YA brouhaha
when i was in NL for easter, i rummaged through the closet in the guest room, which has a bunch of crap in it. i found “fudgeamania” in there by judy blume and decided to read it again (last time i was 11, and this time it took me about an hour and a half to read). but judy blume! i forgot how funny a writer she is. so i was perusing the list of other books she’d written at the back, and i’m thinking to myself, she wrote a sex book, didn’t she? one for teens? hm….
i had to wikipedia her. “forever” was the book, and i remember reading it when i was 15 or 16. i read the synopsis and wow, no wonder i read it when i was 15 or 16! which got me thinking, you know, there’s a lot of young adult novels that have been in the news lately for having too much sexytimes in them, and they end up getting censored. (i follow a couple YA authors on twitter and keep up with the times that way.)
but really, YA novels have apparently ALWAYS been controversial, “forever” being one that has been banned, as well as a couple others by judy blume. (are there god? its me, margaret is always controversial – another one i read, at a younger age, too, i think.) judy blume wrote a lot of her books in the 70s, and thinking about other authors i read growing up, cynthia voigt, sweet valley high books, etc. etc., recent rumblings about john green’s 17-year-old characters not knowing how to give a BJ really is not that big, or new, of a deal.
which brings up two points: 1. either my parents didn’t know what i was reading and i was very good at hiding my books, or they realized the written word is important and reading is a key thing in life. and 2. teenagers are sexual beings, just like the rest of us past the age of 11-12. come on, it’s not like they don’t know how it feels to have these urges. a lot of them are reading these books and not doing anything. if teenagers are going to have sex. some book is not going to change his/her mind. i would guess the book-reading crowd is going to be less sexually active than the non-book-reading crowd. adults want to shelter their kids until they’re 30, but life just doesn’t work like that.
so i was wiki’ing my fave YA authors from when i was a YA, and i was thinking i might just pick up a few from the days of yore and read them again. see how steamy they really are.
2 thoughts on “YA brouhaha”
so i asked mom today whether or not she watched the books we read. she said she tried, but with three overachieving readers i the house, it was not something high on her list of things to do. she said she was pretty much only worried around the age of 12, and at that point we were all pretty much reading babysitter club books. i asked what about judy blume at age 15? apparently ok. when jane was 18, she told her smut should at least have a plot, and found a not-very-well-hidden girly mag in charlie’s room when he was 16 (that was the worst). she was more worried about the music charlie listened to than the books any of her girls read.
i tried to read lavyrle spencer when i was 6. i told mom, thinking she’d be impressed that i was reading such a grown up book. she quickly put the kabosh on that reading. after i read it as an adult, i’m not surprised.
what drives me nuts is when they sensor books that are based on the real lives of teens. kind of the like the bully movie. kids are hearing this language and being put in these situations on a daily basis. do you really think that by not letting kids read about real life that real life isn’t going to happen?? too many adults with their heads in the sand. :p