Children’s Literature and the Issues Surrounding it

Children’s Literature and the Issues Surrounding it

It’s a minefield! Parents want to protect their children, teachers want to get teens reading and most teens could not care less about books. Are we going too far in wrapping them up in cotton wool? Are they as Burgess claims already exposed and desensitised to a world of sex, drugs and violence. Why are books sanctified as a form of entertainment, yet film and television can explore issues that are taboo in teen literature freely? If attitudes towards childhood and adolescence are changing, as is natural with any social construct, literature should reflect this. Choice at least should be offered, not all teens are going to want to read about the dark, frightening issues presented in a few brave teen novels, but some will and for those teens the books should be there for them to read.

My viewpoint on the issue of what is and is not appropriate for the category of teen literature has changed over the course of two weeks. Reading the extracts from Junk in class I was immediately hooked, Burgess had reeled me in. I was convinced that Junk should be read by teens. I do not think we should mollycoddle young people; we should talk about issues, open up communication and place trust in young people to make informed decisions. Junk is far more effective in presenting the facts than any government approved website, however ‘young person friendly’ it might be. However, as I became enveloped in the world of Junk my certainty wavered. The story stayed with me after I put it down, I could not read it late at night, the plot remained in my thoughts, if it affected me like that how would it affect teens? My concern was not like lots of other critics of the book that it glamorised and encouraged drug taking, it certainly does not, but it does require an emotional intelligence from the reader.

Reflecting on this I realised that we cannot judge the suitability of a book for teenagers based on an adult’s reading of it. When we read we are protected by our own imagination. The author relies on direct and indirect reader experience to build the story. We cannot therefore judge whether a book is suitable for teenage readers based on our adult reading of the book. At a younger age I do not think I would have been as haunted by the scenes of drug taking and prostitution because my understanding of the issues would have limited my reading of the book. Burgess, when asked if his children had read the novel, said that both of his sons had, he felt one had read it too young, he explained “it didn’t do him any harm, but if you read these books too young a lot of it just goes over your head”. This is illustrated in Stephen’s interview with a young person who felt that it was not relevant that Cassy’s father in Wolf was a terrorist, he could have been a murderer, it was a detail added to build the father’s character. Readers attach significance to plot subjectively prioritising issues in the text according to the reader’s reality.

So what makes a teen novel? The group’s reading histories reassured me that I was not the only one to have stopped reading for pleasure around my early teens. Appleyard (1991) confirms this experience as all too common, so, what does it take to hook a teen reader, as Burgess hooked me as an adult? What are teenagers concerned with and what gets them reading? As pointed out in Stephen’s podcast exploring these questions involves making generalisations about teenage readers based on those young people that do read, a minority group, however looking at those that do not read and what they want in books is a different issue.

Appleyard (1991) explores teen novels in depth arguing that teen readers want novels to reflect their reality. Darker themes of sex, violence and crime are prevalent in teen novels matching their realisation that the world is not wholly innocent. We see as the readership of the Harry Potter books aged the issues tackled by Rowling became more adult, dealing with real consequences, seen in the death of Cedric (The Goblet of Fire). Junk ends unnervingly with Tar held in the web of addiction. Although claiming to be ‘clean’ his inconsistent story leaves the reader questioning whether he is as close to recovery as he claims. Unlike children’s novels that typically restore order and safety by the end of the narrative, teens want a book to be true and to match their newly forming views of the world.

Central figures in a narrative must also match the reader’s reality; characters in teen novels are more complex and sophisticated than in children’s fiction, seen in Ursula Le Guin’s, A Wizard of Earthsea. Writing ‘real’ characters is important because as Appleyard argues, when talking about books teens comment almost entirely on their identification with characters and situations, making few references to plot and structure. The characters in teen novels that are most likely to secure a teen readership homogenise into a group of misunderstood, sensitive individuals in limbo between the adult and child world. Identification is commonly fostered in fiction through the use of first person narrative, revealing the inner thoughts of the central character. Burgess when asked about his use of multiple narratives in Junk said that he wanted the reader to feel like “each character was whispering in their ear”. The technique of first person narrative also exemplifies the discrepancy between thoughts and actions increasingly apparent to adolescents (Broughton, 1978).

Biographies also provide a realistic account of experiences for some young people and, in the same way that Junk feels like the sharing of secret thoughts and feelings, a biography can also feel like a private conversation with the author. Ravi (17), a boy interviewed by Appleyard, enjoyed reading biographies and felt reassured by the winding route that “great people” took to find their place in society. He felt he could identify with the authors because he was making a lot of choices at that time and was unsure about the decisions he was making. Uncertainty is perhaps at the forefront of teen readers’ minds and we can see here how identifying with people in literature can act as a comfort. Making links between the text and reality shows the third aspect that teens look for in literature according to Appleyard, something that makes them think. This involves thinking about the message and meaning of a text.

I question whether the significance placed on realism, identification, and the power to make you think in a teen book is so different to what an adult reader looks for in a good book. This is perhaps not surprising as adolescence is the transition from childhood to adulthood. When I read I look for a reality to pin the novel on to, unconsciously looking for ties with my own life. To grip a reader a book needs to have some relevance to the reader’s life, teens feel the same. Perhaps the main difference between adult and teen books is the age of the central figure. However, teens read and enjoy adult books and adults can read and enjoy teen books. Therefore perhaps the difference is not the book itself but the reader’s response, as I have already alluded to, a reader will respond to a text according to their age and their own reality, not necessarily in a way that we might predict.