Thanks to one of the teachers I work with, I was clued into YA Saves yesterday, which gave me a bit of a heads up.
Honestly, people, I can’t turn my back to write one exploding watermelon story before things sort of go kablooey!
For those of you who need the Wall Street Journal article, it’s right here.
And Viable Paradise classmate Bo Balder points me to Kyle Cassidy’s very cogent response right here.
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I will add a mere three brief points to the discussion.
1. My teen life was one of the worst YA novels you could write. A YA novel in my youth about incest could have saved me. Where was it? Because I believed in books that much. In some ways, I envy kids now. While the novels are dark, there’s that one kid going through the same situation mirrored in the novel. That gives that kid one more chance out of darkness.
2. I am concerned as an adult about the content of YA novels. But sheltering kids from the evils of the world does not prepare them for a world in which bad things could happen. A responsible parent sits kids down and talks to them. They know what their kids are reading.
To wit, the book I left my high school teaching job over–Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War. There were two kinds of parents in that scenario–parents who could see the value of a book taught with careful adult supervision and parents who did not want their children to read the book because of interesting obstacles such as “eyeball rape.” (Not making that one up. It was my favorite complaint, and the one that has stuck with me over the years…) Which parents have done a better job raising empathetic children?
One conservative Christian parent honored me with the comment, “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have my child discuss that book with than you, Catherine.” She understood that the content of the book was important for her child’s emotional and intellectual development. She wasn’t afraid to give her child a book that showed a darker side of life. You know, guiding a child through that sort of thing might be a parental responsibility.
So, I’m not saying turn kids lose on dark YA books. I am saying talk to your kids.
3. Supernatural stuff is horrible and scary. Sure. It’s also not real. There are loads of theories about how fairy tales are cathartic, as well as loads of theories about how children who are exposed to violence and/or the fantastic might emulate it. (Video games, Superman, and Wile E. Coyote have all born this burden).
Most kids know better. They can tell the difference between fantasy and reality. If they can’t, no YA book is at fault, and you should seek help for that child.
I found that the supernatural I encountered in my childhood books helped me hope. I sometimes imagined that I was the kidnapped child from a family that loved me. I sometimes I imagined I had come from another place. I never thought of these things in a delusional way, but they were ways to help me escape a difficult situation. I identified with Oliver Twist and David Copperfield, and imagined I was the princess raised by trolls.
I’m not sure I would have made it without those abilities to see my situation with hope. I’m not talking about anything as drastic as suicide, but books for young people made it possible for me to come out of a dark, dark childhood with the idea that I would be better because all those heroes and heroines in the books I loved overcame. I know not all books have an ending in which the heroes overcome. But enough did that I’m still here, and I’m still sane.
There are two sides to every coin. Could it be that dark YA could be used for good, as well as evil? Yes, I think so. With that in mind, then, I’d like to encourage the mother in the Journal article to actually know what her daughter is reading. Then she could have gone right to the shelf and gotten it, or asked someone about books that are similar. And she wouldn’t be worried about the influence of these books, because she would know what it was.
Catherine
