A round up of WSJ #YASaves responses.

• Intractable Bibliophilia: "In YA parlance: O RLY?"
• One-Minute Book Reviews: "Cox Gurdon isn’t saying: Never read young-adult books. She’s saying: Know what’s in those books, and use judgment, as you would with movies."
• The Strangest Situation: "If you read about someone doing drugs, having sex, self-mutilating, feeling depressed, going through a trauma,  or living the brutal reality of poverty and violence, you'll be messed up or catch a mental illness like a bad cold?"
• A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy: "And, yes, it does cross the line from “what is right for my child” to “what is right for all children.” This article is full of “no parent in their right mind would want a child to read such garbage.”"
• Bookalious Pam: "I wish I had YA books to read then. I would have loved to have known other people had problems and I believe more than anything that YA Saves."
• Cheryl Rainfield: "I could not have survived my child- and teenhood without books. YA fantasy books helped me escape the abuse and torture I was living, and YA realistic books helped me feel less alone."
• Cecil Castellucci: "YA authors are not deliberately trying to write something that is horrible, or shocking, or going to get banned. YA authors are writing books the same way any other author does, word by word, in order to tell a story that wants to be told."
• Janet Reid, Literary Agent: "Stuff it."
• Jackie Morse Kessler: "These numbers show that issue novels such as Cheryl Rainfield’s Scars and Lauren Myracle’s Shine — two books also mentioned in the WSJ article — are not simply “relevant for the young.” They’re urgent for the young, and for their parents."
• Ellen Hopkins: "It is ludicrous to assume a teen who reads about cutting will choose to self-harm."
• Libba Bray: "They can push down the barricades of "them" & widen the circle of "us"."
• Tiger Beatdown: "Well, when I was a teen, I read a lot of dark books. And you know what? They were there for me in an extremely dark time, and they spoke to me in a way that other books did not."
• Adventures of a Guybrarian: "These are dark things that exist in life. Young adult literature seeks to shed light on this darkness, to give hope to young people who don’t have the benefit of life experience to give them the perspective to deal with it. It gives them a voice in the darkness that says: you are not alone, other people understand you."
• The New Yorker: "Though the adults in this fight believe it to be in many senses a new fight (because they think kids today face unprecedented horrors and, in Cox Gurdon’s case, because she thinks the books have an unprecedented luridness), it isn’t exactly new. And I don’t just mean that adults have always fought over what children should read. They have been having this exact conversation for awhile."
• Terrible Minds: "Adolescence is fucked up. Let me say that again, but with more letters and syllables for emphasis. Adolescence is fuuuuuu-huuuuuuuuh-uuuuuuuuuuucked up."
• Kyle Cassidy: "Which is sort of like standing in a mall parking lot and shouting "ALL CARS ARE RED!""
• Roger Sutton: "Give me an author who is truthful and talented; spare me an author who writes to save lives."
• Gayle Forman: "The offshoot of this is when something happened to the editor-in-chief or her best friend and she thinks it means it’s a trend so the story is assigned to a reporter who must hunt down people who fit into this trend, even if there are only five of them in the entire country. You can see why I left journalism?"
• NPR: "While the WSJ piece refers to the YA fiction view of the world as a funhouse mirror, I fear that what's distorted is the vision of being a teenager that suggests kids don't know pathologies like suicide or abuse unless they read about them in books."
• Malinda Lo: "The subtext of Gurdon’s essay is that YA literature has a responsibility to teens to show them a moral world. The problem is: Whose morals?"
• Martha Brockenbrough: "So in this case, the Wall Street Journal got it exactly backward."
• Salon: "Critics like Gurdon are forever holding the dregs of the present up against the best of the past, which is an unfair and highly loaded argument."

There are, of course, many, many more: See #YASaves. And if I've missed particularly strong responses to the piece, let me know in the comments!

Comments

[:paula]

Chuck Wendig = My Hero.

My response, from FB: Some teens have an appetite for the grotesque that far exceeds what they may find palatable later in life: I think it's part of the violent process of differentiating themselves from their parents. It comforts them to read fiction that mirrors their internal melodrama, savage fantasies, and occasional feelings of desolation. But there's also plenty of Rosemary Clement-Moore, Anna Godberson, David Levitan, E. Lockhart, and John Green - to read on days that aren't so bad.

[reader]

I don't know. Jeez. I'm not sure what I find more distasteful -- the generalization of the article or the constant hysteria in the YA community at every opportunity.

Dark is on shelves right now because it sells. I like contemporary YA. I don't see many new contemp YA authors getting book deals right now. That sadddens me. Everything is fantasy or dark or dystopian. But those tides will turn, just like they always do. What will not turn, seemingly, is the constant willingness of the YA community to get their collective panties in a bunch over jack sh*t nothing.

[Account Deleted]

I've posted a reply on my humble little blog. I think I've laid out better there than I could have in the comments here, if someone wants to check it out!!! :D :)

http://booksandhugs.wordpress.com/2011/06/05/books-save-lives

[muffin]

The ladies over at Forever Young Adult have a great response as well.

[Jennifer Kathleen Gibbons]

Hi, I wrote about the WSJ article today:
http://www.redroom.com/blog/jenniferkate/thats-how-the-light-gets-in-0#comment-74414