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Amplify's Parent Network |
July Newsletter 2011 | |||||||||||||||
| Teens Feeding Their Minds With "Dark" Themes As a guest presenter, I am always looking for ways to connect with students when I walk into a new class for the first time. Hence, I always notice the readers. You know...the ones who are using every spare minute to read a book they just can't put down. It's usually a girl. And  the book often has a vampire , or something equally "dark," on the
cover. I get excited when I see my all-time favorite, To Kill a
Mockingbird, until I realize that it's been assigned as homework. Still,
I hope they are enjoying it.When it comes to choices, many teens are faced with books by publishers who think teens need a dose of realism...whether it be rape, suicide, self-mutilation, drug addiction, family disfunction, incest and so on. Is this really healthy? Come to think of it, do you even know what is IN the books your son or daughter is reading? Well, it's my opinion that you should. I can remember skimming through of a book that my daughter picked up at a thrift store for 89 cents because all her friends were talking about it. I wept because she had been exposed to an explicit sex scene at a young age...and in a context that romanticized giving in to passionate feelings as the natural and inevitable outcome of being in love. We had a talk. This thoughtful Wall Street Journal article, looking at contemporary young adult (YA) literature, is worth reading in its entirety, to help you, as a parent, think through your role in guiding your teens' choices in literature. Here are a few excerpts: "The argument in favor of such [dark and explicit] novels is that they validate the teen experience, giving voice to tortured adolescents who would otherwise be voiceless. If a teen has been abused, the logic follows, reading about another teen in the same straits will be comforting. If a girl cuts her flesh with a razor to relieve surging feelings of self-loathing, she will find succor in reading about another girl who cuts, mops up the blood with towels and eventually learns to manage her emotional turbulence without a knife. Yet it is also possible, indeed likely, that books focusing on pathologies help normalize them and, in the case of self-harm, may even spread their plausibility and likelihood to young people who might otherwise never have imagined such extreme measures. Self-destructive adolescent behaviors are observably infectious and have periods of vogue." The author concludes: "So it may be that the book industry's ever-more-appalling offerings for adolescent readers spring from a desperate desire to keep books relevant for the young. Still, everyone does not share the same objectives. The book business exists to sell books; parents exist to rear children, and oughtn't be daunted by cries of censorship. No family is obliged to acquiesce when publishers use the vehicle of fundamental free-expression principles to try to bulldoze coarseness or misery into their children's lives." A Concerned Parent,
Tori Libby
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 We are looking for people to interview about Amplify's program. If you or your son or daughter would be willing to get in front of a camera and tell us what you appreciated about Amplify's visit to your church or school, please contact Andrea Nelson at
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