SOURCE: "On Tulsa's Mean Streets," in Newsweek, Vol. 100, No. 15, October 11, 1982, pp. 105-06.

In the following essay, Lyons examines Hinton's works and career as well as the films based on The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, and Tex. Lyons briefly recounts the plots of the three novels, maintaining that Tex is superior, and includes commentary by Hinton.

Quick, name the only American novelist whose books have inspired both the Walt Disney studios and Francis Coppola to adapt them to film? Clue: the author's first effort was written while she was a 16-year-old junior at Will Rogers High in Tulsa. Give up? If there's a teen-ager on the premises, ask the kid. Odds are good that S. E. Hinton is a household name around your place, whether you knew it or not.

Coppola's version of Susan Eloise Hinton's first novel, The Outsiders (1967)—a melodrama about gang fighting between working-class "greasers" and country-club...