Bittercon: The Pill in the Sugar--Morals in YA Lit
What about moral messages in kids' or YA stories? Are they actually organic to our traditional story structures? Do most kids notice, appreciate, or resent them? Any well-taken (or cautionary) examples from famous SF or fantasy? If "Obey authority" isn't to your taste, is "Think for yourself" still a bit bitter on the tongue?
That last question was most interesting to me. It's easy to stick the quill into overly moralistic kidzlit--in her teenage diary, L.M. Montgomery (who was no slouch at inserting uplifting messages into her fiction) sighed over the best stories that just had to have a spoonful of medicine stuck in them. I believe that kids, ever since kidzlit became a publishing category, have gotten used to sliding past the obvious lessons. In a way, that's the earliest reading protocols a kid gets, the ability to stand back from the text and choose what one wants from it, rather than swallowing it wholesale as Truth.
Back to that last question, and I wonder if there is any possible answer, especially in these days when some teens think it a good idea to get a gun and blow away a rival. Claiming historical precedent for millennia is evidence that it's "always" been that way until the "Victorian cult of the child" (I actually saw an article to that effect some time back) but does this evidence show the advance of civilization? Is it the job of young people's literature to fashion stories that advance civilization? I happen to think so, because kids read to entertain themselves but to learn about the world, and that includes the possible world. Too big a dose of "the horror that is" (and we have it pumped into our living rooms every day) creates an anxious and dispiriting burden, though others might disagree. It might be a left-over of my hippie-dippie youth to believe that enough people working together can create some happy choices and endings, which can propagate more, but maybe I'm just dead wrong?
Finally, I have come to believe in teaching "Think for yourself" to kids, with all the risks that entails, but the second half of that is "But consider the consequences first." Agree? Disagree? Throw tomatoes?
That last question was most interesting to me. It's easy to stick the quill into overly moralistic kidzlit--in her teenage diary, L.M. Montgomery (who was no slouch at inserting uplifting messages into her fiction) sighed over the best stories that just had to have a spoonful of medicine stuck in them. I believe that kids, ever since kidzlit became a publishing category, have gotten used to sliding past the obvious lessons. In a way, that's the earliest reading protocols a kid gets, the ability to stand back from the text and choose what one wants from it, rather than swallowing it wholesale as Truth.
Back to that last question, and I wonder if there is any possible answer, especially in these days when some teens think it a good idea to get a gun and blow away a rival. Claiming historical precedent for millennia is evidence that it's "always" been that way until the "Victorian cult of the child" (I actually saw an article to that effect some time back) but does this evidence show the advance of civilization? Is it the job of young people's literature to fashion stories that advance civilization? I happen to think so, because kids read to entertain themselves but to learn about the world, and that includes the possible world. Too big a dose of "the horror that is" (and we have it pumped into our living rooms every day) creates an anxious and dispiriting burden, though others might disagree. It might be a left-over of my hippie-dippie youth to believe that enough people working together can create some happy choices and endings, which can propagate more, but maybe I'm just dead wrong?
Finally, I have come to believe in teaching "Think for yourself" to kids, with all the risks that entails, but the second half of that is "But consider the consequences first." Agree? Disagree? Throw tomatoes?