Vampires, Sex and Tweens, Oh My!

As a rule, I try to read anything that Hollywood makes into a movie or The CW turns into a TV show.  I consider it research for my job, and it gives me street cred with my fifth graders.  To that end, I've read Twilight, Harry Potter and The Hunger Games.  This summer, I delved into Pretty, Little Liars by Sara Sheppard and The Vampire Diaries by L.J. Smith, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that YA books are a guilty pleasure.  There are even some great ones that haven’t been made into movies yet.  Check out Jennifer Donnelly’s Revolution or The Tea Rose and the Matched series by Ally Condie.  I have no trouble recommending YA books to adults.  Often they are excellent reads, and very entertaining.  However, I always get stuck when it comes to recommending them to kids.  Parents ask me about the violence in The Hunger Games (about the same as Harry Potter 4-7) and the romance in Twilight (there’s no pre-marital sex), but what about the less famous books our kids are reading?  The elementary school where I work has Pre-K through 6^th grade.  Our 5^th and 6^th graders want to read these books, but YA stands for Young Adult.  Is an 11 year old a young adult?  Is a 12 year old? 

Amy, a very bright 5^th grader recommended Pretty, Little Liars to me, so I was shocked to discover the plot centers around a group of 16 year old girls who experiment with drugs, sex and alcohol.   I saw a little girl at the pool today, she couldn’t have been older than 10, reading book 7 in the series.  She was sitting right next to her mother, who probably doesn’t let her see PG-13 movies and has parental guides on her TV.  I understand.  When we were little, my sister and I loved dance movies like Grease and Dirty Dancing.  My mom would let us watch them but fast forward through risqué scenes.  It was years before I knew that Rizzo and Kenickie went all the way, and I was in college when I figured out why Baby’s father couldn’t trust her anymore.  Despite my mother’s vigilance, I vividly recall sitting on the monkey bars in 4^th grade with my best friend Liz, reading Sweet Valley High: Playing with Fire.  That’s the one where Jessica gets felt up in the pool.  That’s pretty tame in comparison to today’s YA books. 

Generally, I subscribe to the philosophy that it doesn’t matter what kids read, as long as they are reading.  That said, I'd hesitate to recommend any of the books I've mentioned a child younger than 12, even though the TV shows and movies motivate kids to read.  So what should parents do, if they aren’t sure about a book?  I recommend a two-fold attack.  Since you can’t fast forward through the questionable scenes and stapling the pages together, will just encourage the reading of those scenes, I suggest reading the books with your child and engaging in book talks about them.  This will almost certainly embarrass an eleven year old out of Pretty, Little Liars. 

My other suggestion is to guide them gently towards more appropriate books in the same genre; fantasy and science fiction are hot right now, so look to Suzanne Collins.  Before The Hunger Games, she wrote Gregor the Overlander.  Gregor and his two year old sister fall through the vent in the laundry room of their New York apartment and land in Underland, which is populated with giant spiders, cockroaches and rats.  Gregor and the humans who live in Underland must go on a quest to save the world.  I couldn’t put it down.  I also recommend Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce.  It’s about a very tall boy, who pretends to be his friend’s dad.  They enter a father–daughter contest, and end up on a space ship, orbiting Earth.  There are tons of great fantasy series, as well, like Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan; Percy seems like a normal kid, but it turns out he’s the son of Poseidon and actually a demi-god.  Of course there are always the classics like, the Chronicles of Narnia and anything by Roald Dahl.  Revolting Rhymes is my gateway Dahl.  Like all of Dahl’s books this one is gross and weird and naughty, everything kids love in a book.  They are retellings of fairy tales in poetry form, but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs use the magic mirror to win at the horse races, and Red Riding Hood ends up with a new wolfskin coat.  From there it's a short jump to The Witches and The BFG.  And, if it increases the appeal, most of these books have already been made into movies.   

Great Fantasy and Science Fiction for Upper Elementary Kids

The Underneath by Kathi Appelt

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo

Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis

The Twits by Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl

The Witches by Roald Dahl

The BFG by Roald Dahl

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl

The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer

Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan

Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins

The Girl with the Silver Eyes by Willo Davis Roberts

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

The Merlin Series by T. A. Barron
The Roar by Emma Clayton
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman