Posted on 06/04/2011 6:02:08 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Amy Freeman, a 46-year-old mother of three, stood recently in the young-adult section of her local Barnes & Noble, in Bethesda, Md., feeling thwarted and disheartened.
She had popped into the bookstore to pick up a welcome-home gift for her 13-year-old, who had been away. Hundreds of lurid and dramatic covers stood on the racks before her, and there was, she felt, "nothing, not a thing, that I could imagine giving my daughter. It was all vampires and suicide and self-mutilation, this dark, dark stuff." She left the store empty-handed.
How dark is contemporary fiction for teens? Darker than when you were a child, my dear: So dark that kidnapping and pederasty and incest and brutal beatings are now just part of the run of things in novels directed, broadly speaking, at children from the ages of 12 to 18.
Pathologies that went undescribed in print 40 years ago, that were still only sparingly outlined a generation ago, are now spelled out in stomach-clenching detail. Profanity that would get a song or movie branded with a parental warning is, in young-adult novels, so commonplace that most reviewers do not even remark upon it.
If books show us the world, teen fiction can be like a hall of fun-house mirrors, constantly reflecting back hideously distorted portrayals of what life is. There are of course exceptions, but a careless young reader—or one who seeks out depravity—will find himself surrounded by images not of joy or beauty but of damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds.
Now, whether you care if adolescents spend their time immersed in ugliness probably depends on your philosophical outlook.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
My mother reviews unreleased books and has found that that books for teens are the worst filth out there.
One she recently led had a 13 year old girl as the main character/hero. The girl secretly desires her 18 year old brother (Who is sleeping with all the mother’s friends). It seems that all of the things that made her heroic were standing up to the adults and bad behavior. Things like bullying and tantrums are promoted.
First off, this woman is shopping for a physical book in a freaking book store, wtf does she expect to find?
Second off, there has been an exponential increase in the number of titles available in this genre since this woman’s childhood,
Third, if this woman couldn’t find a proper classic novel in this genre for a 13 year old in a physical book store she has no place telling anyone anything about the quality or quantity of literary available on the market today. Did every classic novel that she approves of suddenly not become marketable, some how widely acclaimed classics are no longer profitable for bookstores to carry in stock?
What a joke of an article.
wtf = what the fairytale, I presume?
When I was a teenager, the most “out there” books I read were things like Watership Down, The Plague Dogs, and Lord of the rings.
This was an excellent article. When my kids were teenagers (in the 80s) YA books were already pretty bad - we used to call them “teenage problem novels,” because they always focused on a kid with an alcoholic parent, a child who had been dumped by his or her parents in a divorce, etc. They were dreary and gloomy even then, particularly since these kids seemed to be just sort of survivors and not really people who had any moral or even cosmic framework that might have enabled them to transcend or even understand their experiences. My kids actually did not like these books very much.
However, what’s out there now is infinitely worse. I’m glad somebody finally got the courage to speak up about this, despite being called a prude, a book-burner, or whatever other offensive term the American Library Association can dream up.
She is perfectly aware of the classics, if you’ll read the entire article. The author is merely commenting on the fact that the level of stuff directed at teenagers has plunged in recent years. Incidentally, sometimes kids are assigned this miserable reading fare in their classrooms.
That said, I’ve never understood the need for “YA” novels at all. There are many good stories (for all ages_ focusing on young people, and the stories are of varying degrees of difficulty - although certainly by the time a child is a teenager, he or she should be able to read well enough so that the reading level isn’t a problem. The YA genre is somewhat artificial, and I think it is actually a stealth attack aimed at getting kids to accept the dreary, sex-obsessed, amoral liberal world-view as the norm.
Perhaps she would be better off looking in the "teen" or "children" section?
IMO this understates the problem. Go to a bookstore and see for yourself. Go to the library. Even in small towns, the libraries often have an entire shelf devoted to “vampire fiction.” If you have the stomach, read some.
This stuff is a scourge and unlike certain environmentalist bogeymen, it has real potential to destroy us.
If you think I’m exaggerating, you haven’t looked at it.
Any time I’ve been asked to recommend books for a teen, I’ve always pushed the Heinlein juveniles...Red Planet, Tunnel in the Sky, Starship Troopers, etc.
Me too. I have a family member who was a librarian, btw, and the bizarre moral views of the American Library Association (with a membership mostly of permanently single women and some gay men) would make your hair stand on end.
I rather like a more classic take on vampires...Salem's Lot by Stephen King is excellent, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to a mature teen. Can't stand the modern, "sparkly" vampires.
The Twilight vampire isn’t really a vampire. It’s just a vehicle for the story. Anne Rice kinda homo-ized the whole vampire story and turned it into a joke.
There are books for teens about “rainbow” boys and girls who are perversely seduced by homosexuals.
I would never recommend Lewis' Space Trilogy to a teen. As shown with his correspondences with Arthur C. Clarke, Lewis actually believed that manned space travel inherently immoral, and this absurd attitude (along with his disdain for science and scientists) comes through clearly in these books. Steer the kids towards Heinlein instead.
Parents need to recognize that the libraries - courtesy of the ALA - are increasingly just another indoctrination center for the left. The choice of of books - especially for children - is driven by the ideological enthusiasms of liberals.
You don’t need the library with an ebook. You can save gas and time by simply downloading free books that have solid content. If there is something new that you want your child to read, most libraries now have ebook loans.
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