According to Hopkins, “Teen readers want harder issues and not always a happy ending. Initially Hopkins’ books met with some resistance from librarians because of the hard-hitting subjects like drug addiction, teen suicide, violence, incest, and teen prostitution. “My poems stimulate the visual part of the brain,” says Hopkins.

My readers feel like they are the characters on the page.” Current research indicates video games, text messaging and computers are contributing to a change in the way the teenage brain functions. “The poetry brings the reader inside the characters’ heads. “My readers like the concrete verse,” she says. Hopkins created her concrete poetic style to give her poems structure on the page. It was my voice and not the character’s.” Although Hopkins always dabbled with poetry, she never thought of writing a verse novel until she attended a writer’s conference that planted the seed. “I started Crank as a prose novel,” she says, “but the voice was too angry. With Crank’s instant success, Hopkins says her life has been “a bit of a rocket ride.” Originally called Flirtin’ With the Monster, Crank was published in October 2004. When her oldest daughter became addicted to crystal methamphetamine, Hopkins turned to writing fiction to try to understand her daughter’s addiction and to figure out what she could have done differently.

Ellen Hopkins built her list of nonfiction book credits by combining her journalism experience with her passion to convince her pre-teen daughters that they could become pilots or astronauts rather than the models and movie stars foisted on them by media and marketing conglomerates.

Glass book ellen hopkins