticated themes is to include explicit sex and violence are pure hogwash. Young people are capable of fairly sophisticated reasoning, of empathy, and even of significant evil, and many of them can rise to meet fairly high bars as readers… Simply because these novels are also appropriate for younger readers doesn’t mean the ideas in them are stupid or the prose is unworthy."