The letter reads:

I don’t know what books Rosemary Neill has been reading, but there must be a bit of the-blind-men-and-the-elephant syndrome at work in young adult and children’s literature. Requiem for a Beast may well be very dark, but it is also terribly moving and thought-provokingly beautiful; Marty’s Shadow may contain a near-suicide scene, but I read it as a novel about the redemptive power of love; and I would far rather my 11-year-old daughter read Gleitzman’s Then than watch Neighbours. And if there is a skerrick of evidence that teenagers have been traumatised by reading so-called gritty YA books – which, after all, can so easily be put down – I’d like to see it.