Taking the Y out of YA lit.

As a kid, I was always a fairly advanced reader. Not just in terms of reading ability, mind you, but in terms of content as well. I was reading Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park before I was out of elementary school, and was into John Grisham and Stephen King by middle school. My parents had strange policies when it came to monitoring what I read. They didn't care much about profanity or violence, but they drew a hard line on sexual content. So Congo, The Client, and The Shining were all okay, but Disclosure was not. Yeah, I don't know. It didn't make any sense to me, either.

So, like all good teenagers, I rebelled. I borrowed a copy of American Psycho from my friend and read it. Cover to cover. In a day. It changed everything. My perceptions about what was acceptable for violence, sexuality, and coarse language charged off into the distance, and I haven't really seen them since.

Adult literature isn't always intended for such a young reading audience. That's what young adult (YA) and teen literature is for, right? That's what I thought, until I started reading some YA/teen literature for myself. I have to be honest: even as an adult (in physical age only, certainly not in maturity), I was somewhat taken aback by the sheer brutality of some of the content.

For example, the Hunger Games trilogy recently concluded with the much-anticipated Mockingjay. While the first book in the series, The Hunger Games, was controlled in terms of violence... Mockingjay was not. Violence, torture, and brainwashing abound. Civilians being bombed to smithereens. And bear in mind the protagonists in this series are teenagers or younger. Suzanne Collins, to her credit, does show the psychological and emotional impact of the atrocities of war on children. Not that it softens the blow any, but it certainly makes it more realistic.

These books are in the teen section. That's a pretty wide age range in terms of potential readers. Would a high school student be forever scarred by reading these books? Probably not. Would a middle school student? Unlikely. But how many kids in elementary are reading teen books? Would you want your elementary school child to read about limbs being blown off? I wouldn't. If I had kids, that is.

This isn't a solitary occurrence, either. Michael Grant's Gone series and James Dashner's The Maze Runner series are also rather violent. And those are only the ones I've read, I suspect there are plenty more with similar content. It concerns me to know that my 12-year-old cousin could very well be reading the same books I found to be rather adult in nature.

So what does this mean? Should we pitch a fit and ban the books? Should we offer a caveat to potential buyers? Should the publishers put out less violent books aimed at kids? The answer to all these questions, of course, is no. For starters, we've been in a war for as long as many of these readers can remember. Turning on the news is just as bad as reading one of these books. Offering warnings to customers is great, but every child and teenager is different... and every parenting style, for that matter. And I'm not even going to discuss banning books.

The responsibility, ultimately, falls to the parents. Know what your child is reading, and realize the level at which they can read - both in terms of reading ability as well as content. Familiarize yourself with the hot books aimed at kids and teens. If you don't want to read them, or don't have time, ask one of your friendly Boswell booksellers. Heck, ask me. Come on up to the receiving door and knock and grill me about Mockingjay. We're booksellers. We don't mind. We'd love to help.
One last thing. If a kid really wants to read something, the kid will find a way to read it. Whether or not you allow it. Do you really think I didn't find a way to read Disclosure anyway?