But who will think of the children?!?!
Article in the WSJ that started the kerfuffle, found via sartorias and burger_eater.
The tl;dr summary: Oh woe, books aimed at teens these days are full of horrific violence, darkness, and human spiritual ugliness.
(I'll give credit to Meghan Gurdon, the article-writer, for focusing on the violence rather than the sex. It's always rather bothered me that people will get up in arms about kids being exposed to peaceful naked people, but not violent clothed people.)
Gurdon says: As it happens, 40 years ago, no one had to contend with young-adult literature because there was no such thing. There was simply literature, some of it accessible to young readers and some not. As elsewhere in American life, the 1960s changed everything. In 1967, S.E. Hinton published "The Outsiders," a raw and striking novel that dealt directly with class tensions, family dysfunction and violent, disaffected youth. It launched an industry.
She then goes on to condemn how YA literature has continued to push the envelope, getting more and more negative and violent and graphic: Judy Blume was once considered racy; now she's incredibly tame next to today's dark books.
According to that article, I was raised in the evil days of early YA (after the category was invented). Yet of course many people who were born 40 years ago are now themselves the parents of teenagers...so what the hell is Gurdon talking about? Some halcyon day from when she was young? How old is she?
Is she talking about the days of Peyton Place? Or From Here to Eternity--that's a cheery book. Or Steinbeck's pleasant little idylls, The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, and East of Eden? Let's not forget William Faulkner, that genius of pastoral little fancies.
What, exactly, were teens reading prior to the publishing category "YA"?
I'm fairly certain they were going to the grownup shelves, and finding the same violent, nasty stuff that they can find today. One might argue that today's publishers are pushing the nasty stuff at teens by packaging it for them and arranging for it to be in their section of the bookstore...
...except I can remember being a teen--hell, I can remember being eight--and going to the grownup section of the bookstore and library.
Today's YA publishers aren't irresponsibly pushing nasty books at teens. They're just making it easier for teens to find the stuff they'll go looking for anyway. Which could explain why a lot of grownups are buying books in the YA section these days.