#YAsaves

This is old news but important anyway, so we apologize for getting it up here late. On June 4 the Wall Street Journal ran an article by Meghan Cox Gurdon on the topic of young adult fiction. Specifically, she asserts that most young adult (YA) fiction is dark, violent, horrible, etc. The article contains stuff like this:

If books show us the world, teen fiction can be like a hall of fun-house mirrors, constantly reflecting back hideously distorted portrayals of what life is. There are of course exceptions, but a careless young reader—or one who seeks out depravity—will find himself surrounded by images not of joy or beauty but of damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds.

I stopped reading the thing somewhere around there, annoyed by the whole tone and not interested in feeling defensive about this category I spend much of my life reading and selling. It doesn't sound like she even reads YA for fun, so I felt okay dismissing the whole thing to save myself from a weekend of teeth-gnashing.

Well, one of the reasons I love YA is that the community of people who read, write, publish, review, and sell these books are particularly awesome and loyal people, and I should've known that the responses to this article would be worth keeping an eye on. Compiled below are some of my favorite responses so far.

Banned Books Week: Friday

Yeah, we got off track, day-wise. But this is the final post in the series, so here goes.

What is probably the locally best-selling young adult novel of the last few years (and selling like hotcakes nationally as well), Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian has had its fair share of book challenges since its debut.

It was actually pulled out of classrooms and libraries in Missouri and Oregon. Alexie, charming as ever, has given a bunch of great quotes in the various articles about his books being challenged (a quick online search will uncover other challenges and other articles). But instead of linking to him talking about book banning, I'm just going to link to him talking about one of the "controversial" scenes in the book. Here's Bookshelves of Doom's "If you don't have a crush on Sherman Alexie after watching this, well, we've got a problem" post with the video. Don't worry, BoD. We always did and always will. But y'all should watch that video regardless. (The audio may be, as the kids say, mildly NSFW- not safe for work. But it's really not particularly shocking.)

-Anna, Kids Books

P.S. Remember my first banned book post about Speak? That school district is now taking the book challenge under consideration. All three of those books are great, by the way. And we carry each one, because books need readers and readers need books. In the end, the best anti-book-banning thing we can do is keep reading whatever we want to, and keep pointing it out when someone tries to prevent people from reading what they want. (And maybe to do what authors often do: if you hear that a book gets banned somewhere, send their local public library a few copies so they can keep it in circulation. Couldn't hurt!)