Apparently teens shouldn't read about real life

It is the Daily Flail...

Some of the comments hearten me though. And yes, I'd let my teens read these books, though we'd discuss things too. Thing is sometimes kids are going to need to read about this stuff - about fictional characters where it's 'safe' as opposed to people they really know. Because, well, things like this do happen to kids.

PS: Won't someone think of the children! *clutches pearls*. (Come on, someone had to!)

It's too bad their minds were too closed to understand this part:

'When young people are lost in such traumatic states, it's vital that they don't feel alone,' he says. 'Isolation makes the situation worse and their problems more entrenched. Novels and stories on the subject offer a sense of commonality and, most importantly, a sense of hope.'

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Yes, i read this yesterday... I've only read one of the books mentioned (I'm not a big YA reader) which was Before I die, and it was obvious to me that the writer had read the blurb and not the book. I really enjoyed the book, not because of the subject matter, but because of how close Downham got to pov, there was good writing on show there.

In terms of whether our kids should read it; they were always around. Sometimes you had to hunt to find them, but sad stories for kids have always existed. Little Women? It took me a year to get over. And then there is stuff like Easy Connections/Freedom when I was a kid, which dealt with rape, and Forever which was certainly more adult than teen in some of its content (not by today's standards, admittedly, but then it was).

If kids don't understand it, they won't read it. If they're old enough to process it, they're old enough to read it. My parents never censored anything I read and assumed self-censorship would do the job, and they were right.

Plus, let's be honest; what can be between the pages of a book, a well thought out and written one like Downham's, that's going to be more harmful than what's on line? Bring on the challenging reads, I say, and let's encourage the kids to at least reach for good ones.

Everyone should be good Christian folk and the read the bible, because it doesn't have anything bad in it... oh, wait.

Hasn't anyone ever heard the phrase: And the moral of the story is...?

My first instinct is to agree with everyone else. Read and let read. I read a lot of "heavy" stuff as a kid, and I learned a lot from it.

But just to play devil's advocate . . .

I'm a SFF reader, and I object to things like what I see as harmful trends in sexism and rape-as-titillation in certain types of fantasy. I feel like such tropes are reinforcing institutional attitudes about women that are harmful.

Now, I'm skeptical that the trend of "sick-lit" this article talks about is actually a problem. But I can sort of get why, if some of these books are jumping on a "trend" and are glamorizing things like self-harm or suicide rather than giving them a thoughtful treatment, some people might object to them. Because if the books are poor depictions of this material, they could be contributing to harmful attitudes those people see as problematic. Books do affect us.

Of course I wouldn't advocate any form of censorship, but it's possible there's worthy discussion material here. You know, if the trend exists, and if these books are badly done in ways that reinforce incorrect, harmful ideas. The way the article's written makes me doubt this is anything but a manufactured problem, as the books cited sound like they are thoughtful, but I haven't read any of them, so I can't say.

(Mind you, I have absolutely no objection to well-written fiction about subjects like self-harm or suicide, and I can think of no earthly reason why anyone would have a problem with people writing/reading about a subject like cancer.)

WillSauger said:

Hasn't anyone ever heard the phrase: And the moral of the story is...?

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I have, but at least as often as not, the moral sucks dead bunnies.

It would appear that the article didn't generate quite the response the writer was hoping for. They've shut off the comments.

Water's wet.
The sky is blue.
The Daily Heil is full of shit.

WillSauger said:

Everyone should be good Christian folk and the read the bible, because it doesn't have anything bad in it... oh, wait.

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I took Introduction to the Old Testament at a Catholic college which was populated by about 40% homeschooled kids. I wish you could have seen the looks on their faces when the prof started explain what some of that meant...

My daughter read Speak when she was 13. She told me afterward that it had saved her life, because she realized she wasn't the only one who had been through that type of experience.

I used to work in high schools. Some of the things those kids lived with brought me to tears on a regular basis. And having books available about kids dealing with similar things helped more than one of my students.

Yes, in some cases reading about self-harm might cause a teen to start self-harming. On the other hand, it might persuade them to stop, as happened with a teen I knew after she read the novel Cut. Reading about a teen in a depressing situation might depress readers, but it also might give them motivation to talk about what they're going through. Feeling alone is part of most teens' lives, I think, and even reading about a fictional character who's experiencing something similar can help a teen feel like they aren't so alone after all.

Pretty much the whole reason I write is out of the vain hope that one day, eventually, I'll get published, and someone, somewhere will read my book and think "I'm not alone."

Meh. I read all my mom's sex-and-violence-filled Book of the Month Club selections from the third grade on. Plus our high school book club featured such mild fare as A Clockwork Orange.

Never hurt me.

Um, right?

urgh. daily mail. urgh.

It's so hard to even find the energy to discuss their articles.

The article does a good job of ensuring Amanda Craig will never be a successful YA writer. But I'm sure she'll use the responses to this article as fuel for more articles.

There will always be an element of society that will favor censorship - let's face it; that's what this is - "for their own good"... notwithstanding that the ability to think critically for oneself arises from the considered analysis of differing perspectives and opinions.

I've always thought these folks' true agenda was control - and in my view that makes them inherently dangerous.

shaldna said:

So, in an article in the Daily Fail today we are told that YA novels about real life things such as cancer, suicide, illness, depression and sex shouldn't be read by, well, anyone.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/a...-Tales-teenage-cancer-self-harm-suicide-.html

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If we want to expose our teenagers to all the horror, hate, and sickness in the world, get them a newspaper subscription.

Keeping that in mind, recall the history of Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther", whose publication led to a wave of suicides in 1770s Germany.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorrows_of_Young_Werther

I was one of those preteens who grew tired of reading The Babysitters' Club at 12 and jumped straight into romance novels and Readers' Digest versions of emphatically adult novels. I never read YA. I never felt compelled to go to the YA section to read about fictional teens dealing with similar issues.

But I don't think they should be kept from reading about death, loss, sex or suicide. Teens know a lot more than adults often think they do and every teen is different in what they can deal with, what they want to read, etc.

Anyone who writes anything should have respect for their audience, and that goes double for YA. Your readers are as smart as you are. They can keep up. And they can cope with dark or edgy material. If they don't want to read about such things, they won't. If done properly, dark or tragic material is not morbid but cathartic, which is something the Ancient Greeks and Shakespeare knew but which seems to have escaped this Daily Mail writer.

One thing that the article doesn't mention is that the kind of fiction they're describing (including the language and sexual content) isn't aimed at twelve-year-olds. 14+ YA is a more distinct category to 12+ YA in the USA than it is here in the UK, but it certainly exists and is written by such as Melvin Burgess, Kevin Brooks, Jason Wallace and Meg Rosoff, amongst quite a few others.

I'm currently (re)writing a 14+ YA novel involving a sixth-form bisexual love triangle, and I confidently expect it to give the Daily Mail an apoplexy if and when it is published. After all, how dare teenagers have sex with each other, and how even more dare they have (gasp) gay sex?

I will never understand censors. I'm a parent and when the time comes, I will definitely monitor what my children consume because that's kind of the point of me hanging around all the time. But I can't ever imagine thinking that because something might be inappropriate for my family means it's inappropriate for EVERYONE EVA!

And I'm somebody who read some pretty crazy stuff as a kid. Belladonna (which is about a sex slave eventually taking revenge on her captor) in sixth grade, Pillars of the Earth (which has a pretty graphic rape scene) in seventh grade, tons of bodice-ripping romance novels from late elementary school on. I was a very precocious reader and to this day my mother doesn't know the whole of what I got my hands on, but I turned out not particularly drug addicted or sexually deviant so this really strikes me as not that big of a deal.

Ugh... "Sick-lit"--is that even a thing? Or did they just make that up? I thought we called those "issue books."

There seems to be a certain subset of people who believe that if kids never hear a whisper about the existence of sex, drugs, and violence, then those kids will magically never experience sex, drugs or violence. I'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way.

Alexie Sherman said it very powerfully in his article "Why the Best Kids Books Are Written In Blood":

Does Ms. Gurdon honestly believe that a sexually explicit YA novel might somehow traumatize a teen mother? Does she believe that a YA novel about murder and rape will somehow shock a teenager whose life has been damaged by murder and rape? Does she believe a dystopian novel will frighten a kid who already lives in hell?

(snip)

They wanted to protect me from sex when I had already been raped. They wanted to protect me from evil though a future serial killer had already abused me. They wanted me to profess my love for God without considering that I was the child and grandchild of men and women who’d been sexually and physically abused by generations of clergy.

What was my immature, childish response to those would-be saviors?

“Wow, you are way, way too late.”

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WillSauger said:

Everyone should be good Christian folk and the read the bible, because it doesn't have anything bad in it... oh, wait.

Hasn't anyone ever heard the phrase: And the moral of the story is...?

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I'm reading through the Bible again right now, and yeah, it has some 'bad' parts in it lol. The moral is good though (God loves us no matter how bad we sin).

Anyway, I write clean/Christian/Inspirational fiction, but it's all real life and 'topical'. I don't think you should have to shy away from it. Life sure as heck isn't rainbows and unicorns

I thought the thread was going to be about this story:
Connecticut Town To Destroy Video Games And Violent Media
http://cbldf.org/2013/01/video-games-to-be-destroyed-in-connecticut-town/

In the wake of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, a community organization in the nearby town of Southington is organizing a buyback program to collect video games, DVDs, and CDs deemed to be violent. According to gaming site Polygon, after the collection on January 12, the media will be “snapped, tossed into a town dumpster and likely later incinerated.”

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But about reading: I was a teen and preteen many decades ago and I don't recall reading or having access to anything "inappropriate." I read a good bit of "clean" SF by writers such as Isaac Asimov, and I enjoyed it very greatly. It was (among other things) an escape from the bad times I was going through. It might have helped me to read some of this "bad" stuff, but I sure couldn't have discussed it with my parents. They were a large part of the problem.

On the other hand, there's this book. In college I read most of Heinlein's books including his juveniles (and was delighted when 20 pages into "The Rolling Stones/The Family Stone" I recalled that I had first read it around age 8 or 10). So when I heard about this book, which is compared to Heinlein's juveniles, I ordered it and looked forward to it. Within the first few pages the guys were sexually harrassing the girls in the high school hallways. It turned me off and I didn't read any further.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0812538900/?tag=absowrit-20

I already had a meltdown about this on Twitter. Sorry, Twitter followers. (-;

THE GUARDIAN HAD AN AWESOME COMEBACK ARTICLE TO THE IDIOT DAILY MAIL ARTICLE, WHICH I SUSPECT WAS A HIT-BAITER.

The Mail fucked with John Green...

Nerdfighters assemble!