{"id":27112,"date":"2018-09-18T07:34:13","date_gmt":"2018-09-18T11:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=27112"},"modified":"2018-09-18T07:34:13","modified_gmt":"2018-09-18T11:34:13","slug":"middle-grade-murders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=27112","title":{"rendered":"Middle-Grade Murders"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a recent foray into our advance reading copy bookshelves, I came across\u00a0three or four upcoming middle-grade books featuring murder as a plot line. It’s almost casually mentioned on the back covers, with descriptions like, “When Alice’s friend is murdered, she and her pal Calvin are on the hunt for the killers. But can they stop them from striking again?”
\nThe treatment of murder as\u00a0a springboard for entertainment aimed at younger and younger children disturbs me.\u00a0In an age where respect for human life and dignity is\u00a0already in danger, how\u00a0have we become\u00a0so comfortable with the normalization of murder? Our culture’s endless thirst for violent death as entertainment does stymie me. I’m not immune to the effectiveness of high-stakes\u00a0situations in entertainment; I\u00a0found “The Wire” and “Breaking Bad”\u00a0and “Dexter” brilliant (with some glitches here and there, but that’s not for this post), and they were extremely violent. I also understand why human beings are obsessed with mortality. But we have so normalized murder in our “entertainment”\u2014especially the murder of young women\u2014that I think there’s been a numbing effect\u00a0on us all, and it\u00a0is trickling down to our children.
\n
\nThe Vermont College of Fine Arts<\/a> master’s degree program in writing for children and young adults once hosted a weekend of science fiction and fantasy writing lectures with\u00a0such greats as Gregory Maguire, Donna Jo Napoli, Susan Fletcher, and Susan Cooper. Among the many jewels they shared was a comment by Maguire on\u00a0character\u00a0deaths\u00a0in children’s literature, one that I’ve never forgotten. He mentioned a disturbing trend (even back then)\u00a0of children’s\u00a0and YA authors to treat killing\u00a0callously, carelessly. There are consequences to each loss, he said. If you are going to write about a death, you must\u00a0address\u00a0its effect on the people it touches.\u00a0“If death,” he said, “then grief.” To ignore this is to deny or discard our humanity.\u00a0When we treat murder\u00a0as something almost as\u00a0commonplace\u00a0as\u00a0shrugging our shoulders, we deny its truth.
\nIn real life,\u00a0many children are dealing with the effects of murders in their communities and among their families. They need books\u00a0offering characters who navigate those difficult, irrevocable waters in thoughtful and complex ways.
\nI’m not saying that all literary murders are created equal. Some murders are so cartoony, or distant from our world\u2014a pharaoh murdered\u00a0in ancient Egypt, say\u2014that they don’t pack an emotional wallop for readers in the same way that something realistic, or set in a contemporary landscape,\u00a0does. And of course, children thrill to villains\u00a0and enjoy the delicious suspense and dread of\u00a0a cat-and-mouse game. But often those stories are just as good without any murders at all.
\nAt the risk of sounding old-fashioned, I just want to ask, Is it necessary to write Gone Girl<\/em>\u00a0for eight- to 12-year-olds? We can give young readers plenty of thrills and chills without taking that last terrible step when it isn’t absolutely necessary.\u00a0And sometimes it is.\u00a0The Hunger Games<\/em>\u00a0(a YA title often read by older MG kids) was brutal, but it had a moral center. Those losses were integral to the story; they meant something and were deeply felt, both by the characters and the readers. What we value and care about comes through in our writing, and we owe it to children to be aware of what we’re really sharing in the worlds we create for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A cranky reaction to a possibly growing trend in MG books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}