I’ve found one that’s miles worse than Misfit. This abomination is Blue Moon by Alyson Noel. This one, too, is pitched to teenage girls.
You may well ask what I’m doing, reading these. I’ve been invited onto a radio show to discuss teen-lit and its predilection for witchcraft, New Age, the occult, etc. So I picked these two books at random off the library shelf, just to prepare for the discussion.
What are these authors and publishers trying to do to their readers? OK, they’re trying to enrich themselves; but there are more honorable ways of doing that, such as selling used cars or operating a roulette wheel.
Our young people are already being dumbed down and mal-educated by our public schools. A steady diet of such books as these would surely make them dumber. How else to ensure a steady supply of Democrat voters?
Blue Moon is part of Noel’s The Immortals series (which my wife suggests should be called The Interminables). It is the Oxford English Dictionary of New Age cliches. You name it, this wretched book has got it–auras, astrology, chakras, Summerland, and, of course, past lives. It’s really big on past lives. Make sure you have more than one barf-bag handy for this one. But it’s also big on teen slang (or rather, the grown-up author’s conception of it), boyfriend-girlfriend angst, the perpetual anticipation of copulation (something always seems to get in the way), and a cast of characters with truly irritating names. You won’t find a Tom or a Susan or a Jim or a Patricia among the lot of them. Instead they have names like Ever and Damen and Haven and… oh, never mind! None of these kids seems to have parents, and all the other adults in the story are completely ineffectual.
Even less visible and less effectual than parents are God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. That’s because all these teenage schlubs with goofy names are little godlets in their own right. If that sounds ridiculous, it’s only because it is ridiculous.
So… what harm does it do? Are even teenage girls stupid enough to be influenced by this kind of tripe?
I’m not sure I’m ready for the answer to that question.
Need we ask? When girls are fed this crap and boys taught how to apply makeup and style their hair and aspire to become “mothers” what can we
do? Be glad your children are already grown, do what you can to educate other young people and trust God to sort it all out.
Eric Hoffer said, “When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.” Or, the familiar adage, “Monkey see, monkey do.” Teen girls want to be like the characters portrayed in the popular movies and music videos they idolize. These kind of fantasy books are like sugar to them – only trouble is, it will rot their souls.
Great reference! Hoffer is a favorite.
I’ve noticed the same things, youth literature which chips away at our civilization. I also am sick and tired of the never ending contest to come up with non-traditional names for characters or even worse, cursing some child with a ridiculous New-Age appropriate name. It is to wretch.
Thanks for writing some good fiction, Lee.
Plutarch wrote his “Lives” to give his readers what he felt were good examples that should be imitated. He included a few bad examples–Mark Antony, for one–as models for what ought to be avoided.
As for my own fantasy novels, I would be distressed to hear that young readers wanted to be like Lord Reesh instead of Jack or Ellayne.