WHAT ARE THE KIDS READING?
Apparently ‘sick-lit,’ books about mental illness, suicide and disease, is topping the charts among young people these days.
Earlier this month, Britain’s Daily Mail printed an article that questioned what, exactly, teenagers are reading — and stirred up a froth in the publishing world. The subject: tear-jerker novels for teens, some of them thinly disguised romances about kids with cancer, anorexia, depression, addictions. Stories about teens who self-harm or contemplate suicide. There is sex, swearing, high drama and risky behaviour galore.
Sixteen-year-old Tessa, who has leukemia, looks into the abyss and puts sex on her bucket list in Before I Die. Her best friend and assistant on this mission, Zoey, discovers she has pregnant.
Hannah in Thirteen Reasons Why commits suicide, but first makes a series of cassettes for classmates to explain the role they played in her demise.
Newspapers have long refused to print details of suicide, but publishers of young adult fiction are unleashing entire books on it, huffed The Mail.
One child psychologist urged parents to keep a watchful eye on children who habitually read these kinds of books, especially those under 15.
Before I Die has been made into a film starring teen star Dakota Fanning. Justin Bieber’s ex-girlfriend Selena Gomez has signed on to be Hannah in the film version of Thirteen Reasons Why.
The Mail saw a profit motive. “Since the vampire book bubble burst, publishers have been looking to find the next big thing in the lucrative world of young adult fiction.”
Morbid, maybe, but observers say there’s nothing new about literature that treats suffering as transformative or redemptive. Books with compelling characters and hard-driving plots help teens explore difficult themes in a safe way, these experts say.
“This controversy comes up frequently,” says Allison Hall-Murphy, who chooses English-language titles for teen readers at the Ottawa library.
Hall-Murphy concedes that books for teens have become more intense. “It’s all about the intensity of the experience,” she says.
“Parents ask why their children, can’t read, say, A Wrinkle in Time. But that was written for a younger audience, readers who are in Grade 4 to 6.”
Reading fiction is one of the ways children and teens learn empathy. It also gives them an opportunity to take risks and experiment vicariously. “Reading is one of the safest ways teens can do that. Adults watch horror movies, knowing that they are totally safe,” says Hall-Murphy.
Here’s how popular “intense reads” are in the Ottawa context: the Ottawa Public Library has 48 copies of The Fault in Our Stars, John Green’s bestseller about two cancer-stricken teens who go to Amsterdam to track down their favourite reclusive writer — and have sex when their plan backfires. Earlier this week, there were 254 holds on the book.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which touches on suicide, sexual abuse, drugs and alcohol, was first published in 1999 but there has been renewed interest because there’s a movie coming out this year. It has 371 holds at the library.
But there are other forces at play besides teens looking for a vicarious thrill. Young adult fiction also has considerable crossover appeal for adults.
In a report released in September, Bowker Market Research, which advises the publishing industry, released a report that found 55 per cent of buyers of books aimed at 12 to 17 were actually 18 or older. Of these older buyers, 28 per cent of buyers were between the ages of 30 and 44, and over three-quarters said they were buying books for their own reading.
In a release, project editor Kristen McLean explained: “Although bestsellers lead, there’s a long tail of rich reading that has interesting implications for the publishers of YA (young adult) books in terms of discovery and consumer relationships.”
British writer Sally Nicholls wrote Ways to Live Forever when she was 22. The protagonist, 11-year-old Sam, has a scientific mind and leukemia. He wants to find out about things, including what the Earth looks like from space and “do teenage things” like drinking, smoking and having girlfriends. The book has now been published in 21 countries and was made into a film to be released this spring.
Nicholls believes there has been a spate of these kinds of books in the past five years or so. But it was really radical in 2007 when Ways To Live Forever first came out, she says.
Now 29, Nicholls has published two other YA books and is working on a ghost story about the notorious Victorian “baby farm” murderess Amelia Dyer.
Teens are particularly interested in reading about death because it’s a big and important question, says Nicholls.
“When you’re a teenager, you like to read books about big themes. They are discovering boundaries — what job will you get, will you accept your parents’ religion. Teenagers use fiction as a way to test ideas and explore those ideas,” she says.
“A lot of teenagers read (Sylvia Plath’s) The Bell Jar. If there aren’t books for teenagers, they will read adult books, which aren’t written for them.”
Nicholls spent a lot of time researching Ways To Live Forever, including speaking to a social worker at a pediatric oncology ward and workers at a hospice. The social worker told her that hospitals treat children with cancer like adults and adults like children. Children don’t want to hear the euphemisms about their prognosis. They want the bald truth.
“I get emails from kids who say the book has been helpful to them. I think a child can cope with information about almost every subject.”
Nicholls believes it’s important to state the topic to prospective young readers. In Ways to Live Forever, Sam lists facts about himself on the first page, including that he will die.
Kate Wilson, the parent of a 12-year-old and a 13-year-old and the managing director at the children’s book publishing house Nosy Crow, says books allow young readers to experience something extreme and emotionally trying by proxy.
“There’s also often a sense that because these characters are in an extreme situation they are forced to look at what really matters, perhaps because they have limited time, perhaps because the illness puts the smaller, pettier things of life into a new perspective,” says Wilson.
There are plenty of examples in books for young readers reaching back more than a century and a half.
There’s the lingering death of gentle Beth in Little Women. In What Katy Did, tomboyish Katy resigns herself to living as an invalid after she injures her spine in an accident — until she is miraculously cured. In Victorian literature, illness often taught young women patience and passivity. The new sick-lit protagonist is more likely to look death in the eye and go hog-wild.
Hall-Murphy looks for books that are of interest to the target audience, even if the writing is not stellar. Go Ask Alice, the cautionary tale of a drug-addicted teenage runaway first published in 1971 remains popular. So is the work of writer Lurlene McDaniel, whose three-decade career, which began in the 1980s, has produced some 70 books with lurid titles like Too Young to Die and If I Should Die Before I Wake.
Hall-Murphy has faith in young readers.
She recently bought copies of Jay’s Journal, written by Beatrice Sparks, the author of Go Ask Alice. First published in 1978,
Jay’s Journal purports to be the diary of a boy who is inducted into a satanic cult. But the book has found few lenders at the Ottawa Public Library.
“They are really good censoring themselves. Lots of them don’t like reading these kinds of books, and they’ll tell you that,” says Hall-Murphy. “Some of them are looking for funny romance books. We have to trust that they’re good at knowing what they could handle and what they couldn’t.”
Nicholls can’t think of a single subject she would shy away from as a writer, including suicide and sex abuse.
“It is a massive responsibility. It’s not that you can’t write about it. But you need to contextualize it.
“Considering the underfunding in the mental health system, it’s good that there are books that address these questions for young people.”
Is intense literature for teens manipulative?
“What literature isn’t manipulative?” says Nicholls. “It bothers me that adults who are trying to protect their children are preventing them from having tools. Knowledge is power.”