It is a huge pleasure to have the amazing Alexia Casale here today. Her debut novel The Bone Dragon came out earlier this month and it is amazing. I honestly can't recommend it to you all enough. It is just... whoa. Ok, I'll stop fan-girling now (best save that for the review!) and let you enjoy Alexia's awesome guest post instead. But don't forget to pick up a copy of The Bone Dragon - you won't regret it!!
There
are regular furores over what is appropriate in children’s and YA literature.
Is it OK to talk about sex? How about actually having sex scenes? What’s the
score on swearing and violence? Are there themes that are off limits? These are
important questions, but I’ve never understood the view that there are (or
should be) clear-cut answers.
Jacqueline
Wilson has come in for more than her fair share of disapproval, but her
critiques seem to have become fewer – or at least quieter – over the last few
years… or perhaps they’ve just not been given as much ‘air time’ in the media.
I suspect this is partly due to the comparatively recent explosion of YA as a
literary category and partly to the fact that understandings about what
children, and particularly young adults, can and should read have also
undergone enormous change and development. The debate is now becoming more
nuanced, but also far trickier.
I
believe it is important for all children to be able to find characters whose
lives are not unlike theirs. It is peculiarly alienating for there to be ‘no
one like me’ in any book out there, as Tanya Byrne recently argued.
As a teenager, it’s easy to feel your problems are unique: that no one
understands, that you’re odd and isolated. That there’s something wrong with
you. Seeing yourself reflected from the pages of a book can be incredibly
affirming.
Even
if you know other people in similar situations in real life, it can be hard to
empathise: sometimes the differences between you seem so much bigger than the
similarities. The intimacy of the relationships we have with characters in our
minds – especially when we see through their eyes – has the power to dispel a
surprising amount of this loneliness. Children in difficult circumstances
arguably need the company of fictional characters like them even more than
children living the comfortable, generally happy lives that some parents seem
to think Children’s/YA books should focus on.
.jpg)
For
me, the question comes down to whether we should shy away from writing about
abuse, abandonment, parental alcoholism or the care system because it exposes
children to traumas they would other remain innocent of. This presupposes that
children don’t learn about these things anyway: surely a fictional murder of a
child – or a fictional story of abuse, as in The Bone Dragon – is less horrifying than a real one discussed on
the news? For many, fiction may be a way of understanding people who’ve had
terrible experiences without the heart-wrenching knowledge that the person in
the story is real: that everything in the story has actually happened. Knowing
you’re reading fiction offers the possibility for emotional distance, as well
as a degree of comfort. It’s probably the safest and most cushioned ‘way in’ to
these issues that’s available. Surely that makes it the ideal way for children
and young adults to learn about these things and think them through.
Children
who have been exposed to these issues also need the emotional distance that
fiction offers: it affords a way to re-evaluate what such experiences mean in
their own lives. Through fiction we can live alternate lives and that is hugely
important for young people in difficult circumstances: it’s often the only safe
way to explore the consequences of the options they see before them, many of
which are risky and frightening. Fiction can offer insights into both how
certain choices may make things worse and how others might make things better.
If stories look at the detail of how things change for the better, that can be
a powerful guide for young people looking to mend problems in their own lives.
So one of the things I wanted to do in The
Bone Dragon was show how some people deal with certain aspects of PTSD,
without ever spelling out that this is one of the things Evie is dealing with.
While
The Bone Dragon does touch on some
very dark themes, there’s nothing on the page that is graphic or violent: all
the most harrowing elements need to be ‘read into’ the book. It’s all between
the lines, but it’s there all the same and I think that is important, especially for this age group.
---
I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did! And I totally agreed too - we all see far worse things on TV every.single.day, so why do people freak out so much?!
Anyway, before I start ranting,I want to thank Alexia so much for writing this for us!
And I also want to steer you all towards...
Now, read and enjoy and have a great rest-of-Monday everyone! :D