Month: June 2011

The first time I went camping, my dad had acquired a huge tent meant to sleep a legion, and we were dragged off to spend Memorial Day weekend living in it. I complained, whined, and muttered, and I took a stack of books a foot high. Now, understand–I grew up on a farm. I’d slept in the backyard in a sleeping bag. I’d slept in the barn in a sleeping bag. I’d slept on horses’ backs (sans sleeping bag) and in trees (also without the sleeping bag. That’s just asking for trouble.) Any time I wanted to eat fire-cooked food, I’d pester my dad into a weinie-roast. (I was twelve. Stop laughing.) So I really didn’t see the point in this camping thing. It was as miserable as I’d feared. It rained the whole weekend, one of those long, slow, soaking Pennsylvania rains. We were all–my dad, my brothers, my dad’s girlfriend, her kids–stuck in that huge flipping tent that really wasn’t big enough to hold us all day and night for three days.

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I’ll tell you a secret. I’m 35 years old and I don’t have a driver’s license. Yep, you read that right. People always freak out when I tell them that. In this day and age, and where I live, this is not the norm. We have a crappy public transit system, so driving is really necessary. Which sucks for someone like me. Here’s the condensed version. When I was 15, I went through the standard Driver’s Ed training. That was a joke, because I got, at most, three hours on the road. And I had severe anxiety, having never behind the wheel before. The instructor told my parents that I was not in any way ready to drive. I needed more time. So, the following year, we gave it another shot, and I was still unable to complete the training.

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So, I have done an awful lot of drinking this weekend. Not necessarily the best sentence to start a post with, but here we are anyway.

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(Disclaimer: This blog post reflects the opinions of the author, not of Turtleduck Press as a whole.) This weekend, the Wall Street Journal published an article arguing that YA fiction has become too dark. It’s too violent, the author writes. It deals with situations and behaviours that could negatively influence young minds (she gives the example of self-harm, arguing that if a teen reads about it, s/he may want to try it – say what?). It’s too explicit. It uses too much “foul language”. The vampire trend is only another example of this depravity. The blogosphere and Twitterverse (at #yasaves) exploded with rebuttals as readers and writers of YA weighed in. Today’s teenagers are already facing these issues. Statistics. More. Anecdotally, I know young people who struggle with mood disorders, with whether to come out to their parents, with the extreme pressures placed on them in today’s world. And I don’t know that many young people. Turtleduck Press’s own KD Sarge works in a school, and she sees a lot more than I do. Books aren’t putting ideas in their little heads, but giving them tools to deal with their realities. Books tell them that they are not alone, that #ItGetsBetter. Laurie Halse Anderson says it better. I agree with these arguments. I believe in the importance of talking/writing/reading about self-harm, rape, abuse, bullying, homophobia. I reject book-banning (others have pointed out the irony of the sidebar accompanying the article, which recommends, among others, Fahrenheit 451). I support the bravery of…

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