And What Are YOUR
Children Reading??

by R. Z. Halleson

Way back when my kids were in grade school and Junior High, I continued my practice of occasionally picking up the books that they were reading, especially the ones that they couldn't seem to put down, and which they seemed to read again and again.

Judy Blume's books were among the most wonderful of these, and were widely traded and read by the kids in our neighborhood. I gave her book "Are you There God, It's Me Margaret" to a twelve-year-old foster child living with us, and this girl whose name was also Margaret, found a girl very much like herself in this story. She lay on the sofa in our living room reading the book over and over, laughing anew at the parts she liked.

And then came "Forever." Blume wrote a book for older teens and young adults without its ever being identified as not for children. Nine-and-ten-year-olds subsequently were reading sexual material for the first time. Parents were unaware because, as far as they knew, it was just another children's book. Blume is a sensitive and insightful writer, and I just don't believe that she would have knowingly written this for youngsters. One could blame the publisher, I suppose, for not categorizing the book more clearly, and after some other experiences with books for pre-teens and teens, I find myself highly suspicious of publishers' need to pad the bottom line by mis-categorizing books or misleading potential readers by the way the books are presented.

The most egregious example of this was "Flowers in the Attic" written by V.C.Andrews and first published in 1979. This edition is no longer listed on Amazon.com, and not having read the re-release of it in 1990, I don't know if the content was changed. "Flowers in the Attic" is the story of two sets of twins who are locked in a hidden room and attic for years. As the older brother and sister become teens, they begin an incestuous relationship that continues through all the subsequent books in this series. It was an adult story and was sold on mass market paperback racks in drug stores, grocery stores and other such places.

The cover of this edition was exceptionally enticing to kids, and I don't doubt for a minute that this was intentional. It was a shiny double cover with the outer layer showing a scary mansion with a large cut-out window revealing four beautiful somber blonde children on the layer beneath looking out from this window .

I discovered "Flowers in the Attic" in my sixth-grade daughter's bedroom, dog-eared for the places that she wanted to go back to again and again. After reading the book, I told a friend who was an editor at the Chicago Tribune how shocked I was at what the kids were reading. Another friend who owned a local bookstore told me that Jr. High kids were coming in every day asking when the second book in the series was coming out. When it did, she sold out in the first week and had to re-order!

At the invitation of my editor friend, I wrote a short article about "Flowers in the Attic" warning parents to be careful what their children were reading. The response to my little warning was nation-wide! Because the article was widely reprinted, I received numerous letters, was invited to be a phone-in guest on two radio programs, and was interviewed for the front-page feature article in the Wall Street Journal (which also interviewed and quoted my daughter).

The best was yet to come. V.C. Andrews herself wrote an angry letter to me, furious that I had dared to criticize her book. The letter was badly typed with many misspelled words and questionable grammar. I found myself wondering who had really written these books.

V.C. Andrews died in 1986, but Pocket Books continues to publish novels using her name as the author. I don't know about you, but that really raises a red flag in my mind about the integrity of some in the publishing industry.

The Harry Potter phenomenon has come and gone. It will rise again, no doubt, when younger children grow old enough to read these stories, but probably will never again become the publisher's romp to the bottom line that we saw a few years ago. It doesn't have to. These are solid mid-list books that will stay on the shelves forever and deservedly so. The author J.K. Rowling filled the stories with family, friendship, and loyalty, in the midst of the fantastical adventures of these extraordinary children and their teachers.

So now we have Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" saga, a series of four books that are driving teenage girls wild with desire to read the next installment about the ordinary (hardly) young high school girl who falls in love with a vampire who is dying to suck her blood, but refrains because he loves her back. Oh dear! What will happen next?

I still share books back and forth with my grown children, but I also borrow my grandchildren's books so we can talk about what they are reading. My sixteen-year-old granddaughter desperately wanted to read the first in the "Twilight" series because all her friends were talking about these books so I bought a copy for her on the condition that she would loan it to me when she was finished reading it. She read non-stop on a Friday afternoon until 3 a.m. the next morning and gave it to me a couple of days later. I read it in two days, even with other things to do. The book is a fat trade-paperback with what looks to be 14-point type and plenty of spacing between the lines — a fast read.

Not far into the book, I began to laugh to myself. Meyer was using the same writers' techniques that made the "True Confessions" magazines so enticing to me and all my friends when we were high schoolers in the early fifties: Lots of yearning, and sneaking looks at someone to see if they were looking back, and wondering what others were thinking, and wanting but fearing relationships all at the same time. Oh for the days when my best friend Gloria and I would visit her married sister so we could lay on the couch and read her magazines that were filled with love and passion. Our mothers never knew, and Gloria's sister didn't tell.

I haven't read the next three books in Meyer's series so I can only base my assessment on the first one. It is shallow and has no redeeming value except that it is thoroughly entertaining, suspenseful, and has the teenage-girl mind down pat in terms of knowing what they want to read. In the first one, at least, there is no overt sexuality other than kissing lips and throat (the guy's a vampire, remember?) and Meyer only hints at the gore that must take place when the vampires hunt and feed on bears and deer and other large animals in the great Northwest, having sworn not to feed on humans so that they can live peacefully among them. The "True Confessions" magazines and their prototypes didn't portray blatant sex either, so by today's standards, they were pretty innocent, but there is something to be said for the hints and the yearnings that only suggest what might be to come. It keeps you reading and wanting more.

Too bad that all books aimed at teens couldn't be so innocent. Take a look at what sits on the young adult shelves at your local bookstore and wonder, as I do, why publishers need to exploit our teens for the sake of their own profit. Open some of these books and skim through them. Put them back, please, and don't buy them.

Would I read the next book in the "Twilight" series? If my granddaughter reads it, then I'll read it too so that we can talk about it. After all, it was a fast read, and honestly, I couldn't put it down either.

Top of Page