Ponyboy. Greasers vs. Socs. For millions of fans around the world, these few words will instantly call up the world of The Outsiders, S. E. Hinton's classic novel about teen gangs and the troubled process of fitting in. Since publication of this first novel in 1967, "the world of young adult writing and publishing [has] never [been] the same," according to Jay Daly in the critical study Presenting S. E. Hinton. Daly went on to note that "The Outsiders has become the most successful, and the most emulated, young adult book of all time." Ironically, this quiet revolution in book writing and publishing was wrought by a seventeen-year-old girl, who by all rights should have been one of the intended readers of the novel, not its author.

Susan Eloise Hinton was a high school sophomore at Tulsa's Will Rogers High School when she began her novel. At the time...