Success Quote by Caroline B. Cooney

There is a quiet radicalism in admitting you want the good guys to win - and then specifying that the parents get to be among them. Cooney is writing against a well-worn engine of young adult drama: the plot that runs on adult incompetence. In a lot of teen fiction, parents exist to be absent, clueless, hypocritical, or outright villainous, because that clears the stage for adolescent autonomy and keeps the stakes intimate. Cooney signals a different moral geometry. She can still "approach serious subjects" (trauma, danger, ethical messes) without requiring teenagers to be emotionally orphaned for the story to move.

The intent isn’t to sanitize reality; it’s to refuse a cynical shortcut. By insisting on "parents among the good guys", she protects a particular kind of hope: that adulthood can be a source of shelter rather than a punchline, and that a young person’s agency doesn’t have to be purchased with abandonment. That choice also reframes what "winning" means. It’s not just the protagonist surviving; it’s the preservation of a family ecosystem where responsibility, listening, and repair are possible.

Culturally, the line reads like a response to eras of YA that prized grit as credibility. Cooney stakes out a storytelling ethic: seriousness isn’t measured by how brutal you are to your characters, but by how honestly you test them while still allowing care to be competent. It’s a small statement of craft that doubles as a worldview.