Teen books
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Thu, 12 Nov 1998 10:52:51 +1100
I find it a real shame that `teenage books' are seen as 1) automatically
bad literature and 2) To be read by teenagers only. I've been a kind of
teenage literary crusader for some years now - I got so sick of any
literature about or for teenagers having either to be a mere framework in
which every teen issue (drugs, pregnancy etc etc) could be inserted to make
it worthy, or to be utter tosh for teenagers with, it is assumed by book
companies, half formed brains and vocabularies. I didn't see why books
about teenagers could be of interest to adults (it may even help them
remember what it was like and how difficult it could be). The sad thing is,
the industry limps on, resting on all these cliches, and no one does
anything about it.
In my own novel I aimed to shoot down both of these cliches. I steered way
clear of issues (which most teenagers I know run a mile from anyway) and
attempted to write something about teenagers that adults enjoyed. I must
have been on the right track because the play I based on it eventually won
a national award.
`Catcher' was undoubtedly an influence on this position and on the book
itself. It's one of the few books that satisfy both criteria, and it's a
shame it didn't start off a whole genre by itself - the Thinking Person's
Teen Novel.
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
@ THE INVERTED FOREST www.angelfire.com/pa/invertedforest
> First of all I find it very sad that CITR would be categorized in the
> same section as The Babysitter's Club. Your post reminds me of a
> teacher I had in 6 grade who would become very angry at a student if
> they read a book that was not a young adult book. I read Lord of the
> Flies and she became furious, a fellow student of mine read a John
> Grisham book and she yelled at him because he was too young to read a
> book with sex in it. I have a lot of anger towards young adult books
> because that was what I was forced to read in middle school when I
> really wanted to read great literature. That is why I am angered when
> I hear that CITR is categorized as a young adult book.
> -Liz Friedman
> >
>
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