Teenage fiction

How has my understanding of children’s literature and the issues surrounding it developed through our recent focus on teenage fiction?

I have become aware that there is a huge range of material encompassed by the term ‘children’s literature’ – from Peepo! to Junk. Children vary enormously from three to seventeen, and therefore what they read varies, but also how and why they read. I have become conscious that I read differently now from how I did as a teenager – that is I respond to texts differently and take different things from them. The girl that Stephen interviewed said that she thought Wolf was mainly about how every person has a front. When I read it I thought it was about people’s need for stability, in the people and the place of their home. This perhaps reflects the fact that the 16 year old girl is going through a period of her life where she is concerned with the inner self (Appleyard, 1991). Perhaps I am at a place in my life where stability is more relevant, and therefore that is what I saw in the same narrative.

Reading and thinking about teenage fiction has led me to formalise my thoughts about the various purposes for reading. I have been aware of my own differing reasons for reading; when I read romance novels and Sweet Valley High my motivations are not the same as when I read Dostoyevsky. I knew that reading was important to me for various reasons, and now have begun to think about how and in what ways reading is a beneficial experience for me. I’ve begun to contrast what reading means for me know to what it has meant to me in the past, specifically during my adolescence. As Appleyard (1991) outlined, the reason for reading can change radically during teenage years in response to changes in the way that they think about the world. Specifically, the idea of the inner self and the ability to think abstractly about theoretical possibilities develop during teenage years. This is reflected in the way that teenagers read and what they look for in what they read.

Appleyard (1991:100) identifies teenagers’ three main purposes for reading: involvement and identification with the character; realism; and because it makes one think. How do Junk and Wolf stand up in this light?
Junk is written in multiple narratives from the various main characters’ points of view. This means that there are several characters with whom the reader can identify. The characters are the same age as the target audience and the tone of each narrative is friendly and confidential, like a friend talking to the reader. This helps the reader identify with the characters. In comparison, Wolf has one central character, Cassie, who is quite particular. I identified with her relatively easily, but can imagine that many readers would not feel that they had much in common with her.

Wolf tells Cassie’s story as she goes to find her mum in a squat and gradually discovers who her dad is. In some respects it is well rooted in mundane, real aspects of life and in other respects it seems almost fantastical. The people that live in the squat, her mum, her mum’s boyfriend and his son lead lives which seemed not entirely realistic to me, or perhaps just out of my experience. Junk, on the other hand, is about events that are far from my direct experience yet seems authentic and real. I agree with Tim Bowler (2004) that teenagers can smell bullshit a mile off; authenticity was certainly essential to me as an adolescent reader. It is still the first thing I look for when reading children’s fiction as an adult.

Wolf did make me think a little about stability and conflicts of loyalty, but it didn’t provoke any lasting thoughts. I can see the girl in Stephen’s interview’s point that the references to the IRA would not have been interesting or even understood by many teenagers. However, I found Junk to be thoroughly thought provoking. I was conscious that it was trying to get me to understand how teenagers can become heroin addicts and prostitutes, and despite my consciousness, it worked. Gemma started off as someone from a respectable home, like me, and each of the steps she took seemed like steps I might take, if I was in the same situation. Junk made me want to be able to understand how people end up in different situations. It made me think about how I can leap to judgments with very little understanding.

The recentness of the construct of teenage-hood is important to remember. When I first read Melvin Burgess’ comment that there is very little written specifically for that age group, it didn’t seem very plausible. After all, there have always been people aged between 13 and 20, and for books have been produced for a significant while. However, having learnt that it is only relatively recently that literature has been written specifically for children, and the reminder that teenagers have only existed as we currently think of them since the 1950s, it makes more sense. Teenage is a difficult period where people are held by society to be neither children nor adults. They have most of the physical capacities of adults but society denies them the same rights and responsibilities, and ascribes them different roles.
As each child formulates a concept of what it is to be a child from those around them (Hollindale, 1997), in the same way teenagers construct what it is to be a teenager from the actions and views of those that make up the society in which they live. Literature can play a crucial role in this understanding of self. Reading about experiences beyond those in one’s own life provides more information from which to construct an idea of self. Both Junk and Wolf could be useful to a teenage reader in this respect
The media response to Junk has made me aware of how contentious teenage fiction can be, which makes me think of the need to defend particular books as a teacher. Whilst I am convinced of the benefits of reading widely for teenagers, I can see that it will be useful to be able to support my arguments with research and understanding. I agree with Tim Bowler that children are the future guardians of literature and I want to ‘share with them the things we care about in the hope that they may come to care about them, too.’

During our class discussion the commonly-held idea of ‘wanting to keep children innocent’ came up. While I’ve heard this before, reading Junk and thinking about the issues surrounding teenage fiction has really made me think about it. I’m struggling with the whole idea of preserving children’s innocence. Isn’t innocence ignorance? If so, isn’t the desire to keep children ignorant contrary to the desire to educate them? Chambers dictionary has several different definitions for innocence. The first is ‘free from sin; pure’. I can’t see that this definition is applicable though. Knowing about a sin is surely not the same as committing one. Junk is clearly not promoting ‘sin’ and is therefore unlikely to lead to young readers taking up the ‘sins’ it depicts. Perhaps this definition is more relevant: ‘Simple and trusting; guileless; artless’. This still leaves me with doubts. Whilst it seems laudable to want children to be able to trust, naturally and honestly, would it be best if they were able to make informed decisions about how, when and whom to trust? This idea of innocence perhaps makes sense with regard to very young children who are always in the care of their parents, but as Stephen pointed out, at what point should you introduce children/teenagers to information that they will need to make their own decisions? And when? Surely by the age of fourteen (the target age of Junk) children are making many decisions without their parents watching over them and cannot be expected to make sensible decisions if they have been denied knowledge upon which to base their decisions? I still have more questions than answers.



Appleyard, S.J. (1991) Becoming a Reader. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Bowler, T. (2004) Carnegie Medal Winning Acceptance Speech [Online] available at http://www.timbowler.co.uk/carnegiespeech.html [Accessed 27.01.09]

Hollindale, P. (1997) Signs of Childness in Children’s Books. Stroud: Thimble Press