| ...but not everything. |
For the most part, I tend to agree. There is a lot of junk in the Teen Lit universe. It is true that sometimes kids and teens (and now that I think about it, even a lot of adults) who need some sort of literary "fluff" to turn them on to reading. But young people who are whiling away the hours reading, e.g., the Gossip Girl series, are almost certainly reading at the expense of intellectual and moral muscle. Sometimes a kid picks up a book like Twilight and it begins a lifetime of reading. But I think there is a greater possibility that those whose first gravitate towards reading purely because of YA fluff (especially that with more sexual content) will turn out to be the same people who can't live without their fix of Cosmopolitan magazine, unless something helps to otherwise shape their reading habits. It's not the reading their interested in, but the juicy content (why, oh why else, are Danielle Steele novels still in print?).
There tends to be an attitude in the library world that any reading, especially by young people, should be cause for celebration. I was annoyed, but not surprised, at the actually graphic content of some graphic novels I had to review for a Collection Development class last year that were aimed at tween boys (nearly nude women and drug use, anyone?)*. I'm of the mind that any instance of good reading, by anyone, is what ought to be celebrated. Kids have to learn that it's eating their literary 'vegetables' that makes them strong. Parents, despite their often cynical impressions, have a significant role to play in forming good life-long reading habits in your children (yes, even teens). And what a lot of Catholic parents do have going for them is that they exercise more discretion in what their children read than your average mom and dad, who are just happy that the children have something to keep then occupied (if you are a parent doing this in regards to either books or television, you may want to re-think your strategy).