5. STOP WRITING BOOKS TOLD FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF CHILDREN
I think we can all agree that Jonathan Safran Foer’s magic child in Close and Loud has officially ended the need to ever write a book again told from the point of view of brilliant magical children. The desire of adults who are not YA authors to place themselves inside the lives of kids to make a more-perfect and more beautiful version of themselves in youth: Puking sound. YA authors are actually performing a vital service: Please continue doing that, YA authors! There’s nothing self-conscious and plodding about what you’re up to. Kids in general are rarely magical. They’re kids. Sometimes amusing, sometimes accidentally saying interesting things. When adults write kids they make them unbearable. Like Harry Potter. What a bore. Hermione was the real hero of all those books. They should have all been called HERMIONE GRANGER SAVES HARRY POTTER’S DUMB ASS AGAIN.
(From “How to Write the Next Great American Novel” via DS)
Ross Gale is a writer and editor from the Pacific Northwest. 
I agree that kids are are rarely magical. I write pretty dark stories in the perspectives of children. Maybe the problem is that people see them as less capable of chaos than adults, or less capable of grappling with darkness, and so the characters come out flat and they don’t really say anything about life that’s of interest. Have you ever read Julie Orringer’s short story collection, How to Breath Underwater? I think it’s a good example of the dark side of childhood.
I have not read Orringer, but it sounds interesting.
Try Shade’s Children if you can find it. It was a dark one, but a great YA story I think even adults can enjoy
Adult authors also tend to write YA books that are trashy and superficial, leading one to believe that all teens are trashy and superficial. (Not true.)
Dawn, I agree. I can’t stand YA authors who feel the need to include every teenage stereotype in their books with the hope that said inclusion will make the books more relatable to “normal” teens.