Books written in blood

  After reading both assigned articles for my Children's Literature class I have decided that I do indeed agree with one of them more than the other.

 In the first article I read, Darkness Too Visible, by Meghan Cox Gurdon, she talks about how disgusted parents are with what is available to teens and kids at the bookstore. People think the children are going to somehow be influenced by the actions in the books. In the second article, Why the Best Kids Books are Written in Blood, by Sherman Alexie, he talks about the book he wrote about his own tragic life and how it  has been read by so many teens and how they respond to it.

 Alexie says, “There are millions of teens who read because they are sad and lonely and enraged. They read because the live in an often-terrible world.” In my own personal experience of working at an elementary school in the Minneapolis Public School system, I know that this is true. There are SO many worse things these kids have seen and been through that reading about vampires and dark things is actually a welcome escape. Are they going to go out and become vampires? No. Might they have a new obsession with vampires, probably, but I think that is ok.

 In one of my college classes, we had a guest speaker, she told us that her teenage daughter wanted to read some vampire books, she didn’t think it was appropriate. After a while her daughter asked her what she could do to change her mind about the books, the mother said, you have to write me a summary after each chapter. So, the daughter got to read the books and the mother found out that they weren’t so bad after all, she even began to read them. I just think this is a great example of engaging students and children in what they are reading, whether it is Stephen King or Beverly Cleary, the important thing is that they are interested in reading and we should nurture it in any way we can.