I haven't posted on this blog for a very long time, but I have learned that my last post caused some people to believe that I am no longer reviewing books.  Just to dispel that misconception, I am!  In fact, I have posted a fair number of reviews just in the past few months.  I still need volunteers, though!  I can only read so many books and do enjoy adult literature, too, so even one review from a volunteer is a huge help to me and concerned parents everywhere.  

Anyway, if you follow WII at all, you may have noticed that more and more reviews have dipped into the middle-grade market.  I thought it might be a good idea to write a few words about my choice to do that.  When I first began this website, the idea was to stick closely to the YA market.  That is where most juvenile books with problematic or mature content are found.  Relatively few middle grade novels worry parents, because publishers follow stricter content guidelines.  Of course, there are a few that have caused an uproar in the middle grade market--particularly the Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling, and the His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman.  Generally, however, the middle grade market is considered pretty safe by most concerned parents, myself included.

As I've reviewed more and more books, though, I have found myself coming across a lot of middle-grade novels with teen protagonists.  They are young teens, to be sure, but they are still teens, my target age level for WII reviews.  Occasionally, I purposely choose a middle-grade book with a teen character, such as Every Soul a Star, by Wendy Mass, because I want a book aimed at younger teens in order to give age variety to my reviews.  Most of the middle-grade books I and my volunteers have reviewed, however, are books that we chose to read for personal reasons (hey, children's books are for everyone!) and have had no intention of reviewing.  Once we discovered that the book had at least one teen protagonist, it seemed silly not to review it for the benefit of all.

I also continue to read and review YA books, but over the past year I have found myself feeling more and more oppressed by the books I've chosen.  One after the other has told a tale of angst and misery, or else the story has featured murder, graphic sex, and/or more spiritual darkness than I can handle.  I have found myself being affected by these stories and have tried to choose more upbeat novels, but the truth is, the YA market just doesn't publish a lot of them.  Dark and dismal is de rigeur.  Look long and hard, and you'll find a few--some even reviewed on WII--but you'll have better luck if you ignore the 8-12 middle-grade age label and expand your search into that market  

And that's why WII now features many more middle-grade reviews than it used to.  For my sake as a reviewer and for your teens' sake, I now keep my eyes open for any middle-grade novels that feature teen protagonists.  Young adult literature is still the focus of this website, and I will continue to feature reviews of all sorts of books (except horror and novels published by religious houses).  Happily, though, I have discovered that the middle-grade market offers wonderful tales for teens that aren't oppressive, so they will continue to have a place in What's In It.

 


  

Recently I finished a YA novel called Oblivion, by Sasha Dawn.  It was hip, clever, different, well-written--and I almost couldn't finish it.  At one point in the novel, I decided I would just skim it through quickly, because I dreaded picking it up each time I sat down to read.  I even considered sending it back to the library unreviewed.  In the end I plowed on through, because I had already read more than halfway and because the book was really too complex to skim.  When I read the final sentence, I slapped the book shut with relief.  And for the first time, I seriously considered whether I should continue reviewing YA books. 

To understand what bothered me about this book so much, you almost have to read it.  My review will give you an idea, but it really won't be enough.  Let's just say that I would choose Gossip Girl or Pretty Little Liars over Oblivion, if I had to pick one--and that is saying something.  At first glance the storyline sounds wonderful, fresh and fascinating.  A high school girl is victim to a psychiatric condition called graphomania.  This is an urgent compulsion to write without apparent purpose, and the writing (at least in this story) usually makes little sense.  Through the girl's struggles with the condition, the threads of a gruesome mystery begin to unravel, until at last she is able to remember and help solve the crimes she witnessed a year earlier.  Not bad for an exciting premise, eh? 

But then the story fills in.  Frequent swearing, several sex/sexual scenes between the protagonist and two different boys (separately)--plus a drunken lesbian encounter and talk about a menage a trois.  And this is just for starters.  There is also a wicked Christian pastor (though to be fair it is made clear that his church is clearly not a recognizable, authentic one), child sex abuse, the discovery of infant murder, and…shall I go on?  The point is that the darkness of this story was not titillating and exciting as dark stories can be, at least not to me; rather, it was oppressive and horrifying.  If I'd read it as a teen, it would have haunted me for months.  My mind would not have been ready for something like that.   

This is book for teens?  This is how far we've come in pushing the limits in the YA book industry?    Perhaps this is the outer limit, but I doubt it.  Sure, there will always be a point at which publishers will edit an author's book for appropriate content, but they travel an unbelievable distance today before meeting that point with no indication of where they will stop. 

Yes, Oblivion weighed so heavily on my spirit that it has actually caused to rethink my commitment to maintaining this website.  The truth is that every book I read affects my mind, spirit, and emotions, just as it does with teens.  Sometimes I end a book feeling uplifted and better for the experience, even some books that address difficult or painful themes, such as Like Water on Stone, which is about the Armenian genocide.  Sometimes I shrug my shoulders, indifferent but unscathed.  But often--much, much too often--I leave a YA book depressed, disgusted, or disturbed.  I am not talking about books with specific objectionable content here, such as swearing or sex.  The stories that leave me this way are usually the ones that are disturbing or spiritually oppressive as a whole.  These are ones I need to approach with caution or avoid altogether.  I need to learn to just put them down.  Finishing so that I can write a review is just not worth it, I realize. 

I know that dark, edgy, and/or heavy is hip in YA literature right now, and I know that what brings me down doesn't affect everyone the same way.  If teens didn't like them, publishers wouldn't print them.  That they like such stories is understandable, considering the point they are at in their development and considering the difficult situations they often face in real life.  Perhaps such stories help them process what is going on in their lives.  Still, after reading so many of these novels, I have to conclude that YA fiction, generally speaking, is definitely not the safe sort of entertainment many parents assume their teens are getting, even parents who have no concerns about swearing, sex, and other such content. 

Perhaps teens can handle these books; perhaps many of them are mature enough to choose and we should trust them to make a wise choice for themselves.  This is what I've often heard parents and teachers claim, and these sane, intelligent adults seem confident enough about it that I sometimes wonder if I'm just a worrywart.  Still, my instincts and past experience raise too many red flags to simply shrug and relax.  I can't help but wonder if these adults would be so approving if they read a lot of these books themselves.  Not just an isolated one here and there, but a lot of them as I have.  Perhaps if they did, they would come to feel, as I have, that the YA market has gone too far in doling out the dark, edgy, and oppressive to our impressionable teens. 

What we read and watch helps to form us; it has power.  The words don't always roll off of us like water off a duck.  Many times they sink in, and we can't control that.  Sometimes we don't see their effects until years later--I am still haunted by things I read and seen in my youth, for instance-- but they are there.   Why don't we care more about this for our teens?

When I began this website, I was mostly concerned about the objectionable material that most concerned parents want to monitor--swearing, violence, etc.  Now, after two years of struggling to find uplifting, funny, and/or lighthearted novels to balance out the darkness, I have to conclude that our (my) concerns are too heavily weighted towards specific words and scenes.  What parents should be concerned about most are the stories in a holistic sense, just as we might consider whether our teens are ready for difficult but brilliant movies like Schindler's List or The Passion of the Christ.  We should be focusing on how books will affect our teens holistically, too--their minds and spirits, their emotions and continued development. 

Making this discernment is much harder than simply noting whether a book contains upsetting swear words, gratuitous drugs, or scintillating sex scenes; yet, it is a task we parents should not ignore.  There is still the problem of "how," though?  Parents are already so busy.  Unfortunately, there is no easy way to help a teen avoid potentially damaging books, though, and it won't do to throw out the whole genre to make things easy.  There are too many good books, and besides, the tried and true adult classics can contain disturbing material, too. 

Concerned parents really have two choices.  We either open the door wide for our teens and trust them to make wise choices on their own.  Or we must put in the effort, whether we are busy or not, to help them avoid making poor choices that may harm them.  Although it may not be "PC" to say so, on this I must take a firm stand.  The truth is, there is only one right choice.   

 





        

This last day of the year, I am full of good food and all the holiday trimmings of the past month--gifts, outings, family games, and good cheer.  At the same time, all the merriment has made me lazy and my brain a little on the dull side.  There is something serious I want to discuss on YA literature, but I want to go out on a cheerful note, so I'll let that wait.  Instead, a little reflection on the bright side of YA literature is in order.  For a genre that is so full of pitfalls for cautious families, it is easy to brush this aside and vilify all YA books en masse.  This is what some parents tend to do, insisting that their teens read only religious fiction or classics (which offer plenty of controversial content themselves, ironically).  This, of course, is not fair, which is part of the reason for this website--so that parents don't have to make such a blanket judgment because they lack resources to help them make more informed decisions.

This Christmas I have been reading a collection of short Christmas stories by women writers.  They are old stories, many from the 1800s and early 1900s.  They are nice stories, but I am struck by the fact that that is the best I can say for those I have read this season.  The writing styles and vocabulary are archaic, and the plots are typically quiet and a little slow.  These things are not weaknesses in themselves, of course, but for these particular stories, one thing stands out to me that has been (thankfully) excised from modern writing:  a wet, warm, saccharine sappiness that drains the tales of the kind of truthfulness that moves me.  Don't get me wrong.  I like sappy stories sometimes.  Catch me watching a Hallmark commercial or an old episode of Little House on the Prairie and you'll see tears in my eyes.  But in stories like these, I can't help but roll my eyes a little.  

This reminded me of old novels I have read or skimmed.  Whether beloved or not, many (not all!) stories of yesteryear tend to follow this "unrealistic realism" track.  They are stories that could happen, theoretically, but they have been sanitized and glossed to the point that modern readers feel a little nauseous after reading them.  The characters are too perfect, perhaps, or the plot threads come together too neatly, or the dialogue just doesn't sound the way people actually talk (even in the olden days).  And the writer's voice doesn't even sound authentic; instead, it sounds more like the writer is putting on a false persona to fit into a socially acceptable box.  Maybe these stories are "safe" to read for those who want to avoid things like sex and bad language--but great literature they are not.  

Today's novels tend to be different, though, including those written for teens.  Yes, they often contain themes and content that parents don't feel their teens are ready for or which glorify things that go against their family's values and beliefs.  YA novels are often dark and edgy, too, and some are shockingly trashy and poorly written.  As a genre, though, YA novels of today do tend to be better written than many of their predecessors.  More sophisticated in tone and style, more believable, more layered with meaning, and more artful, today's YA novels take readers where earlier YA authors couldn't (or wouldn't) dare to go.  Criticize them in whatever ways we must, a fair-minded reader who has been well-grounded in older literature (not necessarily classic, just older) must admit that this is, indeed, one major bright side of the YA genre.

As much as I hate to see teens pushed into adult classics before they've had a chance to fully explore the wide and wonderful world of children's literature, it must be acknowledged that literature transcends the age of the reader.  To put it more simply, a good book is a good book.  It doesn't matter if a teen wants to read Ramona Quimby books or Charles Dickens or Sophocles, art is ageless and belongs to everyone, not certain age groups.  Sometimes, though, teens need good books that are both "age-appropriate" and morally trustworthy, and the reviews in "What's In It?" will not always meet their needs.  If you have spent much time exploring these reviews, you will have noticed that most reviews have content of concern to cautious families.  Those that don't have content of concern aren't necessarily starred as great reads, either.  

This is where my "Young Adult Classics" page comes in handy.  If you have not yet discovered it and are frustrated by the options presented in the reviews, I want to take this opportunity to introduce you to it.  These are the "in-between" books--literature either written for teens or are at least teen-friendly that are considered modern classics.  These are the books that are outside the scope of What's In It?' 's criteria for reviews.  It is important to clarify that parents and teens cannot simply assume that these books will coincide with their personal standards for appropriate entertainment.  In fact, some of them have decidedly adult content, such as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (although the protagonist is a young girl).  Parents and teens can be certain, however, that these books have strong literary merit and have stood the test of decades of time with teen readers.  

When I began writing this post, I intended to list all of those books in my "Young Adult Classics" page that are completely trustworthy for cautious readers.  Then I realized that my standards may be different from yours and must back off of that intention, except for a few titles.  Here are those books that you can be certain contain no troublesome material, according to the content categories I use in my reviews (such as violence and vulgar language).  I should add that I am including only those books with which I have had enough experience to be certain about them.  Other books stand out to me as very "safe," but I do not know or remember them clearly enough to include them; thus, I am certain that I am leaving out books that should be included.  For those of you who just want a few suggestions without spending any time researching them first, though, here's a start.  And if you have any to add to this list, please let me know!  

• Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis
  
• The Westing Game, by Ellen Raskin
  
• The Laura Ingalls Wilder series
  
• Understood Betsy, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
  
• Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
  
• Betsy-Tacy series, by Maud Hart Lovelace (half the series is about Betsy's childhood; the other half is about her adolescence and young womanhood)
  
• Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
• A Wrinkle in Time series, by Madeleine L'Engle

And here are the books about which I am 90% certain are free of concerning content:  

• Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen
• Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O'Dell
• Julie of the Wolves, by Jean Craighead George
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain
• The Black Stallion series, by Walter Farley
• Homecoming, by Cynthia Voigt
• The Witch of Blackbird Pond, by Elizabeth George Speare
• An Old-fashioned Girl, by Louisa May Alcott
• Sister of the Bride, by Beverly Cleary
• Fifteen, by Beverly Cleary

If you have had your finger on the pulse of education in America over the past few years, you have likely heard a lot about the "dumbing down of America."  This generally refers to the widespread movement to water down the curricula and/or instructional methods used to educate our children. 

It doesn't take much research to see that much of this lamentation is right on the mark.  Whatever the arguments are in support of this dumbing down, two facts are indisputable.  First, the United States of America is far down the ranks of educational achievement throughout the world.  The last I heard, we came in 25th in how smart our kids are compared to other countries.  Second, long ago and way back when, our kids were held accountable to much higher standards in academic subjects (Virgil in Latin, anyone?), and we didn't hand out all the freebies that we do today.  Today's homeschool parents and many institutional educators are thus doing what they can to reverse our nation's course.

As an English teacher and former homeschool parent, I have noticed that literature instruction has become a major part of this movement both in homeschool programs and in alternative institutional schools, such as charter schools.  Although today's student isn't typically equipped to read the Great Books, such as Sophocles and Plato, they are generally able to manage the Good Books--the classics most of us recognize as central to the Western canon.  To try to fix what has been broken in the American educational system, many programs are doing what they can to return these classics to their rightful place as the center of literature studies.  And I applaud this.

Yet, in my observations of this movement, I have noticed something that I don't applaud.  These programs tend to push students way, way too fast.  Dickens, Austen, Shakespeare, Twain, Alcott, and all the wonderful authors who make up our classic canon are not being introduced to our students like new friends they can get to know; they are being thrown at our students like vitamins that hopefully might nourish them enough to get them through college.  Program after program presents a daunting list of authors to be raced through in a single year--authors who wrote such rich and profound work that even adults need sufficient time to mull them over and digest them.  How are our kids supposed to read great classic, adult novels lickety-split and get much out of the experience?  For that matter, why are we pushing adult novels in the first place onto children and teens who don't have the maturity to fully explore and understand them? 

To discuss this issue thoroughly is outside the scope of this post.  To every opinion I offer about what literature programs should be doing differently, a supporter of this dip-and-sip approach could offer a defense…to which I could probably offer a counter-defense (or concession, as the case may be) and so on and so forth.  Such an debate should take up the space of a book, not a blog post.  Yet, I would like to at least suggest here that there is another way to avoid dumbing down the literature education of our children, to celebrate the classics while not overwhelming our novice readers, and to celebrate the best of contemporary literature, too (after all, every classic was once "contemporary literature"!)

Without suggesting specific ways to design a program (not my intention here), I suggest pursuing a hybrid approach.  Let our kids read a lot of books without forcing a study; steer them towards the good books, and teach them how to spot books that aren't worth their time.  If a chosen book is a little bit above their level, let them read with a commentary in hand, such as Cliffs Notes.  Maybe discuss it with them in a casual sort of way--book-club style perhaps.

Don't push it, though--avoid books that discourage and kill interest, that foster a hatred of literature studies.  There are plenty of wonderful books at all levels.  The good books aren't going anywhere, so there is no need to rush.  This is art we're dealing with, not an academic subject!  Art should be handled with great care.  Then, carefully choose a select few books to study deeply each year, books chosen for a reason and that will be meaningful to the students.  These should be books that the teacher is prepared to unpack as fully as their class can handle.  In this way, students will not only have a rich experience of the book (or story/poetry/etc.) but will understand how to tackle difficult books on their own in the future.

Literature is not a race.  The good and great books are art, an experience to be treasured and savored.  Let's slow down, so that our kids can have a chance to discover that.       

   

This month's blog will be kept very short, since I'm hoping you will take a little time to look over a new discovery that I made just recently.  For the first time, as least as far as I know, a YA publisher has woken up to the fact that many parents and teens aren't willing to read just anything being published in today's "almost anything goes" YA market.  They want to know more about the content of YA books, like they can for movies, and Clean Teen Publishing honors that concern with their self-imposed rating system.  This is not a religious publisher, believe it or not; it is a secular publisher that seeks to honor the sensitivities of teen readers and their parents.  May other publishers take note and eventually follow in their steps.  Click here to learn more! http://www.cleanteenpublishing.com/ 

To deviate for a change from my usual philosophical meanderings, I thought I'd spend this blog highlighting the origins and history of young adult literature as a genre.   Doing so may help clarify why young adult literature seems so different in nature from literature for children and why it contains so many landmines to navigate in a cautious household.  I think it is also worth knowing a little something about a literary genre that has exploded in just the last decade, especially since it's important to our teens!

Juvenile literature of any kind didn't exist until the 1700s, when authors began writing moral and educational tales and poems.  This literature was generally steeped in a Christian worldview, though it tended to be so didactic and unrealistic that it is unlikely that many Christian parents would choose to share it with their children today.  It wasn't until the early 1900s that children's literature was born in the sense that we know it today--stories written for entertainment and delight.  YA literature, however, wasn't born until the World War II era, when teenagers were first recognized as a distinct social grouping.  And it was also during World War II, in 1942, that YA literature was born with the very first novel written just for teens:  Seventeenth Summer, by Maureen Daly.  

If this is the case, then what did teens read before 1942?  Throughout history, dating from ancient times to the 20th century, teens read what adults read:  Homer's epics, Chaucer, The Count of Monte Christo, Little Women, The Hobbit, and so on.  Some of these novels, of course, featured young people, such as the four sisters in Little Women.  By and large, though, teens were part of the adult world and entertained themselves with adult literature.  Exceptions to this may be the few formula-fiction series available in the early 20th century, which featured young adults--for example, the Nancy Drew series and the Hardy Boys series.  These, however, were not marketed specifically to teens.

After Seventeenth Summer was published, only a few teen-oriented books were notable for their literary quality until the 1960s.  These included the still-popular Johnny Tremain and Catcher in the Rye.  In 1967, though, young adult literature began its first golden age with the publication of S.E. Hinton's classic, The Outsiders.  After her breakthrough (a success story notable for the fact that she was a teen herself when The Outsiders was published), more authors stepped up to produce some of the most memorable novels in the YA genre:  Judy Blume, Lois Duncan, Robert Cormier, Paul Zindel, Katherine Paterson, William Armstrong, and more.  This period, too, saw the rise of the "problem" novel, where the plot focused on a single issue, such as death or drugs.  Most of these fell by the wayside over time, as they became more and more formulaic.  But the most popular authors of that first golden age are still read today.  

Still, as a genre in its own right, YA literature didn't really take off until the early 2000s, when it virtually leaped into the spotlight on the heels of the Harry Potter phenomenon.  Since then, more and more authors have presented the teen world with their creations, particularly blockbuster series like Twilight and The Hunger Games.  YA literature has become so complex, enjoyable, and sophisticated in recent years, in fact, that many adults are now reading the same novels that teens enjoy.  Two of the most popular types of novels in the YA genre today are dystopian and paranormal, but YA spans the gamut, offering all types of stories to meet every interest.  

The challenge for cautious parents today, it seems, is not finding good stories for their teens to read, but finding stories that do not betray their values and beliefs.  YA has grown up, now often seeming more firmly adult in its content and themes than oriented to young people who are still growing and impressionable.  Yet, despite its mature content, YA literature has greatly improved in general quality over the past couple of decades--a welcome change that all parents can celebrate.  

Just this weekend I was reading the introduction to a chapter in a cookbook by a mom like me.  In the essay she discussed the 1970s cookbook classic, Laurel's Kitchen, in which one of the authors expressed her belief that the roots of all societal change are in the home and that women are very important to implementing that change. The author wasn't saying that women shouldn't work outside of the home, but she seemed to be implying that homemaking was a superior choice.  This grated on the mom-author so much that she grumbled, "If I saw my teenage daughter reading this today, I would gently remove it from her hands and suggest that she go to the library and find herself something energizing and appropriate for a girl her age, like Wifey or Scruples."  

This reaction bothered me so much that I had to write about it in this entry.  'Was she serious?' I wondered.  Maybe she was exaggerating as a way to blow off steam.  I hoped she was exaggerating, because I didn't understand.  What about expressing a belief that society begins its changes within the family--and that mothers are important to this change--was offensive to her?  I assume that something about it was anti-feminist to her, but I couldn't see it myself.  What really got me, though, is that she would rather her teenage daughter go read very adult books like Wifey and Scruples than a book that extolled the importance of mothers and homemaking.  Even if she disagreed with what was said in Laurel's Kitchen, how was it that bad?

I have to wonder if there is a clue in this situation that points to why so many parents refrain from protecting their teens today from mature content in today's music, movies, books, and television shows.  Sex of all stripes, indecent language and behavior, alternative lifestyles, adult themes, and immodest clothing are everywhere in today's American culture.  Some of it is unavoidable, such as the soft-porn magazine, Cosmopolitan, that grocery stores put at children's eye-level without protective shields in front of them.  Most of it is not, however.  The last time I checked and putting aside the fact that some kids will always find ways to sneak around their rules, parents still had the final say over what their kids watch, wear, listen to, and read.  Yet, I am constantly amazed at what parents allow their teens to do and enjoy, from wearing teeny-tiny short shorts to listening to smutty music and watching trashy T.V. shows.  What happened to protecting our teens from trash and promoting modesty?  Why is sheltering them from that which can harm them so ridiculed today?  Why do we allow them to buy into the sex being sold at stores like Abercrombie and Fitch and open up the internet to them without filters?

To be sure, a lot of parents are cautious and protective.  Some are much more so than I am, in fact, and I consider myself protective.  Perhaps it all boils down to one's religious and moral convictions. Perhaps what is shocking to me--such as allowing teen girls to reveal their cleavage and wear shorts that might as well be underwear--is honestly nothing worth raising an eyebrow over to another parent.  'So they are showing their assets?' I imagine them saying. 'Let them enjoy being young!  Varicose veins, sagging, and cellulite will settle in soon enough.'  I don't understand this point of view, but maybe that's what it's all about--point of view.  

It is true that today's teens are more sophisticated than in those of the past few decades.  Personally, I hold the parents accountable for that, and I don't think it's a good thing.  We adults haven't promoted the sense of responsibility to go along with that sophistication.  Teens are allowed to act like kids while absorbing ideas and images that belong to the world of adults.  To me, this is a dangerous mix that begs for trouble--which we have in abundance with drinking, drugs, premarital sex, and all sorts of other issues.  And we wonder why.  Could it be that if we--as a culture--protected our young people en masse from adult matters like we used to (something I am old enough to personally remember), they might find growing up a little easier, a little less fraught with confusion and pain?
 



    

When I began this website, it was partly to provide a service to parents and partly as a way for me to rebel against the constantly loosening standards of fiction marketed to teens.  I was a parent of a pre-teen at the time and already aware of what was happening the literary market she was about to enter, because of my work as a bookseller.  Not wanting to overreact, however, I decided that I needed to strike a balance in how I exposed her to teen literature.  Some parents, I knew, refused to allow their teens to read anything but traditional classics and modern children's "classics" (like Redwall and teen-oriented Newbery winners).  I could have saved myself a lot of trouble by taking this approach to literature, but there was something that bothered me about that idea.  Those classics, I reflected, were once untried newbies at one time (in other words, not classics), which meant that some of the hip, new books of my daughter's generation would someday be labeled classics themselves.  Why ignore the best of today's teen literature, then?  The only trouble was finding it.  My solution, of course, was this website.  

As my daughter entered her teen years, though, and as I began to post more and more reviews, I ran into a new problem that I think it's time to think through.  What should we cautious parents do about "bibliotherapy" novels--stories that address disturbing, yet all too real, issues that affect today's teens either directly or indirectly?  These include issues like rape, eating disorders, racism, sexual and gender identity crises, alcoholism, parental neglect, and many more.  As much as we may want to shield our precious teens from heavy, painful issues like these, the fact is that many are experiencing them--and if they aren't, there is a good chance that they soon will, either personally or through someone they know who is struggling.  What do we do when our teens want to read a YA novel that may help them process an experience or a struggle that is too heavy for them to bear alone but too embarrassing or painful to talk about with an adult?

Providing the teen with a non-fiction self-help book that dovetails with one's family values is one possible alternative, but there is at least one major problem with this idea.  Fiction can often speak to us more powerfully than self-help advice books can.  In fact, I contend that the power of story over lecture is the biggest reason your local bookstore carries so much more YA fiction than YA non-fiction. Walking beside a character in a story can be cathartic and therapeutic, because it doesn't teach.  It illuminates and reveals truth and sparks understanding and insights in ways that self-help books simply can't.

I am thinking in particular of Laurie Halse Anderson's acclaimed novel, Speak, which is reviewed here on What's In It?.  This novel draws the reader into the tortured, damaged mind of Melinda, who has descended into voluntary muteness as a way to cope with the traumatic experience of being raped by a male schoolmate.  The novel is beautifully written, but it is dark and painful, not meant to provide mere entertainment.  Speak is meant (I think) to enlighten those who have not suffered sexual violence and to throw a lifejacket to those who have.  It has been passed around from teen to teen and used in therapy situations many times--a clear testament to the power of story to heal.

So again, what is a concerned parent to do about books like this, if we notice our teen sneaking them or even outright asking to read them?  Do we keep our battle lines tightly drawn against vulgar language, violence, or whatever types of content we want our teens to avoid reading?  Or are the potential therapeutic and enlightenment benefits worth pushing our rules aside temporarily?  Each parent must answer that question for himself, but for me some balance makes the most sense.  I have to remember that part of letting my teen grow up means loosening the reins little by little.  I also have to consider my teen's general maturity and sensitivity, and then I have to weigh that against the book's content.  This means that if my oldest daughter asked, I would allow her to read Speak.  Her sister, however, who is less than two years younger, is highly sensitive to dark, vulgar, and sexual content and is thus in a different place than my oldest daughter.  She is a different kind of person and is just not ready for Speak.  Maybe next year she will be.  

To some, making such concessions might be a sign of moral weakness or indecisiveness.  For some parents any therapeutic value is not worth the immoral content their teen will have to read in order to experience the benefits.  They might figure that the book might be considered a helpful tool, but since many have coped with disturbing issues without the help of fiction for a long time, their teen can, too. I respect this decision; for all I know these parents may be right.  Maybe it is the better route to take. But as someone whose life has been powerfully affected by books, who has had my life course actually altered by books, there is a point at which I figure I need to trust my teens to choose wisely.  I have to trust that I raised them well and that any specific content of concern to me, such as swearing or violence, is not going to affect them as negatively as the overall story may affect them positively.  And then I must let go and remind myself that God is still walking with them, even when I am not.  

     



    

As I've said in my introduction to What's In It, part of my purpose for the site is to help parents mine the gems of teen literature and toss the trash.  Up to now, however, I haven't really discussed what constitutes literary "trash."  I figure it's up to each parent to decide that, since we tend to apply the label subjectively to art, based on our personal values.  It isn’t much different from determining if a sunset is beautiful or ugly.  We might present an argument to someone for why it is beautiful in objective terms (bright colors, for example), but in the end we have to accept that the other person may not be impressed by that sunset.  Still, despite the subjective nature of determining beauty and quality in literature, I still contend that there is such a thing as literary trash--and that sometimes what might objectively be called "trash" really is not.  

When people call a work of art “trash” (any kind of art), they typically mean that a piece doesn't observe the basic principles of that type of art, that it is shallow, factually incorrect, or stupid.  In short, the author's intentions were poorly executed, the piece is of low artistic quality, and thus it is "trash." Since we are talking about art and not biology or astronomy, arguing that a piece is good when the majority of people deem it bad is no crime.  Argue away!  But you might still be objectively wrong.  If you are trying to argue, for example, that a one-star horror flick was just as good as the exquisite epic that just won an Oscar, well, you’d simply be wrong.  You’re entitled to your opinion, of course, but that doesn’t make you less wrong.  Objectively speaking, the epic has a more complex, profound plot, state-of-the-art cinematography, the most experienced director in the business, nuanced acting, and so on. 

YA literature is no different.  Take the lowest quality novels reviewed on this site and compare it objectively with the high-star novels (such as Between Shades of Gray), and you just won't win if you try to argue that neither/both are trash.  The low-star novels tend to be shallow, silly, simplistic, with artless language, one-dimensional and/or uninteresting characters, and an insubstantial plot.  The high-star novels are rich in beautiful language, profound themes, powerful and complex plots, and memorable and believable characters.  Thus, we can say objectively that the one-stars are artistic "trash" and the five-stars are "gems."

And yet...and yet this will still not keep some from calling the low-starred novels "good" and the high-starred novels "trash."  Why is this?  And are they right?  Of course, we have already noted that it is a person's moral judgement that often results in a "trash" or "treasure" assessment.  Some people do judge a work of art from a moral perspective; the artistic qualities are secondary in importance.  If it doesn't make the moral cut, it is trash--period.  For others the artistic and subtextual qualities are of primary importance.  In their opinion, moral/disturbing issues that arise in the work can be discussed, pondered, and judged, but they don't (and shouldn't) define the quality of the work.  

There is another way people judge art, though, and it has to do with the emotional power of a work.  I am thinking of a well-known television show from the '70s and '80s:  Little House on the Prairie.  As a child of the '70s, I grew up with this show.  Every weeknight my mother and I would eat our dinners in front of the TV in our darkened living room, following the adventures of America's best-loved pioneer family, the Ingalls.  We laughed, cried, worried, and cheered with them.  And because the rest of America did, too, the show hung on for nearly 10 years.  

Not only was the show fun to watch, meaningful, fairly complex, as American as apple pie, and morally wholesome, but it was emotionally powerful.  I usually ended up trying not to cry by the end of the episodes.  These characters were real, and I don't mean as in history (which they were, of course).  I mean that Michael Landon, Caroline Grassle, Melissa Gilbert, and all of the principal actors became the characters they played to TV viewers.  Who can imagine Charles Ingalls with a beard, as a quick internet search will show he had in real life?  Ppfft!  To me he and the rest of '70s America he was a buff, handsome charmer with curly, black hair.  Yes, these people became friends we came to love (or love to hate, in the case of Harriet Olsen).  Like the velveteen rabbit, these Hollywood constructions became Real.

But five-star cinematic art it was not.  The plots were sometimes thin and ridiculously unrealistic.  The characters were often melodramatic (I mean, couldn't the kids ever think of some way to express their hurt outside of running away?)  Sometimes the show's overall themes reflected modern concerns a little too obviously (teen drug abuse, anyone?) Though the buildings and costumes look good to me, the general setting about as un-Minnesotan as you can get (and yes, I have seen the real Walnut Grove).  And yet...and yet I couldn't care less.  Maybe artistically speaking some would argue that Little House borders on trash (and maybe even crosses over), but emotionally?  It is one of the best television shows ever produced, and I have no doubt that an enormous host of fellow viewers would agree with me.  Sometimes neither artistic or moral aspects have little to do with how we judge art; sometimes, it's how deeply it touches us. 

If I had more time, I could argue for cultural standards could be another valid vantage point from which to judge literature.  After all, there does still seem to be some general consensus out there on what qualifies as child- or family-friendly.  Morals play a part in this, of course, as well as patriotic and age-appropriate standards.  But this is enough for now.  How do you judge whether a book is "trash" or a "gem"?  Or do you see it differently altogether?