Darkness Too Visible: The Wall Street Journal Bookshelf  by Meghan Cox Gurdon

BACK STORY:
Young Adult Literature falls under adult scrutiny every generation.  Should writing for young adults be instructive? Should it reflect what "really happens" in our teens lives today? Does reading encourage kids to do 'dark' things? Or do kids find that reading about these 'dark' things helps them to understand what other kids must feel like without having to experience it themselves?  Do books normalize dangerous behaviors? 

As teacher librarians we see a wide variety of kids and we connect those diverse students with books that they find interesting. We know how popular books are that show a wide variety of behaviors. For example, these books always fly off the shelf:

Cut by McCormick, Patricia

Twilight by Meyer, Stephenie

The Perks of Being A Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky

The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things, by Carolyn Mackler

ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle

It is generally considered that the book The Outsiders, written in 1965 opened the doors to what is now called "young adult fiction". Teens of the 1950's had the books by Maureen Daly to read: Seventeenth Summer and  her short story : Sixteen along with Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, and the books that we consider classics today: Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The yearling, Johnny Tremain. Before that time books seemed to be divided into books for children, and books for adults.  Books for children were often written to include an educational or instructional component to them so that the young readers would learn appropriate behavior, or be instructed in ways to behave. 

During the 1960's and 1970's young adult books started looking at the way teens behaved and how they reacted to events in their lives.  Go Ask Alice (1971) depicted the dark side of drug use which was in its hippie hey-day and was worrisome to parents and other adults. It was in the 1980's and beyond that Young Adult  fiction began really taking off with authors such as Judy Bloom, V.C. Andrews, Meg Cabot, Gary Paulsen and others leading the way. 

The dip in teen reading took a turn in the later 1990's as vampires, fantasy, graphic novels and the very realistic of 'realistic' novels began to reach teens in droves. 

So what's a librarian to do?  What has always been done: connect readers to books - help them find the best reading that will speak to them, stretch them, and entertain them.

...and what's a parent to do? Read widely, talk to their children, have fun.... and support libraries....