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: reading
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, […]
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 […]
For the Last Time, the Internet is Not Ruining Reading
So look. I know it’s super trendy to claim that the Internet is destroying our ability to read, but it’s really, really not, and I’m tired of this trope. It’s up there with claims that textspeak is ruining literacy and that we have crossed the Rubicon when it comes to the sanctity of the English […]
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 […]
I Love Books. Let’s Make Them More Accessible.
I upset a number of people last year with some comments on books and class, and I’ve been filtering through and thinking about their responses rather than responding in haste. Some of the critique I received was thoughtful and well-merited: I didn’t clearly articulate what I was trying to say, I collapsed some things into […]
Stop Having a Cow Over New Words in the Dictionary, People
So every now and then there’s a news story about new words being added to the dictionary that’s framed as both hilarious and awful because they’re all horribly outré modern words that are all gross and icky. Most of them come from the internet, though others may incorporate other new usages in English. People express […]