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[subsidaryforge]

Okay, this article on YA books being too dark has been making the rounds and being duly torn apart. I'll let someone else handle Hunger Games. I wanna talk about Sherman Alexie's Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which has apparently been "challenged" quite a bit in libraries. So Alexie says something about being impressed his book has that much power

Comments

[glishara]

This idea that it's a major recent shift is kind of ridiculous, too. Twenty years ago, when I was reading YA fiction, it wasn't paranormal darkness, really -- I could hardly find any YA fantasy -- but I remember the reams and reams of books about being kidnapped or sexual abuse or -- the big culprit -- dying of cancer. There were dozens of books on every bookshelf about dying of cancer. Books about kids whose parents were dying of cancer, books about kids who fell in love with kids who were dying of cancer, books about kids with siblings dying of cancer, books where the protagonist-narrator herself was dying of cancer

[aerrin]

Amen, and no kidding.

What really kills me is that most of the books they target for being 'dark' are in fact intensely, insanely hopeful. These are the books that acknowledge for kids that there are real demons in life - and that they can be dealt with, survived, overcome.

I've read a few YA books that have no real light at the end of the tunnel - Living Dead Girl comes to mind. But I've read so many more that depict surviving and moving past rape or abuse or oppression or the freaking end of the world, and most of these say 'yes, you can do it even though you are a teenager, you can do it /because/ you are a teenager, you are powerful and have some control over the world around you'.

Dark circumstances do not make dark /books/.

[glishara]

These are the books that acknowledge for kids that there are real demons in life - and that they can be dealt with, survived, overcome.This is so true, and really important. Chesterton once said, "Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." Terry Pratchett plays with a similar idea when he talks about how you can never convince children that there's no monster under the bed, but you can convince them that it can be killed and that it can be frightened as well as frightening

[subsidaryforge]

Yes, yes, yes to everything you guys have said.

Another note on Part-Time Indian - it's a fairly didactic book about all this horrible things. "Here is why you shouldn't drink even if everyone around you is drinking." "Here is why you should do well in school in a school that allows you to do well, even if it isn't hip -- no, even if it is terrifying to do so." "Here is why you should date anyone you want, but not fetishize certain types of people." It is like a very well-written friendly manual with illustrations. Our hero has it rough, but wins at the end