Debates over ‘age appropriate’ literature tend to talk down to children, underestimate young readers, and put value judgements on creative work.
What is age-appropriate fiction, really?
Tag: books
Stop hiding behind ‘quality’ to avoid conversations about diversity
The ‘quality’ arguments surrounding diverse books are bogus red herrings designed to cover up for systematic representational problems.
On policing reading choices
Books are amazing, and so are the people who read them — no matter who they are, and no matter what they’re reading. I confess that not every book is to my taste, but that’s all right, because they have plenty of readers who love them just fine. And I don’t believe that my dislike […]
Stop writing YA for adults
I am, as we know, a voracious reader of young adult fiction. I find it deeply enjoyable. My collection of young adult at this point outstrips my adult shelves, and we haven’t even gotten into my growing assortment of middle grade books. I love books for young readers. I love reading about them, I love […]
Bad behaviour: Authors versus teen reviewers
We’re all subject to criticism, and the larger our profiles, the louder, more distributed, and more intense the criticism tends to be. Authors certainly endure their share of bad reviews, and have a variety of ways of dealing with them, from refusing to read discussions of their work to thoughtfully reading and digesting critique. Some, […]
Pop culture and the modern funeral
The funeral is an everpresent force in pop culture, particularly on television, where in long-running serial storytelling, people at some point have to die—from a cynical perspective, to drive the plot forward, but also from a purely practical one, to accommodate actors who want to leave programmes before the end. This means that we tend to […]
Pop culture and the diversity triangle
Of late, we have seen diversity explode onto the pop culture scene. While the concept of ‘diversity’ has always been a lurking buzzword, the establishment is finally starting to take it seriously in response to consumer pressure — and to be clear here, when I talk about ‘diversity,’ I mean representation across all minorities, not […]
Not rewarding something isn’t actually censorship
Over the summer, something very troubling happened: The Romance Writers of America listed a romance set in a concentration camp as a finalist for the Rita, its most prestigious award, the community fought back, and the board issued a statement betraying a fundamental lack of understanding about the issues at hand. That For Such A Time made it […]
Is the YA Takeover About Stress?
Reams and reams and reams have been written about the alleged YA takeover; honestly, it’s a good thing that print media is dying (allegedly) because otherwise entire continents would have been denuded of forests to accommodate the rage against the dying of the adult novel. If we are to believe the naysayers, adult YA readers […]
Why the Pushback on YA?
Every other week, it seems, I’m reading an article attacking young adult literature. It’s trashy, it’s too dark, it’s not dark enough, it’s juvenile, it’s too sexy, it focuses too much on girls…the list seems endless, as Aja Romano pointed out at the Daily Dot earlier this year. In response to every ludicrous opinion piece […]