Wit & Attitude Quote by Caroline B. Cooney

Cooney’s line lands like a wink at the entire machinery of young adult fiction: she’s pretending to accept a rosy premise she clearly doesn’t buy. “I believe” signals a deliberate performance of faith, not a confession. It reads like the kind of thing an author says to a school board, a parent group, or a gatekeeper who wants stories to reinforce the official script: kids adore their parents, childhood is gratitude training, adulthood is imitation.

The subtext is sharper. YA writers make their living chronicling the exact opposite impulse: the adolescent need to separate, to test limits, to notice hypocrisy, to want a life that isn’t pre-approved. By stating the conventional expectation so bluntly - “crazy about their parents,” “want to be just like them” - Cooney exposes it as a fantasy adults tell themselves. The exaggeration does the work: it’s too neat, too obedient, too sitcom.

Context matters here because Cooney has spent decades writing teen-centered narratives where family love can coexist with conflict, secrecy, or suffocating norms. This quote is less about parents than about audience politics. She’s flagging the hidden negotiation behind books for young readers: the kid is the reader, but adults often control access, curriculum, and legitimacy. So she offers a line that can pass as wholesome while slyly acknowledging the genre’s real engine - the teenage suspicion that growing up means becoming someone else entirely.