Age groups vs. difficult topics

[mdmkay]

OUCH...I just had one of my beta readers come back and say she could only make it 1/2 way through my new book because of the difficult subject matter. She went on to say how no one would buy a book about a ten year old who was dying of cancer. I agree that cancer wouldn't be approprate subject matter for a read-out-loud or a picture book....as far general audience but for middle graders I believe that at that age they are starting to have questions about more difficult or abstract matters.....such as death. Am I way off base here?????????? I'm pretty sure I've posted at least parts of this story while it was a WIP in the SYW forum called Lilly's Cancer or AM I GETTING IN TOO DEEP HERE.................any and all opinions welcome.

[Torgo]

To be perfectly honest, I don't think it's an amazingly commercial idea. That's not to say that, done well, it might not find its niche.
Books about death do exist at all levels of the childrens book industry - Judith Kerr's Goodbye Mog and Michael Rosen's Sad Book, both picture books, spring to mind. There are a good deal of bleak novels on subjects such as death, abuse and anorexia in the YA market, too. Still, a book for ten-year-olds about cancer will probably have a difficult time unless it is exceptionally well-written.
One tip which applies for younger books as well would be to try to keep the emotional tone of the book varied. It will be a difficult read if it is unremittingly sad.

[cwgranny]

This year's Newbery winner, Kira, Kira, is (in large part) about the main character's sister dying. I haven't read it so I am not certain what she dies of but her sickness and dying is a integral part of the book, though not the whole book. But sickness and dying cannot be the whole book or it's not likely to sell. I have read another book ...no, maybe it was a short story... it was a short story in one of the Vivian vande Velde collections, I think. Anyway, the main character is dying and dies in the course of the story. She does, in fact, hasten her death through exposure to the elements. So obviously even death of a main character isn't totally unheard of. But again, the story was about more than dying -- it was (1) a romance of sorts, (2) a ghost story, and (3) a story about dignity and taking charge of your own destiny.

So...you must ask yourself, though the vehicle for telling your story may be the sickness of the main character -- what is the real story? What's it really about? Is it about hope in impossible circumstances? overcoming fear? Helping others in a situation where anyone would think you helpless? If all your story is about is sickness and dying -- it's not likely to sell. But if it says something profound, something moving and powerful and hopeful (for middle grade novels must always contain an element of hope) beyond the sickness and death -- then you may not only sell it, you may get an award. But it must go beyond the elements of sickness/dying and it must do it very very well. If people are having trouble getting through it, death and the spector of death may be too much in control of the story.

That's my two cents.

gran

[Tish Davidson]

You might find this topic resonateds more with early young adults - say 12-14 than with children around age 10. Ten is a kind of sunny age where life still centers around the family and they are still pretty concrete thinkers and don't ponder too much about things that don't immediately affect their stability at home. Older kids tend to think more globally and become more involved in abstract questions about death, dying, right, wrong, moral and ethical issues. A book tackling a death from cancer (presumably a long, slow death) might be better suited to this age group that is beginning to look outward and consider abstract issues more seriously.

[katiemac]

Yes. I'd suggest raising the age of your character, if only by a couple of years. When I was in 6th grade (so 11 or 12), I read a lot of Lurlene McDaniel's novels, which are about kids and teens with cancer. She had a series I really enjoyed at the time about a girl who was thirteen and diagnosed for the first time. There were four books, I believe, and each year she got a little older. She was a survivor by the end of the first book, but other kids she was friends with weren't. In the following stories of the series, she became a counselor at a cancer camp and encouraged younger kids.

Mainly, McDaniel's stories revolved around hope and survival rather than death and dying, although it did happen. If it's something you're interested in looking at, I think the first book of the series I mentioned (although she must have upwards of 20 novels, all about the same topics) was _Six Months to Live_.

[watcher]

What did your other beta readers say? If I were you I would get more opinions.


Faye

[mdmkay]

I think you guys just saved my butt.........the main thing she said is that she could only get through 1/2 the book because she didn't think that it was appropriate to write a book about a ten year old dying. Yes, there are some funny parts, some sad parts, a baby born at home (accidently which was joyful) but Lilly does die in the end but there is alot about showing Mandy go through the stages of grief and ending up at acceptance and so does Lilly before she dies. It also shows that life does go on. I really love the book and all the other people who have read it have really liked it. Changing the characters ages will work beautifully it's a bit less then 14400 words but a Young adult doesn't have to be huge my scale says up to 50,000 but doesn't have a minimum. This will soooooooooo work.

[cwgranny]

14,400 words is considerably shorter than the shortest YA I've seen in print. I believe the shortest I've seen in print was around 22,000 and it was by an established writer. At that length, it's more of a novella and is going to be terribly difficult to sell. Plus, it does sound basically like a death book -- making it harder still. I wish you luck, but brace yourself for a challenging experience.

To get a feel for lengths of YA novels (in word count) you can check out the YA shelves at your library or bookstore or Amazon and write down the titles. Then go to
http://www.renlearn.com/ and navigate to the "quiz store." Once there, you can feed in the titles of the novels that had the shortest page counts and (most of the time) the site will give you several bits of information about the book -- including exact word count. This can show you that books that seemed really short are usually well, well over 20,000 words.

gran