So I was over at What Red Read and saw the post below. Apparently there are some people up in arms about YA books. They're too dark and disturbing, etc. Some parent freaked out because they looked at a table or shelf of YA books and they were all the same. I'm going to guess that she looked at a shelf of YA fantasy/paranormal books and saw all the vampire/supernatural -esque stuff. Firstly, I'm so tired of people grouping YA in one big category. You don't have to get YA titles like Twilight. You can get Pretty Little Liars, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants or even some Sweet Valley High.
Red mentions reading a lot of Stephen King and Alexander Dumas at around 13. I started reading Stephen King around 13 or 14. I also read a lot of "adult" books at that age.
See what else Red and others have had to say, click below.
What Red Read: Overreacting parents and YA fiction: "The interwebs, at least the book section of it, seems to be up-in-arms over a recent WSJ piece Darkness Too Visible by Meghan Cox Gurdon ab..."
Aww thanks for the link and whatnot! It's silly that when people think YA all they think about is Twilight and that ilk. I'm not a YA fan but I know there's more to it than just that. It's that kind of laziness, the refusal the look at the material long enough to realize there's more than just the dark stuff there that is annoying.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I think some people over react without educating themselves. Plus, I don't actually think Twilight is that "dark" except for the fact that the covers are black.
ReplyDeleteI'm posting a link from the Indigo Teen Fiction blog about what's the latest news in this YA uproar.
http://blog.indigo.ca/teen/item/413-books-are-dangerous.html
Thanks for the link to that blog. I think Gurdon tried to make her argument more reasoned than just "kids are too dumb to know that dark books are fiction," but in the end her argument still fell into that category. I wish she was calling for parents to be more informed about what their kids were reading instead of just angry at all books marketed at a certain age bracket.
ReplyDeleteI do too. If she were asking for a review of certain books, versus a single negative generalization, then the argument might sound more thought out.
ReplyDelete"Firstly, I'm so tired of people grouping YA in one big category. "
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree. Even the idea of YA being a genre bothers me a little. It's so much more diverse than that.
Nymeth, That was actually one of my top ten pet peeves for a post I did in March. I feel the same way about Graphic Novels. They aren't a genre, they're a type of book. I guess another pet peeve of mine are people, like Gurdon and the angry parent, who judge a book "by its cover".
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