Touchstone has made available online David Mills’ article “Bad Books for Kids,” which won first place in the practical theology category of the Associated Church Press competition:
You may be surprised, if you don’t keep up on these things, and few of us have any reason to, how tawdry and sometimes depraved are the kinds of books being offered to teenagers by the major publishers and bookstores, and even the schools. This is true especially of the books supposed in some way to describe “real life.”
Before I came across a short essay on what’s called “young adult literature” a few years ago, I couldn’t imagine that the books were more than mildly offensive, with a few news-making exceptions. (The popular Face on the Milk Carton describes the main character’s increasing intimacy with her boyfriend, utterly unnecessary to the story, with lines like “She could touch him in places she had never touched another human being.”) I was shocked, and I think of myself as someone who is not easily shocked, by the evidence of commercial depravity.
June 23rd, 2010 | 11:41 pm
Maybe I was odd, but for some reason I graduated straight from children’s books to adult books and mostly skipped the teen lit. I found them to be patronizing, and as this author observes, formulaic.
My parents were basically laissez-faire with me about books. Whatever I wanted to read was cool. Movies and games could be censored though. In retrospect, I think that was completely wrong. Books, for those who understand them, are far more powerful than any film or game.
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But as to the actual content of the essay, I found some parts to be remarkably Tocquevillian.
“No one understands them, the people in authority over them least of all.” Americans are naturally abhorrent of non-merit-based authority, especially parentage.
“The good life requires having the things you want” Materialism in America? I’m shocked, shocked!
“Business, if it is thought about at all, is greedy, rapacious, uncaring, and environment-destroying, and produces conformity and monotony.” — The American conflict between Puritanism and Hedonism (albeit in neo-religious environmentalist form)? Yes, please.
“There is no question that can be solved only by rigorous, disciplined thought.”
“God doesn’t exist for any practical purpose.”
“Politics doesn’t exist, history doesn’t exist, high culture doesn’t exist.” Individualism, Pragmatism, and Cultural Poverty? Welcome to the new world!
June 24th, 2010 | 10:01 am
Tocqueville *was* a prophet. It’s a little awe-inspiring to realize how much he saw.
Like Andrew’s parents, we’ve tended to be somewhat, though not entirely, laissez faire about books and very careful about movies. I see his point, but I worry more about the power of visual images to remain with you forever and stories told that way to mold your mind and imagination without your realizing it, because your defenses are seduced or put to sleep.
I can think of movies I now devoutly wish I’d never seen — the worst one of which (it showed real evil with too much relishing detail) I was taken to by a Baptist minister I knew.
June 24th, 2010 | 11:21 am
Thank you for your well-researched article, David. It was a pleasant read and gave me a lot to think about.
My son is only one year old, so I’ve got a while before he hits teen lit…of course it’ll probably be sooner than I think…
I very much agree on monitoring closely the entertainment and information that our children take in. It’s just plain common sense. Way too many people are lulled by the culture around them that seems to shout with a thousand different voices: “It’s just a book! It’s just a movie! It’s nothing! Why so prudish? Think for yourself and do what everyone else is. Question authority if you want to question something.”
June 24th, 2010 | 1:00 pm
this generally fits with my experience (i read a lot of books as a teen that probably have mostly a female audience, including the face on the milk carton, ugh ugh ugh). although i think by the time i was 13-14 i was capable of discerning and disapproving of the perspective of a lot of the books. OTOH i loved charlotte doyle… certainly by the time i was 16 or so i disliked the modern disney movies for their progressive messages… if you’ve raised your kid to think critically and deconstruct/hate on/complain about things (AS YOU SHOULD, hopefully starting with bad hymns! :) ) then there’s probably less to worry about.
when he writes “He may trust you, he may believe you implicitly, but the story has still buried in his mind a dangerous image of the way the world is,” I think he’s right depending on the child and how advanced a reader he/she is. charlotte doyle certainly didn’t bury in my mind an image of the way the world is. and i loved charlotte doyle.
when he writes that you should read more advanced stuff to your kid, i think that is v good advice, and much more key. if your kid can understand pride and prejudice, she can understand the implicit errors in the worldview of the author of the face on the milk carton. if your kid is three years ahead of what everybody else is reading, you can probably more often have the best of all three worlds, if they’re able to read what “everyone else is reading,” recognize why it fails, and evangelize against it. and teach their friends to be book critics too… maybe.
(sorry for no caps this is pasted from my private blog, where i don’t capitalize)
June 24th, 2010 | 1:25 pm
Thank you for the informed article. I agree with you about everything except for your recommendation of Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy (can’t figure out how to do italics). Pullman is a militant athiest who hates organized religion, especially Catholicism.
There is an in-depth New Yorker interview of him called “Far From Narnia” where he is very clear about his opinions. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/12/26/051226fa_fact?currentPage=1 (can’t figure out links either!)
From the New Yorker article: “…he is one of England’s most outspoken atheists. In the trilogy, a young girl, Lyra Belacqua, becomes enmeshed in an epic struggle against a nefarious Church known as the Magisterium; another character, an ex-nun turned particle physicist named Mary Malone, describes Christianity as “a very powerful and convincing mistake.” Pullman once told an interviewer that “every single religion that has a monotheistic god ends up by persecuting other people and killing them because they don’t accept him.”
June 24th, 2010 | 9:31 pm
On “horribly difficult lives” — well, conflict is the lifeblood of fiction.
One notes that in fact business hates “conformity and monotony” — if you like it, everyone buys the same thing and doesn’t buy anything else. If you need to be Unique and Individual you always have to buy new things to Express It because last month’s things have been picked up by everyone else who wants to be Unique and Individual.
June 28th, 2010 | 4:26 pm
I had the pleasure of hearing David Mills speak about this topic last fall. Is talk was as edifying as the article. Congratulations on a well-deserved award.
July 5th, 2010 | 11:07 pm
This was a fantastic article, BTW, and I’m recommending it everywhere. Congratulations.
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