Adults Reading Young Adult Books?

This is a response to this article by Joel Stein, who clearly doesn't know what awesomeness he's missing. I do, I suppose, see his point about children's books, but sometimes people want to see what they missed by not reading a certain book as a child, and certainly there are some people who even in adulthood could learn a few things about being kind etc etc etc from children's books. And I agree that an adult reading a kids book in public can seem weird and embarrassing. My problem with this is that he doesn't seem to quite get the distinction between "children's book" and "young adult book".

Now, what do you think of as a children's book? The thing that comes to mind is a cardboard full-colour picture book, or, for older children, a not-very-thick book with large print and the occasional cartoon illustration, usually filled with great adventure in which nobody gets hurt and gets home in time for tea, or has at least some form of happy ending. And what about these books Mr Stein is referring to as children's books? Twilight; The Hunger Games - and now you'd all better pay attention because I won't be defending Twilight again anytime soon.

Fair enough, Twilight may seem melodramatic and some of the whole love triangle thing unappealing to many people over say fifteen, but vampires, werewolves, that level of romance, all topped off with the odd bloody battle - is that for children? Fantastic for "tween girls" - yes (it wasn't that long ago that I myself was a Twilight-obsessed "tween girl") - but maybe not so great for adults (especially adult males), but most definitely not for children.

And what about The Hunger Games? Well, I'm sure an innocent eight-year-old would absolutely love three full-length illustration-less novels documenting at best heartbreak and a bittersweet ending, and at worst the gruesome slaughter of teenagers forced by a violent dictatorship, followed by a political campaign to overthrow the corrupt government.

What I am saying is that, as I hope is obvious by now, young adult books are not children's books. Did Mr Stein not notice the bit in the title of the genre that uses the word "adult"? To me, a young adult book doesn't have to only be read by the young adults in our world. It is not fair to look down upon them simply because of those who happen to connect with them best due to the age of the characters. Because in my view, a young adult book simply is a book that deals with young adults, and who understands being a young adult better than real young adults themselves?

I am going to use the example of Kristin Cashore's The Seven Kingdoms Trilogy here, simply because it was through looking through Kristin Cashore's blog that I found her response to this article, and thus found this article itself; also, these fantastic books are most certainly not well-known enough.

The trilogy is in the Young Adult genre, so how serious is it? Could a more mature reader stomach this stuff that is enjoyed by younger audiences? I'd like you to read this blog post by Kristin Cashore herself about why she wrote the second book in the trilogy Fire and tell me yourself. Tell me that it doesn't contain adult themes and a message that Ms Cashore wants to get out to the world - the world of adults.

And if, despite this, you automatically think that because of the series' genre, the storylines are simple, there are no underlying morals, the characters are immature or are stock characters, then think again. Let's take a look at Ms Cashore's third book Bitterblue, which has won awards for children's books. Its protagonist is an eighteen-year-old queen of a fantasy world. So far it's sounding like a children's book.

But now let's look a bit deeper - which basically would mean reading past the first page. Firstly, when I gave it to my mum to read, I had to try and explain half of it to her. The plot got that complicated. I already mentioned the protagonist is a queen - she has a kingdom to rule - therefore there are going to be some politics involved here. Then her late father was a sick, power-hungry psychopath, and eight years after his death, she's still finding evidence of his cruelty and trying to fix the many, many things he did so badly wrong. So she's confused, she's overwhelmed - but she's strong, strong enough to fight back and survive assassination attempts, and she's clever, with a good mind for numbers and ciphers. And that romantic interest who in teen books are always so perfect - he's a thief, but a good thief, although he acts rather too rashly at times. Oh, and sexual acts may or may not be hinted at throughout the course of the novel. Still sounding simple and stereotypical and "dumbed down"? Still sounding like you'd give it to your kids as a bedtime story? Or maybe it sounds like something you'd prefer to read yourself?  Are you believing me that Young Adult books such as this one can be read by more mature people yet?

So what is it that Mr Stein has a problem with? Is it the fantasy worlds that many of these books seem to take place in? Are they too childish? That, my friend, is called escapism, and any person of any age is entitled to it. Or is it the genre? Now, tell me Mr Stein, what do parents tell their children? Don't judge a book by its cover? Yeah. Go figure.

There is one last thing I would like to say. I don't find it at all fair the way Mr Stein not only condescends these books and their writers (which completely undermines the ginormous effort and the fantastic skill on their part to actually write a book - an eight hundred page first draft and four years for Ms Cashore to complete Bitterblue.) but openly admits to not actually having read ANY of the books he is complaining about. I have read Twilight. I have read The Hunger Games. I have read Harry Potter. So I think I am perfectly justified in saying that he should go home and actually do his research. He's missed some great stuff by being judgemental and condescending (I'm sure he could find some great children's picture books to help him with that). He has some serious catching up to do.

I DON'T WANT ANY MORE C'S!!!

I have a biology exam tomorrow morning. I am terrified. And stuck on C's! The past two tests we've done in lesson, I've got C's, and the two past papers I did today and yesterday, I got C's. In GCSE, my lowest was a B. One single B, in French, three marks off an A. Actually, no, I'm forgetting that speech I did for English, I got a C for that, but I still got an overall A. I hate the idea of me giving speeches. I hated that speech in particular. "How do you think society should be improved?" I DON'T KNOW, YOU'RE ASKING THE GIRL WHO RARELY HAS OPINIONS CAUSE SHE'S SO SLOW TO MAKE UP HER MIND, AND RARELY VOICES THEM WHEN SHE DOES HAVE THEM!!!!!!! See, all the other groups got to make fun speeches. I can't remember what like, but still. I suppose I could write a speech on improving society now, after I've had a year or so to think about it. If I could go back, I'd write it on education. Our education system seems a bit pointless to me. We study to pass exams. HELLO? Anybody see the problem here? How about, that we have life after exams?? That doing well in the exam doesn't mean that you'll be able to actually apply that knowledge? And the mark schemes! Seriously! Marking my biology past papers earlier, I was just... so annoyed. I thought I'd done well in that past paper. Like, at least a B. But you see, I knew I'd got the answers vaguely right. Somewhere in all the drivel I'd written was something akin to the right answer - or at least, the right answer that I'd learnt. But no. They ask you absurd, misleading questions like "The diaphragm helps to bring about the changes shown by the curve A. Explain how." when they could have just put, "How does breathing work?" and I wouldn't have looked at the graph above the question and gone, "Hmm, I wonder what this shows?" when I should have just been writing down everything I could remember about how the diaphragm relaxes and makes the chest cavity smaller and increases the air pressure and decreases the lung volume.

This is why I hate exams. They never, ever ask you straight questions. Ever. And I never, ever know what they want me to put to make them give me the mark. And I don't think you would - some of the answers they want are ridiculous. I swear you'd have had to have not only done ALL the past papers available, but actually MEMORISED the entire of all the mark schemes to know what they want you to put. It's honestly, seriously ridiculous. How on earth will learning a freaking mark scheme, half of which is gibberisch anyway, help me in later life? I want to learn biology! I don't want to learn mark schemes! Biology might one day be helpful to me! A mark scheme will NEVER be helpful to me!!

See, Sir, if I could do that speech again now - with a subject that really gets me angry and that I actually think should be improved in society - or if I'd have thought of this at the time, then I reckon I could've got an A. Or maybe a B. (It should be noted that it may also have helped if I'd been feeling particularly well, and awake, on the day)Though to be honest it wasn't really the English I needed to worry about. It was the French.

Anyway. This wasn't supposed to turn into a rant about exams. It was supposed to be quite a short post, because I have last minute revision in the form of one last past paper to be doing, and I don't want to go to bed particularly late. But I'm going to post again tomorrow and I probably won't mention the exam because I'll probably be sick to my back teeth of talking about it, as it's in the morning and we have to stay in school all day. Actually, I'm not entirely sure about that. But I'm staying in school anyway - one lesson I can catch up on, but four's a bit much. So tomorrow I'll post a short story or something, maybe what I wrote in creative writing yesterday and hopefully I'll be doing that every week after that. :)

And I wish when they tell year 11's that A Level is hard, they tell them that A and A* students get C's. Because I'm only just realising just how hard A Level is.