Young adult novels gently introduce difficult real-life issues

The argument

Supporters of young adult fiction point to how much difficult material the form already carries, and to the care with which it carries it. Beverley Naidoo's Carnegie winning novel, "The Other Side of Truth," shines a light on the themes of death of a parent, racism, political asylum, detention centers, and bullying — subjects that would be forbidding in the abstract but are reached here through characters a young reader has come to care about. Police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement are central to Angie Thomas' young adult novel, "The Hate U Give." In "The Hunger Games," Suzanne Collins puts a dystopian spin on political oppression, placing the machinery of state control at a distance where it can be examined. Annabel Pitcher's "My Sister Lives On The Mantlepiece" looks at family life after the loss of a child to a terrorist bomb. What makes the treatment gentle rather than merely grim, on this argument, is structure as much as subject. Naidoo's young protagonists endure many hardships but become the heroes of their story and get the happy ending her readers are hoping for. The hardship is real and is not minimised, but it is bounded: the reader is shown a way through it rather than left inside it. For supporters of young adult novels, that is precisely their value. They are a way for young people and adult readers to become invested in the characters and what happens to them, and investment is what makes a difficult subject legible rather than abstract. Young adult fiction gently encourages curiosity about the world we live in. It is a window into other people's lives and tragedies and a place of common ground for those with shared experiences — a reader who has lived something similar meets it on the page. And they share a message of hope that life's hardships can be overcome.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Young adults are still children, and children should not be exposed to difficult themes in Young Adult books. In 2017, Angie Thomas' "The Hate U Give" was banned in a school in Katy, Texas, after a parent complained due to the story's inappropriate language and sexually suggestive content. The book has received other complaints from adults who felt it was not appropriate reading for young people because the "f" word is used over 89 times, and there are references to drugs. In addition to this, there are implications that "The Hate U Give" presents a rebellious anti-police sentiment that sends out an irresponsible message to young people. The difficult themes in young adult novels take away a young person's innocence.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The titles listed show that young adult fiction addresses hard subjects; "gently" is the contested word, and the counter's account of the language, drug references and formal challenges to one of these very books is a dispute about how sensitively that is done. [Rejecting P2] Investment in characters and a message of hope are reasons the books are affecting, not reasons to read them rather than the adult fiction treating the same subjects — and the assured happy ending, offered here as a virtue, is the feature critics point to as softening what the books depict.