10.

[kathleenfoucart]

Ten years ago I walked across a stage in a blue polyester gown and morterboard. Blue and "gold" cords were draped around my neck, I shook the "stealth principal"'s hand and graduated high school. There's a picture on my desk today of six of us from that morning

Comments

[readthisandweep]

Thank you for this. By the time my generation became aware of YA we were so cynical, we tended to dismiss it as too youth orientated to be of any interest to us. In doing so, some of us became a bit 'snobby' about it.

I have certainly dismissed it. But reading you, I have an image of my 12 year-old granddaughter who, about a year ago, gave up on all the previous 'good literature' she had lived & breathed. She began reading the dreaded Twilight; & Harry Potter. Plus a plethora of other YAF a great deal of it dealing with the real issues that affect young people. Divorce; sex; drugs; school; loss; friendship & rivalry etc.

Not only did she read them, she re-read them, sometimes on a loop until her parents began to wonder if she would ever read anything else again.

Something in these books clearly resonates with her & after reading you, I realise I no longer need to know what; just to accept that it is so.

I'll never be a Twilight fan; I consider S Meyers to be an apologist for misogyny. And I don't reckon Rowling either. She strip-mined my childhood to write her books; & isn't, imv, a very good writer anyway.

But my opinion is irrelevant; my angst-ridden youth is behind me. Each generation needs it's role models. Mine simply didn't have any ~ it was all boarding schools & ponies; Far Away Trees & Islands of Adventure. There was virtually no realism. I ought to be grateful for the fact that for my granddaughter, all [teenage] life is writ large in so many of these books ~ for good or ill.

And she got over Twilight ~ all by herself! Can't say the same for HP but at least no one is exploited in JKR's books. And in any case, my granddaughter is now reading, The Hobbit to her eight-year old sister.