Dear My Hypothetical Children: #YAsaves

[Trigger Warning:  This post discusses self-harm, abuse, rape, suicide, and similar topics that may be upsetting for some readers.]

Mrs. Meghan Cox Gurdon and I have dramatically different ideas of what constitutes “literature.”  Also “children’s books,” “banning,” and “parenting.”

My job as a reviewer and bookseller is to police your teen's reading? I don't think so.

Case in point: yesterday’s Wall Street Journal carried a column of Mrs. Gurdon’s titled “Darkness Too Visible,” discussing the “dark” themes that many young-adult books currently deal in – and, in the process, using a lot of words – and sentences – that mean something very different to me than they do to her.

For example, Mrs. Gurdon claims that “As it happens, 40 years ago, no one had to contend with young-adult literature because there was no such thing.”

In YA parlance: O RLY?  Because, depending on how you slice it, young-adult literature – in Mrs. Gurdon’s words, literature aimed broadly at people between ages 12 and 18 – has been around anywhere from 100 to 600 years.   The Ohio Library Council starts the clock in 1919, when Mabel Williams was  appointed as the first young-adult librarian at the New York Public Library, and mentions that the term “young adult” to describe literature has been around at least since 1937.  Maryland’s Salisbury University offers a class in the history of YA literature that goes all the way back to Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and names such enduring YA classics as The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe and Little Women.  Author David Lubar starts counting from J.D. Salinger, whose 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye is literally required reading for thousands of American teens.

In any case, even assuming Mrs. Gurdon’s math is correct, her argument – that YA novels with “dark” themes like abuse, self-harm, and suicide are not only dangerous but pearl-clutching-ly scandalous – makes no sense.  Gurdon points out that “the argument in favor of such novels is that they validate the teen experience, giving voice to tortured adolescents who would otherwise be voiceless.”  This is a fair point; a great many teenagers suffer abuse, depression, and self-loathing of the worst kinds, and feeling that someone understands, even if that someone is fictional, is preferable to feeling like such a freak one doesn’t deserve to live, let alone be loved.

Yet in the very next paragraph (and this is a newspaper; paragraphs are short), Gurdon tosses this point in the trash in favor of her own premise: “it is also possible—indeed, likely—that books focusing on pathologies help normalize them and, in the case of self-harm, may even spread their plausibility and likelihood to young people who might otherwise never have imagined such extreme measures.”

Dear Mrs. Gurdon: your privilege is showing.  By which I mean that this argument overlooks entirely the fact that, even if teenagers would never think to cut themselves if they didn’t read about it in a book first, not all teens who do read about it in a book are going to try it.  Kids whose worlds are full of sunshine and non-vampirous daisies aren’t going to feel a sudden urge to bust out the razor blades to manage their inner pain, because whatever’s going on in their lives at the moment, they can handle it.

Teens who are suffering that much and who can’t handle it at the moment, however, are going to go on suffering whether or not a book gives them the idea that self-mutilation is somehow helpful.  And – gasp – some of those teens might even realize, upon seeing the self-harming protagonist getting help, that they can also seek help for themselves.  Which, not-incidentally, may have something to do with why the author wrote the book in the first place.

Gurdon then gives an example of a book in Kentucky’s Boone County Library that concerned “a patron,” not due to its contents, but due to a cover that featured a scarred forearm.  Gurdon makes it clear that her problem with this is that the concern was over the picture on the cover, not on the book’s contents.  Yet Gurdon inexplicably casts the fact that the patron only worried about the cover and not the story as the librarians’ fault: “That the protagonist’s father has been raping her since she was a toddler and is trying to engineer her suicide was not the issue for the team of librarians re-evaluating the book.”  …It wasn’t the issue for the library patron who complained, either, but that’s okay?  In teen Internets parlance, “Logik: Ur doin it rong.”

I’m simply bemused by this bit:  “Foul language is widely regarded among librarians, reviewers and booksellers as perfectly OK, provided that it emerges organically from the characters and the setting rather than being tacked on for sensation…. But whether it’s language that parents want their children reading is another question.”

Well, yes – what “librarians, reviewers and booksellers” will or won’t tolerate in a book differs from what particular parents may want for their kids.  That’s normal.  Librarians, reviewers, and booksellers usually look for different things in a book than the parent of a child would.  As a reviewer, I’m looking for a plausible story that’s engagingly told and offers some useful or novel perspective on this walking mess we call “being human.”  As a bookseller, I’m looking for things that will sell.  It’s so rare for literary popularity and literary merit to go together that I’m always delighted when I find a book that is both excellent and sells well.

This statement is baffling precisely because it’s so obvious – yet Gurdon presents it as a fault, as if librarians, reviewers, and booksellers are somehow failing at their respective jobs because they don’t attempt to parent every kid who may be exposed to the books they stock and/or review.

And heaven forbid that we should disdain to bowlderize texts for any reason:

By f—ing gatekeepers (the letter-writing editor spelled it out), she meant those who think it’s appropriate to guide what young people read. In the book trade, this is known as “banning.” In the parenting trade, however, we call this “judgment” or “taste.”

In even more teen Internets parlance: WHAT IS THIS I DON’T EVEN.

“It’s appropriate to guide what young people read” is not the definition of “banning,” “judgment,” or “taste.”  It is, perhaps, the definition of “parenting” – that is, something that ought to be done by the parents.  Gurdon remains somehow convinced that it’s a librarian’s or bookseller’s job to parent people’s kids for them, at least in terms of “guid[ing] what young people read.”

Yet, even if it were my job as a bookseller to “guide what young people read,” I’d get it wrong.  “Young people” aren’t a monolith, so I can’t offer the same book to every one without getting a few who are completely turned off (or worse, are triggered to re-live past traumas in their own lives) by the tale.  Certain books may or may not be appropriate for certain kids.  My job (and I dare say a librarian’s as well) is to offer a sufficient selection of titles so that parents and young adults can choose something that is appropriate for them.  Asking me to decide ahead of time that books about suicide, or rape, or cutting are totally inappropriate is asking me to parent your kid for you.  I can’t do that.  I don’t know your kid.  You know who does know your kid – or, at least, who should?  The parent(s).

Gurdon’s final sentence is the kicker: “No family is obliged to acquiesce when publishers use the vehicle of fundamental free-expression principles to try to bulldoze coarseness or misery into their children’s lives.”

Mrs. Gurdon, you are absolutely correct.  No family is obliged to read anything a reviewer recommends or a librarian or bookseller puts on the shelves.  So why on Earth are you complaining, when nobody is making you do anything except maybe parent your own kids?

I know one thing: my hypothetical children are no longer allowed to read Mrs. Gurdon’s columns.  I don’t want them exposed to such shoddy blame-game arguments, lest they think establishing a sensible position on a subject is as easy as merely whining a lot in a major newspaper.

Resources for Teen Readers and Their Parents

Reading that won't make your parents wet their pants.

Like bibliophiles everywhere, readers of YA fiction like diversity, yes?  Here are a few links for reading ideas that won’t make your parents wish the librarians did their job for them.

I.  Books You May Enjoy

This is just a sample.  Feel free to leave lists of books you already enjoy in the comments!  Even if they are about blood and vampires!

Canterbury Tales — 1387
A Book of Courtesy — 1477 (the first book for young people published in English)
The Fables of Aesop — 1484
Le Morte d’Arthur — 1484
Alices’ Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carol — 1865
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott — 1868
The Story of Bad Boy
by Thomas Bailey Aldrich — 1870
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne — 1872
Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain — 1876
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell — 1877
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson –1883
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle –1883
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain — 1885
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes  by Arthur Conan Doyle –1892
Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling — 1894
The Bobbsey Twins by Laura Lee Hope –1904
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin — 1904
Peter Pan in Kensington Garden by J. M. Barrie — 1906
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham — 1908
Little House in the Big Woods  by Laura  Ingalls Wilder — 1932
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien — 1937
Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes –1944
The Story of the Negro by Arna Bontemps — 1948
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger  — 1951
A Raisin in the Sun
by Lorraine Hansbery –1959
Tituba of Salem Village
by Ann Petry –1964
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee –1968
The Pigman by Paul Zindel –1968
Sounder by William Armstrong –1969
Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret by Judy Blume  — 1970
Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George — 1972
A Hero Ain’t Nothing but a Sandwich by Alice Childress — 1973
Dragonwings by Laurence Yep — 1975
Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry  by Mildred Taylor — 1976
Beauty by Robin McKinley — 1978
Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson — 1980

II.  Online Resources for Young Adult Readers

Canada’s Calgary University offers links to online texts of several YA classics.

Kay E. Vandergrift at Rutgers University has an entire page devoted to the history and analysis of YA literature.  Good stuff for book reports, or just for learning to love books a little more.

The ALA’s Young Adult Library Services Association has tons of info on YA books.

It’s linked above, but it’s worth adding again here: David Lubar’s essay on the history of YA literature is entertaining AND informative.

Have additional resources?  Add ‘em in comments!

About Dani Alexis

Dani Alexis is a freelance writer, book critic, and full-time radical intersectionalist who works under the disapproving but adorable supervision of a deaf, epileptic Turkish Angora. She got a law degree once, but it didn't take.
This entry was posted in banned books, book reviews, bookstore, children's books, editorials, fiction, writing, YA fiction and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

9 Responses to Dear My Hypothetical Children: #YAsaves

  1. Jenn says:

    Wow. This woman would ban rainbow if she could.
    Free will. I read anything from Christopher Pike and RL Stine to James Patterson and other adult fiction.
    I’m not even sure parents should police too much either.

    • Dani Alexis says:

      Yeah, I have serious qualms in some cases about parents over-policing what their kids read, especially if the parents are the reason the kid is dealing with abuse or other trauma in the first place. But I’m not sure what I do about that *as a bookseller* (or reviewer) except give said kids a safe place they can sit and read and someone they can talk to about what they need. If I had a brick-and-mortar shop, which I don’t at the moment. :P

      Also, if the comments on #YAsaves are any guide, refusing to carry “dark” titles in my brick-and-mortar shop would be worse for teens who need to know they’re not alone but can only read about it away from home. So either way, I think I’m back to “must provide many options in YA section.”

  2. Nikki says:

    Hunger Games. Maze Runner series (once it finishes). Any and all Tamora Pierce books. Nearly every Nancy Garden book (I recommend this author because when I finished reading one of her books, and it made me cry because it was so incredibly beautiful, and I sent her an email to tell her that, I got an actual reply, not a form letter, but a real reply that said its writer had read my email and was actually talking to me, and we kept up talking via email for a couple of months. Also, because her stories are beautiful). Anne McCaffrey. Mercedes Lackey. James Patterson, both his earlier When the Wind Blows and The Lake House books, and his later Max Ride, Daniel X, and Witch and Wizard books. House of Stairs. The Devil’s Arithmetic. Redwall. The Color Purple. Meg Cabot. Anything you can find. Read anything you can find. If it bothers you, put it down. Don’t read it again. Keep a stack of Dr. Seuss by the bed. Enough of those and not only will you forget what just bothered you, you’ll also be able to recite The Cat in the Hat by memory (“the sun did not shine it was too wet to play so we sat in the house all that cold cold wet day. We sat in the house, yes we sat there we two, we sat in the house, with nothing to do”). You’ll find books that speak to you. You’ll find books that fascinate you, even the horrible dark books, because none of us are all lace and rainbows. All of us have had horrible dark moments. You’ll find books that say that people who are different from you have the same worries you do. You’ll find books that say that you aren’t alone. You’ll find books that say that maybe a kind of magic does exist, the kind of magic that makes you forget the screaming in the other room and the money that simply isn’t there, or maybe just the kind of magic that tells you to prop your bruised leg on a pillow and prop your head up with another, cause you’re gonna be there for a while. There will be new worlds to explore. Humanity doesn’t give anyone under 18 enough credit, they think everyone under 18 is a parrot, blindly mimicking what’s told to them. When the book’s characters say “I hate myself” enough, the 12-year-old parrot, rather than feeling sympathy for the characters, and sympathy for those in real life who have bad enough experiences with life to want to throw it all away, the parrot states “I hate myself” and becomes another statistic. I read horrible dark books. I read happy light books. I read books that I got bored and checked out because there weren’t any that I did want to read. I think I ended up okay, although I have a pesky sense of sympathy for those going through tough times, a real interest in psychology, and a complete hatred of any type of censorship or book banning. I consider those to be good side-effects.

  3. Nathan Davies says:

    Books I have loved:
    Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes by Chris Crutcher 1993
    Song of the Lioness quartet by Tamora Pierce 1983-8
    Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C Wrede 1985-93
    Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart 1984
    Squire’s Tale by Gerald Morris 1998
    the Earthsea series by Ursula K Le Guin 1968-90

  4. m says:

    Wow. My Dad read The Monkey Wrench Gang and The Milagro Beanfield War to us as small children. Only after we finished To Kill a Mockingbird and Blubber of course. And I fully intend for my children to be well-exposed. Currently we’re working on Harry Potter, the kids are 3 and 6. The 6y’o can already read quite a bit on his own, he’s never had the opportunity to grow bored with boring books. I might not have had perfect parents but atleast they assumed that we would be better off if we got to grow up with the prespective of good books. No wonder kids would rather watch TV or play computer games. They’ve never been exposed to a really exciting book. I’m sure Mrs. Gurdon’s children think that reading is boring and would rather watch Celebrity ReHab than read anything she approves.

  5. Nancy says:

    I just want to quickly say: thank you for articulating this sensible viewpoint.
    I’m a librarian in an extremely small, rural library that serves a fairly large and very diverse community. If a parent complained about a book on our shelf in the manner of Ms. Gurdon, I would laugh after pulling my jaw off the floor!
    I’m glad to have never encountered this short-sighted posturing in our library.
    And thank you for the all the links and ideas about YA literature. Very helpful and timely as we are now considering new YA purchases. And BTW, I found this post via http://bookshopblog.com/2011/06/07/too-dark-for-young-adults/

  6. jlheuer says:

    As a former YA librarian I know the difficulty of finding books for a teen when a parent would ask me for a suggestion, and the joy of suggesting books to a teen who asked me for something to read. YA fiction is very diverse, its not all about cutting and rape and drinking but neither is adult fiction all bodice rippers and murder mysteries. I read psycho thrillers, vampires and steamy romances but those are my my fun escapist reads.I’m not going to kill anyone, suck blood or run off with a lover. I think teens enjoy reading a variety of stories and scenerios too. I still read a lot of YA even though my teen years are in the distant past. My latest is Enclave by Ann Aguirre, The Wicked Lovely series by Melissa Marr (I have her latest adult fiction right now, Graveminder), and Wither by Lauren Destefano. And if you like Little Women you will enjoy March by Geraldine Brooks.

  7. Pingback: Bookmarks for July 28th from 01:28 to 02:05 « JossArdenDOTcom

  8. Pingback: To my hypothetical children… | To My Hypothetical Children

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