Author shines light on teen minds

KIM KNIGHT -  December 21 2014 - Sunday Star Times

MARSDEN REVEALED:
‘‘The real me is very different from what they have imagined,’’ says outspoken Australian author John Marsden.

A parent recently suggested John Marsden codify every possible misdemeanour that might occur at his school in the Australian bush.
The author-turned-principal declined: "You could write down 150 possible breaches of rules and the kids would still come up the very next day with something you've never thought of in your life.
"Like someone climbing onto a roof and disconnecting a television aerial, or someone disembowelling a prep kid's teddy bear. They just keep shocking you with new ways to do spectacularly naughty things."

Marsden has spent an adult lifetime inside children's heads. He's the man who wrote Tomorrow, When the War Began (and its nine sequels), who has sold 5 million (and counting) books for teenagers worldwide, who has won every major young-adult fiction award in Australia.

The hero of his latest novel is a teen, but the book, South of Darkness, is being touted as Marsden's first foray into adult fiction.
"I mean, I think teenagers could read it," he says. "But, in terms of the language and tone and so on, it's very specifically writing for adults. It's a bit hard to define sometimes, what makes a teenage book as opposed to an adult book.

"It worries me when adults read nothing but teen books, which seems to be the case for some of them. When I meet people in their 40s and the only novels they read are for 15-year-olds, I wonder if they might be slightly arrested in their development?"
Marsden is less than two minutes into this, his only New Zealand interview about the new book, when he strays into headline-grabbing territory. He is, surely, aware he's being provocative in a world where adults read Harry Potter and cry over everything written by The Fault in Our Stars' John Green?
"One of the mistakes often made," says Marsden, "is to assume that teenagers will react the same way adults do to the books they read."

Two of his own novels - Letters from the Inside and Dear Miffy - were criticised for discussing themes of family violence and youth suicide.
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