Books for Teens with Heavy Themes

[Selena_Kitt]

Publishers Rolling out Books for Teens with Heavy Themes

"One publisher is venturing beyond its titles on dragons and bunnies with "Claiming Georgia Tate," about a 12-year-old girl whose father pressures her into a sexual relationship and makes her dress like a prostitute. In "Looking for Alaska," prep-school students watch pornography and pass the time binge-drinking. Coming this fall is "Teach Me," in which a male high-school teacher has sex with a student."


This is stuff right from the headlines...!

Whoa... I was shocked... is it a good thing (realism and all) or a bad thing (influence)???

 

[Samandiriel]

Publishers Rolling out Books for Teens with Heavy Themes

"One publisher is venturing beyond its titles on dragons and bunnies with "Claiming Georgia Tate," about a 12-year-old girl whose father pressures her into a sexual relationship and makes her dress like a prostitute. In "Looking for Alaska," prep-school students watch pornography and pass the time binge-drinking. Coming this fall is "Teach Me," in which a male high-school teacher has sex with a student."


This is stuff right from the headlines...!

Whoa... I was shocked... is it a good thing (realism and all) or a bad thing (influence)???

It is shocking and gives kids the wrong messages especiall toward women and healthy sexual relationships.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Back in the seventies my librarian kept ordering the newest Young Adult boooks- like "The Pigman" "My Darling, My Hamburger" "Are You There, God..."
I refused to read them. I wanted sci fi and fantasy books, so I read Tolkien, Lovecraft and Poe, Le Guin, Asimov and Heinlien, and then went into the adult section and read Gore Vidal, John Irving, John Updike, Vladimir Nabokov...

Will these new books be a help or a hindrance? It would depend on the author and the publisher, really. Although they are all coming out in a close period of time, you can't really lump them together.

Well... considering how much committee writing is going on, maybe you can...

 

[Munachi]

i'd say it depends on the books - i.e. how they deal with the topic and all. i had phases in my teenage years where i read a lot of books about serious topics. when i was 11 or 12 my favourite books, for example, would be non-fiction about street-children and child labour in south america. a bit later i'd read books about teenages with alcohol problems, or who get sexually abused, or who run away from home for some reason. these books, though, were written in a way that wouldn't influence you badly - first of all because those easily influenced in the wrong way wouldn't read them anyway (if they read at all) but rather by kids that are interested in that there are bad things in the world and "what can be done against them".

if a book would present these things as cool, or also if it has a too dark outlook on the world (sad ending, message of that some people are just lost, no matter what) then they might not be good for teenagers. so it all depends.

 

[oggbashan]

At one time the books in the teenage section of our local library, and in school libraries, seemed to all about 'Issues'.

There were no stories that were just there to enjoy reading.

That's not new. The Religious Tract Society in the late 19th Century produced hundreds of titles of apparently normal children's books but all had a heavily overt Christian message 'Daughter's prayer saves drunken dad from himself'; 'Friend drags petty thief to church to confess his sins and to become a missionary to the Colonies...'

Children were given them as school prizes and also for birthday and Christmas presents. Relations who gave 'real' children's books were appreciated.

At one time my shop had hundreds of Religious Tract Society books, many obviously unread in a hundred years. They look good on a shelf, but to read? I'd rather read the collected sermons of an obscure preacher - there might be some unconscious humour in the sermons - there was none in the RTS books.

Enid Blyton's books were removed from some school libraries in the 1970s because they didn't have a message. Now she is becoming popular again as reading practice.

Og

 

[R. Richard]

I can't write about underage sex in Literotica, but they can teach it to school kids? Somewhere there is a disconnect.

I grew up [or whatever I did] in the very mean streets of several inner cities. I saw 14/15-year-old girls working as 'ho's, but I never read about it. I saw teenagers and even pre-teen kids doing dope. [By the way, they could buy it from teachers at school.] I never read about real hard-core teenage dope experiments. The scumbags just pretended that none of it happened.

I wonder what the new trend means?

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Back in the seventies my librarian kept ordering the newest Young Adult boooks- like "The Pigman" "My Darling, My Hamburger" "Are You There, God..."
I refused to read them.

oh I read them... along with everything else I could get my hands on

But the most risque thing out there was Judy Blume's "Forever" for pete's sake... now we're talking about books that have oral sex parties in them, kids watching porn, and where fathers have sex with 12 year olds and teachers have sex with students....

now, I'm not a prude, really, by a long shot... I just wonder if kids should be reading this stuff? I guess times change... and literature reflects the times... who would have thought the 70's would be labeled a kinder, gentler era?

 

[Stella_Omega]

O tempora, O mores!
We don't know what the messages will be in these books, yet, either- I'm willing to bet that Just Say No will be written BIG across every page.

Did you read "The Strawberry Statement" which was offered by Scholastic Books in my junior high year? It was about the Kent State uprising.

 

[Tom Collins]

I read my first novel when I was 11. It was Crewel Lye : A Caustic Yarn by Peirs Anthony. It's part of the Xanth series and is very adult. After that I went back to the begining of the series and read it right through, though I have to admit that I quit reading the series after something like the 20th installment...lol...There's a ton of adult themes in those books. Anthony was my favorite writier for a very long time. Until I discovered Heinlien, that is.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

I was reading Stephen King when I was 11... there's anal sex in "Carrie"... :x who knew!? Not MY mom!

But still... there seems to be a difference between books like that (written for adults) and books written GEARED toward teens with "adult themes"... if that makes sense... and I'm not even sure I can put my finger on what or why...

 

[Tom Collins]

I was reading Stephen King when I was 11... there's anal sex in "Carrie"... :x who knew!? Not MY mom!

But still... there seems to be a difference between books like that (written for adults) and books written GEARED toward teens with "adult themes"... if that makes sense... and I'm not even sure I can put my finger on what or why...

I'd say the difference is like Joe Camel. You wouldn't want people using cartoons to deliberately influience children.

In the case of the books, it's one thing if they pick up a book like that on their own, but these books are specifically aimed at them and that's what bothers you.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

I'd say the difference is like Joe Camel. You wouldn't want people using cartoons to deliberately influience children.

In the case of the books, it's one thing if they pick up a book like that on their own, but these books are specifically aimed at them and that's what bothers you.

Yeah, I guess... it's just the exposure of so much, so fast, so young... how readily available it is... the Internet is full of porn, parental controls or not, for kids to look through... when I was a kid, we had to actually find someone's dad's magazines! <grin> It wasn't that the sex and the drugs and all the rest of it didn't exist... it did, and we could find it if we wanted...

but it wasn't being mass-marketed to us... I guess they figure, "Kids are being exposed to this kind of thing, anyway, they might as well have some idea of how to handle it."

maybe I'm just stunned that kids really ARE being exposed to this kind of thing on a daily basis. :x

 

[sweetnpetite]

Back in the seventies my librarian kept ordering the newest Young Adult boooks- like "The Pigman" "My Darling, My Hamburger" "Are You There, God..."
I refused to read them. I wanted sci fi and fantasy books, so I read Tolkien, Lovecraft and Poe, Le Guin, Asimov and Heinlien, and then went into the adult section and read Gore Vidal, John Irving, John Updike, Vladimir Nabokov...

Will these new books be a help or a hindrance? It would depend on the author and the publisher, really. Although they are all coming out in a close period of time, you can't really lump them together.

Well... considering how much committee writing is going on, maybe you can...

You've just pointed out something I was about to say. Which is that it's really nothing new. "My darling My Hamburger" is about a girl who ends up having an abortion. Judy Blume was always getting in trouble for her frankness. In the article, one mom says she wishes that books had RATINGS!! like movies. I am personally appalled by the idea!!!!!! No ratings on books. I will be ashamed to be an American when that day comes.

 

[Tom Collins]

Yeah, I guess... it's just the exposure of so much, so fast, so young... how readily available it is... the Internet is full of porn, parental controls or not, for kids to look through... when I was a kid, we had to actually find someone's dad's magazines! <grin> It wasn't that the sex and the drugs and all the rest of it didn't exist... it did, and we could find it if we wanted...

but it wasn't being mass-marketed to us... I guess they figure, "Kids are being exposed to this kind of thing, anyway, they might as well have some idea of how to handle it."

maybe I'm just stunned that kids really ARE being exposed to this kind of thing on a daily basis. :x

It's only been in the last 70-80 years that we, as a culture have decided that children ought to be sheltered from the realities of adult life, but everyone alive now has the idea that that's how it's always been. That's why you hear people say, "These kids now a days are growning up so fast." 500 Years ago a child understood how harsh life is very early because it was on their doorstep morning, noon and night. Back then it wasn't the "realities of adult life", it was the "realities of life".

I don't think that these books will infulience teens in a negative way if their parents have done a proper job of raising them. It might even be a good thing for them. Maybe some 14 yo girl will read the one about the girl who's forced into prostetution by her father and decide that her life's work will be to stop such things from happening because up until that moment she had no clue that something like that could happen.

 

[sweetnpetite]

If kids are going to read at all (and few really do anyway making it practically a mute point) they are going to want to read books that deal with situations they can actually identify with. (although some will want to read Tolkien and so forth that is even further of a minority) They do not want sugar coated crap that some adult *thinks* there life is or should be like. I didn't when I was a teenager, and teens today don't either.

We had TV for our idealized childhood and youth. I would hate to see our literature being reduced to the level of saved by the bell where one pill always leads to an addiction and the biggest problem a kid seems to face is weather or not to smoke cigarettes.

I think books and literature are all about dealing with lifes difficult choices, and seeing how others deal with them, and seeing how other people might react differently and all different points of views. Reading novels is where I learned that people think differently about things, feel differently- and that I don't always have to agree with them, but I might like to read the story about the bad girl who did the things I would never dare to do, or even about the good girl who was much more virtuous than I knew how to be.

I remember as a teen, reading material was the one place you could find that would be frank and honest about what was really going on in our lives, in the world. Judy Blume, 17 magazine, ect. ect. They opened up our minds and looked right inside and got to the heart of our REAL concerns. TV and movies and music was either naughty or whitewashed but really didin't have that integrety of truth that you would find in a book.

And even then, some books were trash, some were good, some were great, some had terrible messeges, some had no answers at all. But books generally make you think, and by limiting what you can read, you limit what you can think. I don't think we give teens any credit by saying that a book about stuff that we don't agree with is going to influence them beyond repair. Like they can't read a book and still think for themselves? Most teens who read are pretty good at thinking for themselves. We have a lot more to worry about the kids who aren't reading than the few who might be reading some 'objectionable' things.

Anyone remember comic books? They were considered objectionable so they started an approval system and turned them all soft. Parents felt like they were junk and they rotted your brain. They hated them. Well, gee, I think the WWII generation that grew up on comic books turned out all right! Now they say anything that gets kids reading is good. I say books that help them deal with what's really going on in there lives is good.

And I don't think there's a disconnect at all between adults not being able to read about underaged sex on Literotica (you can find it elsewhere and it's not even illegal) and TEENS reading about things TEENS do in school. I used to always say, "If they made a movie about what life was really like for us, we wouldn't be allowed to see it because of the rating." (Good Example: American Pie)

 

[sweetnpetite]

It's only been in the last 70-80 years that we, as a culture have decided that children ought to be sheltered from the realities of adult life, but everyone alive now has the idea that that's how it's always been. That's why you hear people say, "These kids now a days are growning up so fast." 500 Years ago a child understood how harsh life is very early because it was on their doorstep morning, noon and night. Back then it wasn't the "realities of adult life", it was the "realities of life".

I don't think that these books will infulience teens in a negative way if their parents have done a proper job of raising them. It might even be a good thing for them. Maybe some 14 yo girl will read the one about the girl who's forced into prostetution by her father and decide that her life's work will be to stop such things from happening because up until that moment she had no clue that something like that could happen.

Great post!!!! I'm glad to see that someone's on my side

I'm suprised how many *authors* are bent up about 'adult themes'-- don't you all remember your teen years? Your life was full of 'adult themes.'

 

[sweetnpetite]

more from the article:

To offer some parental guidance in this fast-changing arena, Weekend Journal sorted through more than 100 of the season's talked-about teen titles. We kept our eye out for literary merit and great stories, and also looked for themes that parents might want to know about. One discovery: The subject matter is rarely clear from a book's title or graphics. "Rainbow Party" features tubes of lipstick on the cover -- though it isn't about girls discussing makeup, but a teen oral-sex party. We also found that girls are the main target audience here, reflecting publishers' belief that more teen girls than boys read. (The idea is that boys stick to fantasy epics.) That helps explain why there are more controversial girl-oriented titles, like "Alice on Her Way," about a 16-year-old who spends a weekend in Manhattan on a class trip.

Publishers say the mature material simply reflects the culture teens are exposed to today, and may help them to process situations they've heard about or experienced. In some cases, they add, the themes help advance a moral message: "Rainbow Party," for example, teaches children about the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, says Rick Richter, president of Simon & Schuster's children's division, which published the title. He adds that he'd be happy to have his 13-year-old daughter read it.

Industry analysts say editors have been emboldened to go beyond the bad behavior of the '80s "Sweet Valley" novels, because of a few risque-fiction success stories. Last year's "How I Live Now," aimed at children 12 and older and featuring an affair between teen cousins, won the 2005 Michael L. Printz Award for young-adult literature. Many more have been commercial hits, including the "Gossip Girl" series, for readers 15 and up, with seven installments since 2001 and more than two million books in print. (Most young-adult titles sell fewer than 20,000 copies, analysts say.) The "A-List" novels, about rich teens looking for trouble, have had 945,000 books printed since 2003, while last year's "The Clique," a chronicle of spoiled middle-school girls, is already a three-book series with 1.15 million copies in print.

LOL,

I'm laughing becaue "Sweet Valley High" wasn't the standard for teen fiction. I read all kinds of teen books that fit that type of description- you couldn't tell from the cover that the book was about teen suiside, abortion, sex, masturbation ect. They are comparing today with a fictional yesterday, using a few 'clean cut' examples when that's not all that was out there- and it never has been.

And there are still clean cut titles available today just as there always has been those too. Our children will gloss right over 'rainbow party' and talk about how the stories there kids are reading are so much more shocking than the "Harry Potter" of there generation!

 

[Tom Collins]

LOL,

I'm laughing becaue "Sweet Valley High" wasn't the standard for teen fiction. I read all kinds of teen books that fit that type of description- you couldn't tell from the cover that the book was about teen suiside, abortion, sex, masturbation ect. They are comparing today with a fictional yesterday, using a few 'clean cut' examples when that's not all that was out there- and it never has been.

And there are still clean cut titles available today just as there always has been those too. Our children will gloss right over 'rainbow party' and talk about how the stories there kids are reading are so much more shocking than the "Harry Potter" of there generation!

If I had an 11yo I'd talk them into reading The Earth's Children Series by Jean M. Auel. I think that would be old enough to understand what's going on and ask about anything they don't.

 

[FallingToFly]

TC: Anthony is still one of my favorites, I'm an active collector of his stories. Shade of the Tree is absolutely incredible.

Apparently, no one else ever read the Loveline or Lifeline (one of the two) stories for young adults. They were horrible- children dealing with sexual abuse, child abuse, drugs, drinking, sexual pressure, being baysitters for children in abusive situations, teen pregnancy... good books, but depressing as hell.

There were also several young adult/teen stories that were required reading in school that were just enormously adult- 13 is Too Young to Die comes to mind, as does Go Ask Alice. The thing is, there are a LOT of young adult books that you'd never think of as adult material, but oh my gods, are they. The Secret Diary series- sex, drinking, obsession, murder, suicide, crime sprees, psychopathic mental illness... it's great. Have you ever read any R.L. Stine or Christopher Pike? They're marketed as innocuous teen-scare books, and they are cover to cover violence, sex, drugs, etc, etc. Hmm.. the Fear Street stuff still gets to me, the Vampire Diaries was so horrid I put them down after the first one...

Seriously, the only differences about these "new" themes is that THIS is how they're being marketed.

If you don't believe me... well, try out Road to Nowhere. It's Christopher Pike (I'm pretty sure) and it's got some extremely adult themes as well as a very, very creepy premise.

 

[TheEarl]

I'm currently an avid fan of Melvin Burgess, whose books are technically classed in the 'young adult' section of the book store. His most famous book is 'Junk', about a 12 year old girl running away from her abusive father and moving through the world as a homeless kid in Bristol, eventually winding up in drugs and bad shit. Excellently written book and a great story. It's not a 'message'. It's not a cautionary tale. It's a well told, brilliantly written story, that's enthralling from start to end.

I don't see what's wrong with that. It tells life how it is.

The Earl
Also a Piers Anthony fan.

 

[Tom Collins]

TC: Anthony is still one of my favorites, I'm an active collector of his stories. Shade of the Tree is absolutely incredible.

I'm currently an avid fan of Melvin Burgess, whose books are technically classed in the 'young adult' section of the book store. His most famous book is 'Junk', about a 12 year old girl running away from her abusive father and moving through the world as a homeless kid in Bristol, eventually winding up in drugs and bad shit. Excellently written book and a great story. It's not a 'message'. It's not a cautionary tale. It's a well told, brilliantly written story, that's enthralling from start to end.

I don't see what's wrong with that. It tells life how it is.

The Earl
Also a Piers Anthony fan.

I'm still a fan of Anthony's. I still have all the books in the Xanth series that I read, cuz I might want to reread them some day. I've just stopped trying to keep up with it cuz he's still bloody writing it. I've also read the Incarnation of Immortality series at least five times. I've read other serise by him as well. He just stopped being my favorite when I discovered Heinlien is all.

Heinlien is much kinkier than Anthony.

 

[MagicaPractica]

There are a number of things to consider when looking at books like these for a school library. The two most important things is how the topic is handled and then the population of your students and parents. This is being marketed to high school libraries but will not appear in most because it isn't right for the parent population. It may show up in some city schools but even that will be limited. The problem in these books is not the subject matter but the explicitness of how it is handled.

I think we need books that deal with the tough subjects but we also have to be careful of how it is protrayed. You also have to realize that there are kids out there with t-shirts that read "friends with benefits" and their parents have no clue what that means. Kids are getting into things they may be physically capable of but not nearly mentally ready for. We can't close our eyes to that. Ignoring a problem will not make it go away.

Someone mentioned reading Heinlein as a teenager. Me too but think about some of the things that happened in some of his books.

 

[MagicaPractica]

I'm currently an avid fan of Melvin Burgess, whose books are technically classed in the 'young adult' section of the book store. His most famous book is 'Junk', about a 12 year old girl running away from her abusive father and moving through the world as a homeless kid in Bristol, eventually winding up in drugs and bad shit. Excellently written book and a great story. It's not a 'message'. It's not a cautionary tale. It's a well told, brilliantly written story, that's enthralling from start to end.

I don't see what's wrong with that. It tells life how it is.

The Earl
Also a Piers Anthony fan.

Melvin Burgess is an excellent author and I think "Doing It" is very realistic but just too much for most library's young adult sections. If you try to put it out, it'll just keep disappearing.

 

[AngeloMichael]

I'm still a fan of Anthony's. I still have all the books in the Xanth series that I read, cuz I might want to reread them some day. I've just stopped trying to keep up with it cuz he's still bloody writing it. I've also read the Incarnation of Immortality series at least five times. I've read other serise by him as well. He just stopped being my favorite when I discovered Heinlien is all.

Heinlien is much kinkier than Anthony.

Anthony is a mediogre (couldn't resit ) writer, imo, especially when compared to George R.R. Martin, R. Scott Bakker, Greg Keyes, Phil Pullman, even Steven Erikson. I've read the Incarnations series and the Adept series and the Mode series and found them enjoyable but kind of hokey.

What surprises me is that no one makes much of a stink about Anthony. In his books you've got older men professing their desire for "young flesh" and this is a protagonist, you've got prepubesent kids naked and frolicking and "playing" at sex, and you have a teenage girl that sufferes from the trauma of being raped at a party and before that when she was nine years old one of her friends' fathers bribed her into letting him lick her slit. The way she resolved the party rape was done well enough I suppose, but how she was helped into resolving being molested by an adult made me raise an eyebrow. She needed to accept that it felt good and stop feeling guilty for being made to feel good by something like that.

I just find it strange that Anthony gets away with writing things like this, in books geared to teens no less. I am ok with it because I'm one of those that thinks if the person is old enough to comprehend the material written, they are old enough to read it and make their own opinions about it. But I do feel that disconnect talked about earlier that these books can be published in the mainstrem and at Lit you can't write about tow seventeen-year-olds having vanilla sex.

 

[English Lady]

I read Piers Anthony's Xanth series in my teens too, I must say i've read none since but I'd like to read them again, magical. My husband is a big fan of his Mode series, and he read these as a teen, the main character is suicidal, and in the very first book you get a disturbing insight into how her mind works. He found it a very helpful book to read, as he's struggled with depression and suicidal urges since being in his teens.

I think adult themes have always exsisted and always will, the thing is a child has to seek out these books to read them, and a teen is just as likely to stop reading a story they don't like or don't understand as quickly as an adult is. So I guess, the guys and gals reading these adult themes will be able to deal with them. It's not like peer pressure is as evident in book reading as it is in film viewing.