Writing for tweens

I loved Judith Warner's most recent blog post, Seventies Something (http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/). I loved the questions it raised: "What power can any of us – moms and daughters, adrift in the cultural mainstream — have against the hugely seductive, hypnotic machine that has brought us Paris, Miley, Lindsay and more?" I loved its conclusion: "The only thing we can do is provide some sort of inspiration – of a kind of womanhood that makes them want to connect to the better aspects of the girlhood we once knew. And then, give them the space and the time to make it their own."

When UNDERCOVER, my novel for tweens, was released this past September, I wondered how it would fare in a gossip-glittered world. I still don't have any quantifiable answer to that, but what I do have is a growing collection of anecdotals—moments where I've been stopped by mothers, aunts, young readers themselves, and asked point blank: Is this a (to use one person's word) "whole" story? Is this a novel in which intelligence is celebrated? Is this a novel that gives young readers something more than Paris and Britney to think about, aspire to?

I have been surprised by the questions. I have listened. And while I am no sociologist and will never name an era, I can say, in response to a line in Judith Warner's blog that yes, perhaps, there are more of us out here than I might have previously thought. Readers and writers who want heroines to soar, to transcend because of how deeply they think, how brilliantly they see. Maybe smart and self-defining is the new cool. Here's hoping, anyway.