Published By Allen & Unwin
It’s such an emotional piece of writing when ‘the thing’ happens. It’s not quite expected from a young adult novel I guess, especially a sci-fi novel. Oh I disagree, but that’s a really common thing to hear. I think so many people think that young adult books are just simple, facile things. So many people think that science fiction books are just laser guns in space and I disagree so strongly with both of those points of view. I think young adult literature is the literature of transformation. It’s about working out who you’re going to be, and how you’re going to define yourself, and I think that is why kids read it. It’s also why adults read it. So many people go through their own transformations, whether it’s a teen falling in love for the first time or an adult falling in love for the first time after a divorce. For a teen it might be
the first day at a new school and for an adult it might be the first day at pickup of a new school, where they don’t know any of the other parents. We all have these moments throughout our lives and I think YA literature speaks very clearly and sincerely to these emotional experiences that we have. Of science fiction, I would say that there is this tradition of it taking us out of our known world and taking us into another. That distance allows us to ask the questions that we can’t ask in our own world, because we’re a little too close to them. I think in These Broken Stars a lot of what we’re asking is what makes you, you. If it’s not your body, is it still you? And what would you be prepared to do to survive and at what cost would you be prepared to do it?
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