On the terribad "darkness" of YA literature

[sparkindarkness]

Ok. so someone has written a “won't you please think of the children” article about the terrible terrible darkness and drama of YA fiction And won't we allll please think of the children

Comments

[suryaofvulcan]

Let's see, at 13 I was reading 1984 (including scenes of physical and psychological torture), To Kill a Mockingbird (rape, lynching and abuse of a minor), and a novel called Find Debbie!, about a girl with learning disabilities who is murdered by her family.

And heaven knows I was sheltered and privileged (except for having a disability), so I didn't face a lot of these things first-hand, but fiction actually exposed me to some of these issues for the first time, and gave me a safe context in which to discuss and explore them with parents and teachers. I actually remember To Kill a Mockingbird teaching me about racism in a way that watching Roots for example hadn't.

And I think parents who want to 'protect' their children (or Young Adults, to use the name of the genre) from this stuff are abdicating their responsibility and doing their children a disservice. They're sending their kids out into the world unprepared. They want to imagine they can maintain this safe little bubble for ever, but they can't.

[sparkindarkness]

heh that's also true - since when is teens reading "dark" themes such news?

[mauracelt]

This person needs to read the stuff we were all brought up on, only without the candy coating its been dressed in. Grimms Fairy Tales for a good start. Some of the songs kids sang when I was small are just as sick: Ring Around The Rosies, for one.
Think of the children .... ok do that before you start bitching about other ppl and their behaviours or before you yourself do something.. how much would get done in this world if they did that?

I read the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe when I was 11.

[sparkindarkness]

Exactly - I mean dark lkioterature and hevay themes are hardly new things - so why the sudden horror?

[neurotic_rat]

For some odd reason, I couldn't access the link you posted in question...

Otherwise, if that person had MET me, she probably would have been appalled to know that when I was in 8th grade (at around 16-17yrs-ish), I wrote my own personal, dark story that was not all happiness and rainbows based on the real-life shit I went through. The irony being, it was centered on a bullied teen and school shootings (another one, I had a teen wanting to commit suicide). Never finished those for some odd reason... probably a good thing, because years later, Columbine hit.

Seriously, kids are 'happy' 24-7? Someone must have been raised with privilege and sheltered for a good chunk of their lives. :/

[sparkindarkness]

That's odd, I'll have to poke it.

That's just it, since when are kids so happy? Since when are kids os sheltered and unaware? They read this, they write this, why wouldn't they?