Tag: young adults fiction

So You Want Your Teen to be Reading… This?

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

I’ve been saying we all have to be careful about the entertainment that we stuff into our brains. Especially our children’s brains, and that includes teenagers–who are smart enough to get in trouble, but not yet smart enough to avoid it.

Which brings me to I Hunt Killers, by Barry Lyga–which, not too long ago, was an amazon.com “Kids’ Daily Deal” of the day.

One reader described it as “like Silence of the Lambs for kids.” Lovely. Reviewer Joe Hill waxed even more enthusiastic, likening it to “an out-of-control hearse with one busted headlight, blood on the grille, a madman at the wheel, and laughter pouring out of the open windows.”

I Hunt Killers is about the teenage son of a prolific serial killer. The boy’s name is Jazz–somehow “Jazz” has become a popular name for exceedingly disturbed teenagers. Jazz’s old man has taught his boy everything he knows about being a serial killer, in hopes that Jazz will grow up to murder even more people than he did.

Meanwhile, there’s a serial killer on the loose in their hometown. Could it be Jazz, following in his pappy’s footsteps–or will Jazz have to use his special knowledge to stop him?

This could turn out to be pretty unwholesome.

But this is the curriculum material we’re using to educate ourselves and our children.

If it’s what you want, you’re welcome to it. But I wish you lived farther away.

How to Write a YA Best-Seller

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

If my publishers and I were not committed to books fit for the Christian family, I could make a lot of money for us.

See, I’ve learned the formula for creating a Young Adults fiction best-seller. Reading and reviewing a lot of real YA best-sellers has given me a feel for it.

Try it yourself. Here are the ingredients.

1. Kids with super-strength, super-smarts, great kung-fu, or magic. The 11-year-old girl in your story must be able to beat up full-grown, able-bodied men. Kids get a real rush out of this. In real life, adults are always telling them what to do. But in YA fiction, the tables are turned and the kids always come out on top.

Don’t be afraid to make these confrontations really violent. Anything goes, as long as the child wins.

2. Invisible, irrelevant, or totally ineffectual parents. You may have noticed that some YA kid heroes and heroines come from homes where the parents are just out to lunch. Don’t laugh–remember “After-School Special”? When did you ever see a normal set of parents on that hit show?

Harry Potter, for instance, got to have his cake and eat it, too. His real parents, wonderful people, were dead. His foster parents were jidrools, and he ran rings around them. This way you get to honor your parents and make fools of them at the same time.

3. Lots and lots of blood ‘n’ guts. Go for the graphic. The bad guys in your stories, or anyone who happens to get in the kids’ way, don’t deserve to live, anyhow. Make internal organs external. Remember, if it ever evolves into a video game or a movie, there will be lots of screaming and many bodies flying all around the place.

4. Always include a dollop of soft-core paganism. Don’t go overboard and show your super-kids flaying human sacrifices to Xipe Totec and dancing around in the skins. But the pagan flavoring is indispensable! Especially if you want to wind up getting published by Scholastic. [Oops. Did I just kill my chances here? Oh, well…]

It doesn’t have to be all that subtle. I read one YA fantasy novel in which the super-girl was actually the niece of the pagan Philistine fish god, Dagon. Or your kid characters can acquire immortality. Or commune with Nature Spirits and get really good advice from them.

5. But whatever you do, avoid the real God! If you’ve efficiently packed your YA novel with pagan gods and goddesses, assorted “spiritual entities,” deathless vampires, and immortal teens who are really hot although they still have go to school and sit through algebra classes (can you imagine an eternity of that!), there will be no opening for the real God to get in.

6. Just don’t make it too obvious. You want to rope in the Christian parents who want their child to develop the habit of reading. These potential customers are not inclined to look too deeply into any book their children might enjoy. If you are reasonably discreet about your paganism, these Christian readers will never notice it.

And there you have it, boys and girls–now sit right down and write some truly awful YA fiction. Let’s see how far these ingredients can take you.

More Books to Rot Your Teen’s Mind

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

My local library is going to host a talk by a certain author of Young Adult fiction. And the high school has assigned one of his novels to be read by two of the English classes.

This particular novel is about a boy who shows up to high school wearing lipstick. Once upon a time, if some freak tried that, he would’ve been sent straight home with a sharp letter to his parents. He would not have been allowed to ponce around all day, creating a disruption. But of course now everyone else is required to endorse his loony lifestyle.

The purpose of these novels, we are told, is to “confront issues all teens face on their journey to adulthood.” Huh? Could it be that “all teens” have to “confront” these issues because certain adults are obsessed with shoving them under young people’s noses? In some public school districts, “gender education” starts as young as kindergarten.

Hey, check out the International Reading Association‘s 2013 Young Adults’ Choices Reading List (it’s a pdf file on their website). These are the books the IRA deems the cream of the crop. What’s your pleasure? Sexual anarchy, witchcraft, paganism; abortion, morbid obesity, early death–it’s all here, waiting to be shoved into your teenager’s brain by the friendly folks at IRA and your local teachers’ union.

And to the parents who let them do it, a single question–

Why?