Age Appropriateness

[sartorias]

My BVC blog today is about age appropriate reading, and how to define it--something I've talked about here off and on over the past few years

Comments

[aulus_poliutos]

The only YA I renjoyed was some of the historical fiction (Rosemary Sutcliff, Hans Baumann, Barbara Bartos-Höppner), for the rest I always got the feeling the books wanted to get a point across. We had to read some for school - I remember one about a boy whose mother worked and so he had the key for the appartment and had to cook for himself, how shocking. I thought it was boring, preachy stuff that should make those kids who had SAMs feel grateful, while I'd have prefered my mother do work because I thought she'd be happier than at home. (I didn't know she suffered from a depression at that time, nor did she herself.)

Several books were about adapting - I hated those with a passion because I was bullied and felt those books utterly unrealistic and cheesy. In the end I didn't touch non-historical fiction YA books with a five foot pole since I was 8. ;)

[sartorias]

Oh yeah, sounds like you were getting the equivalent of the Problem Novels that we had over here. I knew very few kids who liked those (with exceptions). Actually, those drove a lot of readers I know to adult sf and f and historicals a lot sooner than they might have.

[aulus_poliutos]

Problem Novels is a fitting description. With unrealistic solutions for the most. The bullied kid adapted and did something to win the respect of his classmates and the bullying stopped. Yeah, right, that so works. *very ironic grin*

I prefered Call of the Wild, but most of the kids thought that one had an unhappy ending, the poor dog should have found another home. For me, he found freedom.

[sartorias]

Oh, I remember our teacher reading us Call of the Wild in fourth grade, after we came in from lunch. I so recall entering the classroom, drenched with sweat from the blasting sun, and having to put our heads down, as the inadequate fan burbled back and forth. Her voice would take over and I would sink into the story, forgetting the killing heat.

[aulus_poliutos]

I hated those problem YA books, too. The YA books written in the 1970s and 1980s were so blatantly didactic in their intentions that is was offputting. I did read those problem novels, when there was nothing else around - I was a voracious readers after all. But I always assumed that the kids who claimed they actually enjoyed reading that sort of thing were just trying to show off for the teacher. Though I'd sometimes pawn off unwanted problem novels to those kids ("It's really awful, about a girl at a boarding school who takes drugs and her best friend dies. Trust me, you'll love it.") and swap them against something more to my taste.

Cora