For years, many parents have been asking why their kids spend hours watching TV, listening to music, or surfing the Internet without ever curling up with a book. Educators have also wondered why Johnny can’t—or won’t—read.
But now there’s another problem, and it involves some of the new novels that young people are reading. At least that’s what Sara Mosle, an editor for the New York Times Book Review, reported in a recent issue of the esteemed paper’s Sunday magazine.
According to Mosle, one recent novel in the “young adult” genre (which consists of books published for and marketed to readers aged 14 and under) features a teen who flips out, walks into the local liquor store, and guns down the owner. Another features two teens—a boy and girl—who run away from home and become heroin addicts. Another features a 13-year-old girl who is in love with an adult who happens to be a serial killer. Yet another features a history teacher who goes crazy and holds kids in his class hostage at gunpoint.
“Bleak books” is what people are calling such youth novels, and as Mosle reports in her Aug. 2 story: “Teenagers, to judge from these books, are growing prematurely gray, shouldering burdens far beyond their years.”
As Mosle writes, the books portray adults as “almost unrelievedly materialistic, self-absorbed, irresponsible, distrustful, physically or verbally abusive, [and] uninterested or incapable of communicating with their children—despite their literal cries for attention.”
Such books, many believe, merely express the gritty realities that some kids face today. But that’s not the experience of David Brown—a father of two high school-aged daughters, chairman of the department of English at the Highland Park (Texas) Independent School District, and the son of a Baptist minister.
“Here in my bubble, I don’t see a lot of kids reading that stuff, and even fewer living it,” says Brown, whose district—in the heart of north Dallas—is overflowing with families that are undoubtedly more religious, more affluent, and more committed to family values than the national norm.
So why “bleak books”?
“There is a growth of that kind of novel,” says Brown, “and that’s indicative of the diet that young adults are getting in music, TV and movies. There’s a natural carryover into literature.
“The bleak outlook of a lot of these books is an indication of the fact that there is a large segment of society—including thinkers, writers and normal, everyday people—who are without hope. They look at the world around them, and there is a lot of suffering and torment and death and decay. Because such evils often go unpunished or unrelieved this side of the grave, many develop world views that are dark, even hopeless. That perspective is represented in this literature.”
Brown believes the pervasive pessimism of some of the new novels may be bad for some kids, but “it’s also communicating incomplete stories. This doesn’t make it ‘bad’ literature, but we might call it ‘false’. Some older books may have been unrealistically hopeful, but I don’t think despair is the only answer.”
Instead of boycotting such books (“That only makes kids want to read them even more,” Brown says) he encourages kids to read books that present alternatives.
“There is some great literature being written that offers hope,” he says “and not in a syrupy, saccharine way.” But Brown isn’t talking about so-called Christian fiction. “It won’t do to tell your kids to go to the local Christian bookstore and pick up some of the stuff they try to pass off as good literature,” he says. “Much of it is inferior writing. It’s short on character development, stylistically mediocre, preachy and predictable. And the happy endings are not earned. Kids see through that. And if they don’t, they develop tastes in literature that the secular world accurately mocks.”
Get ready, youth workers of America: Instead of recommending Christian fiction, Brown suggests kids read mainstream novels that are just as realistic as the “bleak books,” but without all the doom and despair. In fact, he sings the praises of The Catcher in the Rye, a book which some Christians have worked to ban from public school libraries.
“What people don’t see is that this is a book full of hope,” says Brown. “It portrays despair and angst, but there are few things more uplifting than someone who encounters all of that and still holds as his objective in life to catch people before they fall off a cliff. Holden Caulfield is a catcher, not a releaser. He wants to rescue others.”
Below, Brown offers a short list of some of the novels he would recommend to students struggling with hopelessness and despair. (Note: Some of these books may include objectionable language. Others feature what could be defined as unsavory characters and dark scenarios. But they all offer hope—even if not through traditional Christian lingo.)
Books one can find on the “young adult” (ages 12-14) shelves
•The Crying for a Vision Walter Wangerin, Jr. (Aladdin Paperbacks, an imprint of Simon Schuster, 1996). Waskn Mani, the son of a Lakota woman and one of the stars in the sky, is torn between his devotion to the mystical world and his destiny of confronting the powerful, one-eyed warrior, Fire Thunder.
•The Giver Lois Lowry (Houghton Mifflin, 1993). In this futuristic story, a boy experiences something incredible and undertakes something impossible, and in so doing questions every value we take for granted and reexamines our most deeply held beliefs.
•A Ring of Endless Light Madeleine L’Engle (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1980). One of a series, this book continues the trials and triumphs of the Austin family. Also good is L’Engle’s Meg Murry trilogy beginning with A Wrinkle in Time, a classic that transcends age categories.
•Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength C. S. Lewis (MacMillan, 1965). These follow Elwin Ransom from one fascinating encounter with evil to another, and in the process, unfold for us a new Eden and the return of King Arthur to the 20th century.
•Ordinary People Judith Guest (Viking, 1976). Conrad, 17, returns home from a mental institution where he was sent after his brother’s accidental death—and his own ensuing suicide attempt. To begin a new life, he must learn to accept himself and those close to him.
•The Joy Luck Club Amy Tan (Putnam; Ballantine, 1989). Chinese-American daughters find conflict, love and connection with their mothers, who are haunted by their early lives in China.
•The Chosen Chaim Potok (Ballantine, 1967). Two Jewish fathers and their sons—one set of which is orthodox—struggle to cope with the changing world, their religion, and each other.
Books not written for young readers, but still recommended
•The Complete Stories Flannery O’Connor (Farrar Straus, 1971). Thirty-one stories provide a tragicomic vision of the Protestant South, each with protagonists who are offered the gift of grace. Most of them take it.
•A Prayer for Owen Meany John Irving (Morrow, 1989). In the summer of 1953, during a Little League baseball game, 11-year-old Owen hits a foul ball that kills his best friend’s mother. What happens after that day, as Owen and John grow to young adulthood, demonstrates the need for faith in everyday life.
•Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck (Penguin, 1937). Poor laborers in California, George and his half-wit friend Lennie cling together in the face of loneliness and alienation until a crisis forces one of them to make a decision that will change their lives forever.
•Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe (Doubleday, 1959). The author seeks to overcome the stereotype of Africa as a “primitive” land by disclosing the Ibo culture, while reminding his people not to forget their genesis.
