Thanks to the power of Social Media, within minutes, Twitter was buzzing with rebuttal, all aimed at the Wall Street Journal, and a special Hashtag #YAsaves quickly became the third highest trending topic of the evening.
Where to even begin on this.... Firstly, addressing Gurdon's anecdote about the mother of the thirteen-year-old, I have one question- why not ask a bookseller for assistance? Seriously. There are lots of other YA fiction choices that are not dark, issue-based books, and a knowledgeable bookseller could have helped her to find something lighter and more fun, like, for example, the newly released Beauty Queens by Libba Bray. It's both clever, and laugh-out-loud funny, and no real beauty queens were harmed in the writing of this book. I'm quite certain that even Ms. Gurdon would have to admit that reading this is not going to turn girls into murderous beauty queens.
Now onto the heart of the matter- the purported unsuitability of gritty, and realistic fiction for teens. There is darkness in the world, and it is naive to try and pretend that there isn't. It is also naive to try and convince ourselves that teens are neither aware of this, and that their lives aren't affected by it, or to claim that our own teen years were all sunshine and rainbows.
Several years ago, Philomel Books published a collection of letters entitled Dear Author: Letters of Hope. The book is a collection of letters, written by tweens and teens to their favourite authors, sharing stories of how he/she was affected by reading the author's books. In a heartbreaking letter to Laurie Halse Anderson, a teenage girl details how she, like the protaganist in Speak had been date raped, and how reading the book gave her the courage to speak up and tell somebody what had happened to her. There are letters to Ellen Wittlinger, Christopher Paul Curtis, Chris Crutcher, and many others, and the teens in these letters have all had these difficult situations thrown at them. These books aren't published to be deliberately inflamatory, or with the intention of normalizing these behaviours. They are published because they reflect realities that many of us don't understand and need to. Their purpose is to get readers thinking and to send a message that no matter how bleak things might seem, there is someone out there who understands.
These books are not for everybody, but what right does one individual have to decide that they are inappropriate for the masses? The more aware teens are that these issues exist, the more we empower them to put a stop to the hate and ignorance that fuels world wars, and to make the world a better place. And in the end, isn't that what's really important?
