dystopollyanna

From: SoupTV (via collegehumor)

"Many times, it's big-name publications that get young adult literature all wrong. Their 'experts' call anything published for the under-18 crowd YA, or they make claims that there aren't any books written for boys (I covered this in my 5 Things to Know About YA post).

     But really the blame might be grown-ups more broadly.
     This month alone, an adult called Laurie Halse Anderson's groundbreaking Speak 'child pornography' because it dare bring up rape. Speak also promotes abortion, theft, promiscuity, group sex, and profanity. Shoo Raynor, a children's author himself, claims that books like Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking series aren't books for teens, but rather, they're 'adult books disguised as children's books.' He goes on to suggest that Ness's series encourages readers to pick up guns and to join gangs.
     Neither of these are the first challenges to YA lit, nor will they be the last.
     Another interesting grown-up phenomenon is that of suggesting that YA books today are nothing like they were back in the day. That when today's adults were growing up, either there were no such things as YA books or that YA books were in no way as dark, scary, profane, or bleak as today's YA books. Neither of these are true."
— Kelly Jensen, BookRiot
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Books that grab you

"Nick Harkaway's Angelmaker, which manages to combine a 90-year-old super spy, a clockwork repairman and a cunning plan to destroy every living thing in the universe, has won him the Kitschies Red Tentacle award for the most intelligent, progressive and entertaining speculative novel of the year.

     Set up by the books site Pornokitsch, the Kitschies go annually to books that 'elevate the tone' of genre fiction. The Red Tentacle prize for best novel – which comes with a large, tentacular trophy, £1,000 and a bottle of Kraken rum – has been won in the past by books including Patrick Ness's A Monster Calls, Lauren Beukes's Zoo City and China Miéville's The City and the City.
     Harkaway's second novel, Angelmaker, in which gangster's son turned clockwork repairman Joe Spork tries to put a stop to monks who are plotting the universe's destruction, beat titles by Adam Roberts, Frances Hardinge, Jesse Bullington and Julie Zeh to win this year's award."
— Alison Flood, The Guardian
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Caveat Lector

"[G.P.] Taylor [bestselling children's author of the Vampyre Labyrinth series] believes it is necessary to establish an age-ranging system for children's literature – despite the fact that the idea was mooted by children's publishers four years ago to widespread protests by authors. 'We've got Dickens with Oliver Twist who was abandoned by his parents and went off on a journey. We've got the Famous Five whose parents were quite neglectful and who went off on a journey. There was always safety. They never went as far as they did today. I think the way forward is a certification system for books, the same way we have in films,' said Taylor. 'For children, we've got to be really careful. [And] we've got to have a guide for parents.' [...]
     His views were roundly rebutted on BBC Breakfast by the writer Patrick Ness, who earlier this summer won the Carnegie medal for the second year running for his novel A Monster Calls, about a boy whose mother has cancer and who is visited by a monster.

     Ness welcomed the darkness in the literature written for teenagers today, and rejected the idea of age-ranging children's books. 'All you have to really do is read what teenagers write themselves, and I've judged competitions for teenagers writing and it's darkness beyond anything I would come up with,' said Ness. 'Teenagers look at this darkness all the time, and I always think if you're not addressing it in your fiction then you're abandoning them to face it themselves.'"
— Alison Flood, The Guardian
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Get books by G.P. Taylor and Patrick Ness here...