A Brouhaha in Full Force over the “Dark” Themes in YA Lit

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violenceFrom Publisher’s Weekly (June 9, 2011):

Are Teen Novels Dark and Depraved — or Saving Lives?
By Karen Springen

It’s been an interesting week in the teen-lit world. On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal published a story that said modern YA novels were “rife with depravity” and “so dark that kidnapping and pederasty and incest and brutal beatings are now just part of the run of things.” The piece immediately set off an Internet frenzy. That night, 13 Little Blue Envelopesauthor Maureen Johnson started the #YAsaves hashtag with this tweet: “Did YA help you? Let the world know how! Tell your story with a #YAsaves tag. And copy the @wsj for good measure.” Within hours, #YAsaves got 15,000 responses from regular readers and from such big-name writers as Judy Blume and Neil Gaiman. Bloggers — but also writers at major news outlets such as National Public Radio and New York magazine — weighed in.

 

The brouhaha is likely to heat up again soon when, according to Meghan Cox Gurdon, author of the story, the Wall Street Journal will “probably” publish a Part Two.
 
Cox Gurdon stands by her story, which she described as “an essay” in an email interview with Publishers Weekly, and shrugged off the naysayers. “Any piece of criticism is bound to be met with displeasure in some quarters,” she said. “What has most surprised me is the degree to which people have leapt off on tangents, and then tried to skewer me for things that I didn’t say. It’s almost comical how quickly a discussion of the content of books turns into wild-eyed accusations of censorship and banning.”
 
Her article “was not about YA literature in its whole but about the lurid elements of a growing number of books within the genre,” she said. The mother of five (including two teenagers), Cox Gurdon said her own kids read novels by contemporary YA authors, such as Judy Blundell, Sarah Dessen, Meg Cabot, and M.T. Anderson.  More from PW…
What do you think?
June 28, 2011: It seems the discussion isn’t over, as Meghan Cox Gurdon responds to her critics in a new essay: “My ‘Reprehensible’ Take on Teen Literature”

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