The small public transport bemo was packed. Scrunched on the lengthwise benches were a couple dozen Balinese, an American hippy, and me, the thirteen-year-old son of missionaries. In the aisle were baskets of coconuts, chickens tied by their legs, a piglet in its bamboo cage, and the hippy's backpack. It was 1969. Hippies had just discovered Bali, an island where I'd been born and raised. Hippies were as exotic to me as they were to my Balinese friends. We gawked at them as if they were sequined-spangled ostriches.

This hippy was reading a novel. I was a sun-blasted, salty-haired boy on his way home from Kuta Beach, where I'd spent a morning surfing the empty waves. I was seated across from the guy. I stared over the travel-stained backpack at the novel in his hands. As the bemo bumped along, a horrible terrible desire filled me. I'd been a voracious reader as long as I could remember. When I was born, my mom said, the first thing I did was reach for a book.

And I'd read my last book weeks ago. I badly needed a new story. I needed books the way some people needed drugs. And here was a brand new, fresh, unadulterated story right across from me, practically under my nose, but whose printed pages were unfortunately facing the other direction and were under the wrong nose. My desire grew. How I craved that book! I was bitter with the unfairness of it. The hippy came from a land of libraries and bookstores. Bali had nothing of the kind. When it came to books, I had to have a scavenger's instinct—I scoured hotel lobbies, homestays, the bookshelves of the few expatriates living there at the time, suitcases of friends who came to visit.

The hippy was only half-way through. At the rate he turned the pages, it would take him days to finish. Unfair! Unfair! I needed that book way more than he did.

The bemo pulled into the Denpasar terminal, where we would change to buses. The hippy closed his novel and tucked it into his the side pocket of his backpack. In the jostle of villagers trying to cram their way out the door with their chickens and coconuts, with the backpacker pushing just as ardently, nobody noticed my moment of extreme temptation.

It is said that God does not tempt us beyond what we are able to endure, but whoever said that didn't have a reading habit like mine.

Dear Reader, I became a book thief long before Marcus Zusak was born.

I was punished for my sins, though. To this day, I can't recall the title or story of that novel I stole.

But I do remember other books, all kinds of books. I was a book devourer. There was no such thing as "young adult" literature back then, at least not as we have now, but even if there had been, I don't think it would have made a difference.

Georgette Heyer's Regency romances. Frank Yerby's historical novels. The Westerns of Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour. The lusty, bloody thumpers of Drum and Mandingo, exemplars of that curious genre, the slave story. Alaistair Maclean's spy thrillers, and John Le Carré's as well. Lord of the Flies and Lord of the Rings. Saki. Shirley Jackson. High-brow, low-brow, sophisticated, simple. The Hardy Boys entranced me as much as Holden Caulfield. Heck, even Reader's Digest Condensed Books. I didn't care. I never met a story I didn't like.

So if you ask me, what books had the most influence on me as a kid, I would have to say, every single one of them. One thing that all this reading gave me was solid, intuitive understanding of what a story meant. Long before I studied the craft of writing, I pretty much had story buried in my bone marrow.

Now I am a middle-aged man, still in Bali, still surfing, still reading, but also writing novels for young adults.

What is the difference between a writer who happens to write young adult fiction and a reader who happens to be a young adult?

The writer, by convention and often times by contract, must have a young adult the same age or slightly older than the target as her main character. Let's call this main character, oh, Livey. Because the target audience of young adults should be able to identify with Livey, she has to face the same sort of problems and deal with the same sort of issues that they do.

But what about the young adult reader?

Why, if you're a young adult, you can read whatever book you want. Sure, the Young Adult bookshelves are crammed with all kinds of great stuff. With its emphasis on storytelling, and some terrific original voices, YA literature provides some of the most compelling reading around. This is why parents will sneak a read of their son's novel and enjoy it more than their book club choice.

Still, I think back to my young self. The whole world of fiction, not just a part of it, was mine for the ransacking.

Although I only stole a book that one time. I swear.


Get more on Richard Lewis at SimonandSchuster.com