Gee. Is that a bulldozer you parked in my driveway, WSJ, or are you just happy to see me?

[erinbow]

 Me, and just about every other YA author I know, am grumbling about this WSJ article/opinion piece.  In the piece, the reviwer today's "brutal" and "violent" Young Adult fiction as "book industry's ever-more-appalling offerings for adolescent readers spring from a desperate desire to keep books relevant for the young." All hope is not lost,

Comments

[ext_645104]

Any good relationship brings up the bad stuff so that there can be a resolution.
Then progress. That's how integrity is kept, isn't it?

That is what YA does. It's the relationship YA readers have with YA books; YA keeps the integrity of being by chasing truths of adolescence (and in general) rather the aspirations of normalized concepts.

You put it perfectly.

[mamculuna]

That review appalls me. I have been a kid (apparently unlike that reviewer) and I know one thing: kids need darkness. They need books that drag the darkness out where it can be seen and dealt with. Wonder if the reviewer has read any of the original Grimm tales lately, or maybe we should send her a copy of Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment or some articles from Marina Warner? The only difference is that YA novels are set in the reader's time and place--but so were the Grimm's stories, when they were first told and collected.