Room at the Top

What Literature should adolescents read?

Without a doubt I feel that adolescents need to be indulged in literature that not only deals with issues they struggle with, but issues that are often viewed as controversial. Today many YA novels are challenged and many are banned because of inappropriate material, but what the naïve people who challenge these books need to realize is that the inappropriate material in the novel is found everyday in the hallways, it is simply unavoidable. The best way for teens to deal with issues such as drugs, sex, and partying is to be educated about them, and besides the obvious resources such as parents, literature is a key source that puts characters in realistic situations in which the reader can identify with. For example my YA group just finished The Outsiders, a book that deals with gangs, murder, and drugs and alcohol. While exposure to these issues may seem detrimental to our youth, they are bound to deal with them someday, so in order for teens to make the right decision when need be they with have the proper information to make the right decision because of an experience that a character they read about might have had.
On the website www.ala.org a list of the most frequently challenged books is given, and after looking into a few of these books the reasons were very similar to the three I listed earlier along with the addition of profanity and the issue of death or murder. For example the book that topped the chart was “The Chocolate War” and the reasoning was because of sexual content, offensive language, religious viewpoints, and violence. The problem that I find here is that I dealt with every one of these issues by the 9th grade, and the problem was I had never had to deal with anything like that before so I was totally clueless when confronted by different people and the issues they brought with them. If I simply had been exposed to books such as “The Chocolate War” then I would have made better decisions when confronted by these people, but because so many books that dealt with these issues were banned I knew so little.
Another book that was mentioned was “Go Ask Alice,” which is very similar to another book that I have read entitled “Jay’s Journal.” Both stories involve teens who spiral into a pit of drugs, promiscuous sex, and in Jay’s case Satan worship. Now these books are definitely risky and contain material that teens shouldn’t be dealing with, but once again we need to be realistic. There is no sense in fighting a cause that will always be around, but instead we should try and work with the students and show the aftermath of their decisions with these books before it is too late. Sure the books both are dark and deep, rather disturbing really, but in every town across America there are students experiencing the same problems that Alice and Jay experienced, we need to find ways to reach them. Throwing them the typical 8th and 9th grade books is worthless, the students will fail to connect to any character, lose interest considering they ever had interest, and eventually stop reading altogether. We need to keep literature that is interesting and helpful to students in their hands; I can not state enough that we simply need to be realistic.