I grew up on a diet of mysteries and adventure stories. You
know the fare if you’re of my generation – Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, all
the Enid Blyton books, boarding school stories, the Black Stallion series,
Tolkien and The Hobbit and so on. Pure fun and escapism for the most part.
Books about divorce, suicide, drugs, depression and war just didn’t exist for
kids.
I loved books. I devoured books. And I wrote my own long
rambling stories, stealing plots and characters from my favourite books without
the slightest guilt. I think it’s because I wanted to be that character in the
book I was reading or writing – I wanted to ride that black stallion, crawl into
the smuggler’s tunnel, have midnight feasts at boarding school. Basically I
wanted to BE in the book. Do kids feel the same way about the books they read
today?
Kids today have access to such a wide range of books, much
more than I ever had. But what kind of books are they? In the latest Quill and
Quire I saw a review for a book which
deals with rape and suicide with the disclaimer that it might be too disturbing
to a twelve year old. Twelve? Really?
I’m not saying that there’s not an important place for this kind of book (I
wrote a young adult novel called If Only that deals with sexual assault) but
more and more I’m starting to think that the dark disturbing books are taking
over our library shelves and bookstores. There is even a recently published
picture book that is set in a concentration camp!
My nephew and daughter, both great readers, turned to fantasy,
I suspect, because they weren’t interested
in reading about contemporary teens with dreadful unhappy lives.
Back to my question: do kids want to be inside the book the
way I did? Some may identify with the character’s problems but do they actually
want to climb into the book and be that character? I’m not sure they do. And
for me, that was the magic of a really great kids book.
