Peeking Over the Literary Edge
By Kathryn H. Kidd

We got several more letters this week about edgy books for children and their parents, and the opinions (as you can surmise) are widely divergent.  There was even a request for me to get on my soapbox and rant about the series that all the girls in our ward are reading, and that rant comes later on in this column.  But first, let’s hear from the real people — you, the readers.  (I am only a cardboard imitation.)

As far as books go, I have several thoughts to share.  First, as has been mentioned, you need to be aware of what your kids are reading.  Our family devours books, and we have learned to be very cautious in our choices. 

For example, when my kids (a boy and a girl) were younger, we encouraged them to read the old Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mystery series.  They both read all of the older books, and then began on the updated series.  Imagine our surprise when the "new" Nancy Drew books included things such as, "Nancy's pulse began to race as Ned came nearer — her whole body longed for his heated embrace."

The "new" Hardy Boys series included topics such as these — their mother locked up in the attic and tortured in great detail, and their girlfriends being blown up and then cloned so that Joe and Frank didn't know that they had become evil.  Wow — not exactly uplifting material, especially considering that these books are written for third-graders.  I was glad that I knew the source of my son's sudden nightmares.

Second, you can have a positive influence on the literature surrounding you.  Through volunteering at school, particularly in the book fairs and library, I was able to get to know the librarians and teachers.  I found that they welcomed positive feedback on the book choices throughout the school, and listened to my concerns. In turn, our family discovered many wonderful books that would otherwise have stayed under the radar. 

My children participated in (and repeatedly won) the Accelerated Reader (AR) program throughout school.  The librarian encouraged them to read additional books (which qualified) that were not on the list and allowed them to design tests for other students to broaden the choices for all students.  Being involved at school in an indirect, non-contact way as my kids got older enabled me to keep in touch with the staff all the way through graduation, which was a very interesting journey.  Repeatedly, I found that the teachers, librarians, counselors, lunch ladies, and others, were very grateful to see a parent at school (even in high school) who was not there to complain.  I'm thankful for all of the hard work they put in, which benefits our society.
 
Third, as an avid reader with two kids who are difficult to keep supplied with books, the search for good literature applies to adults as well as children.  I have noticed a very disturbing trend in the past 10 years of increased homosexuality and adult content in popular books.  I too, was not LDS when I was growing up, and believe that my mom gave me the same book to read which Kathy read.  I did not discriminate in my reading at all when younger, and think it's ironic that I am now very aware of the content of the books I read. 

For instance, I don't watch R-rated movies, but for many years, I read the books the movies were based on and didn't think much about it until my husband asked me if I wanted my kids to read those books.  As I have become more selective, it has been a challenge to find good books, particularly as the content of current books has deteriorated. 

Our family tends to rely on older books.  One of our goals has been to read all of the Newbery award books back to the very beginning.  It is very interesting to see how things have changed in the past 50 years. 

Last but not least, here are some book suggestions for those of us out there in the trenches:

For books on tape or CD (we drive a lot as a family, since we live halfway across the country from our families):

• James Herriot
• Bill Cosby
• Pat McManus (outdoor humorist, absolutely hilarious)
• Chris Heimerdinger's Daniel and Nephi, as well as his Tennis Shoes series
• John Bytheway
• Dave Barry's updated Peter Pan tales (Peter and the Starcatchers, and so on) are wonderful
• Joni Hilton, and
• basically whatever else is on the clearance table at Deseret Book. 

Also, a great way to get your kids started on the classics is to get the Illustrated Classics books — very simple stories, a pencil drawing on every other page.  Our kids loved it when we read Dracula and other stories together as they got older.  After reading these, my son stunned everyone in the 5th grade when he read the original 1800's version of The Three Musketeers — and understood it!  He went on to read and reread all of the books in that series, as well as The Man in the Iron Mask, The Scarlet Pimpernel, and other classic stories that always entertain.

Sorry for the long letter, but as you can tell, it's a topic near and dear to my heart! 

Happy reading to all

Cindy Olive
Amarillo, Texas

What a great list, Cindy!  I have to admit you mentioned some of my favorites in your list — among them the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series and the Laurie R. King Sherlock Holmes books.  Readers need to be careful choosing from Laurie R. King’s books because she also has a series with a lesbian protagonist, but at least the first two books in the Sherlock Holmes series are a lot of fun. 

(Orson) Scott Card highly recommends the Hamish Macbeth mystery series written by M.C. Beaton, too, but I can’t weigh in on them yet because the ones I ordered on Tuesday just arrived today and are still wrapped in plastic on my desk.  It’s always nice to find a long series of books that are worthy of being read and enjoyed, so I have high hopes for Hamish.  Thanks for writing, Cindy.

Our next letter comes from a reader who has strong feelings on the subject of what we should be reading:

Is it okay for our youth to read books that are edgy?  No, it's not okay for anyone, youth or adult, to want to read books that are edgy, not if we plan to build a Zion society.  Nor should it surprise us that Satan is a talented writer who has sophisticated methods of drawing us into feelings of sympathy for evil-doing and other incorrect patterns of thinking.   

A Zion society requires a refined people, folks who have no appetite for things unclean.  Someone may have an overriding need or requirement to read such an edgy book at some time, as Hollie Parry [Meridian’s Young Adult book reviewer] just did in her role as a watchman on a tower.  But we should all be finding the things that would offend our God ever more repulsive to us too as we grow from Good to Better to Best and become more like Him. 

My favorite metaphor for building Zion is Roger Williams’ description of the garden and the wilderness, described by a Yale Law Professor:

Our children should be raised in the garden, not in the wilderness.  They should study the thoughts of those in the garden, not those in the wilderness.  If we send them into the wilderness to be taught, why would they want to return to the garden?  If they are taught in the garden, and if the garden has the power we say it does, our children will want to go into the wilderness to serve and teach and rescue; they will want to cultivate the wilderness and expand the garden.

A search on lds.org will show that several apostles have spoken of Roger Williams, especially Jeffery R. Holland (October Conference 2004) who is a descendant.  Elder Holland also spoke of Emerson.  We and our children should be familiar with Roger Williams and Emerson, and even more so with Joseph Smith and George Washington.  Our children should be read to from the best books from the beginning.  For uplifting reading for teens, someone (Kathy?) should ask President Hinckley, who has mentioned many books over the years, for his reading list.

Raising our children in the garden may require that they be educated in religious schools or in our homes.  So be it.  Our children came prepared for such an education and we, and they, have a kingdom to build.

Joyce Kinmont
Syracuse, Utah
LDS Home Educator's Assn.
www.ldshea.org

What a great idea, Joyce — to find out what President Hinckley would recommend for his reading list!  I wonder what would be on it.

As for edgy books, it’s hard to determine what is edgy and what isn’t.  There are stories in the Old Testament that would curl a person’s eyelashes, for example.  Even a classic like Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath would be far too intense for some people.

I had an experience once that convinced me that what we should and should not read may be as individual as determining what a person should or should not eat.  Years ago, I used to be very interested in true crime books.  I wanted to be a forensic pathologist long before most people knew what a forensic pathologist was.  I was fascinated with what made criminals tick.

After I had been reading true crime books for years, I received inspiration one day that true crime books were doing bad things to me.  Because I was immersed in them, I was more cynical and more hardened than I would have been otherwise.  I knew immediately that I should not read true crime books again — and that having been enlightened about what true crime books did to me, it would be a transgression for me to read even one of them.  But I also knew that this prohibition did not apply to everyone — that there are plenty of people in the world who can read about crime without becoming as hardened as I was.  What was a sin for me wasn’t necessarily a sin for others.

It’s sort of like chocolate.  For those of us who can eat a piece of chocolate and then walk away, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying an occasional piece of candy.  But for those people who can’t stop with a piece or two, but who lose control once they indulge, it’s probably a good thing to completely abstain.

Read on for another opinion about edginess in literature:

I enjoyed your column this week.  It is really funny: when my kids were little I was for more restrictive about reading material than other parents, and now that they are older I am far less so.  Many people just have no idea what is in the "classics."  Edgar Allen Poe wrote about drugs, depression and depraved behavior.  A Tale of Two Cities has a rape scene.  Jane Eyre almost married a man who was already married by accident and also dealt with insanity and cruelty — among other things.

There was a really sweet sex scene in (Orson Scott Card’s) Lost Boys.  To me it is not the content, it is the how and why it is in there and what does it mean?  What about Crime and Punishment?  Let's not forget Anna Karenina. 

We could go down the same path with music.  Many people will see “Porgy and Bess” because it is classic and turn down rock music.  “Porgy and Bess” is about sex, drugs, violence against women, prostitution, outcasts and murder. 

For me the question is, "Do they portray evil as good and good as evil?"  That is my objection to many of the new popular children's books.  In fact, I found Harry Potter offensive from a feminist perspective. Ha!

Liz from Santa Monica

You make good points, Liz.  Edgy is certainly in the eye of the beholder.  Thanks for writing.

Here’s the letter I mentioned at the beginning — the one that inspired me to get on my soapbox and rant.  I hate to do this, because I try to keep my opinions out of this.  This is your column!  But having been requested to rant, I am going to climb on the soapbox after this letter and rant away.  You have been warned!

I'm wishing I knew what series you're referring to that the girls in your ward "are devouring right now."  I try to make it a point to read everything my kids do. I usually stay away from "adult" fiction unless it's by an author I know, because adultery and fornication are regularly assumed to be "normal" adult behavior, which must be included in every story line.  You do find some of that in youth fiction, as well, but in my experience, it is much less common and also less graphic.

The series taking our area teens (in and out of the Church) by storm right now is the vampire/werewolf thing by Stephenie Meyers.  I would consider the subject matter rather "edgy" and, at first, I was surprised that a BYU grad would choose such a topic.  However, I am pleased that legions of young girls (many, if not most,not LDS) are being exposed to a love story that doesn't automatically assume that the "normal" thing to do is have sex before marriage.

Anonymous Reader

Thanks for writing, Anonymous.  And surprise, surprise — the series you mentioned in your letter is exactly the series that our own ward’s Young Women have been carrying to church on Sundays along with their scriptures.

I have no idea why the series has upset me so much.  I have read much, much worse in my checkered past.   I think it’s a tribute to the author’s writing skill that I am so annoyed with the protagonist in that series that I can’t even read the books for long before getting so angry I have to put them down.  Bella is human to me, and I can’t stand her.  In all the thousands upon thousands of books I have read, I have never seen a protagonist who was so stupid.

The back cover of the first book in the series is very revealing:

Hold on. She knows only two facts about him — he’s a predator, and at least on some level he wants to destroy her.  And without knowing any more about him than that, she is “unconditionally and irrevocably” in love with him. 

Excuse me.  If a girl only knows two things about a boy, how can she possibly be “unconditionally and irrevocably” in love with him?  Well, we soon find out.  Edward is rilly-rilly cute.  That explains everything.  Even though her life is in jeopardy, she can’t possibly walk away from him because he is rilly-rilly cute.

Replace the word “vampire” with “child molester” or “spouse abuser.”  If Edward were a child molester or a batterer, would she stay with him?  Of course!  If you’re rilly cute, that’s what matters!

Other things that disturb me about this protagonist include, but are not limited to, the following:

• She sleeps in the same bed with her boyfriend every night, even though they don't have sex.  (He sneaks through the window so her father won’t find out.)
• She runs off by herself to Arizona on a life-endangering mission without telling her father, and is almost killed in the process. 
• She flies off to Europe on a life-endangering mission without telling her father.  She lies to him, and he thinks she’s on a sleepover with a female friend.
• She continually puts herself in harm's way, even throwing herself off a cliff, just because she can imagine that Edward would yell at her if he saw her doing something so stupid.
• She puts her parents in harm's way.  (Yes, she'd be rilly-rilly sad if the vampires killed her parents, but she can't do anything about that.  After all, she's in love!)

The third novel is the one that blew me away.  Picture this.  You are in mortal jeopardy.  Your life is so much in danger that creatures who are bitter enemies (vampires and werewolves) have banded together to fight to the death to save you.  As the battle is raging, the first thing you do is take your boyfriend, who is possibly the strongest combatant, out of the fray to keep you company — even though with him out of the fight it puts the rest of your friends in even worse danger.

Then, while the battle escalates and you don’t know whether your friends who are fighting on your behalf are going to live or die, you don’t even waste a thought on them.  Instead, you spend the entire time pestering your boyfriend to have sex with you.  You badger him over and over and over again.  All you can care about is getting your own physical gratification.

Talk about a black hole of selfishness!

Am I over-reacting?  Probably so.  Our own children’s books reviewer, Holly Newton, gave these books a glowing review — and I really (excuse me, rilly-rilly) trust Holly.  (Our Young Adult books reviewer, Hollie Parry, read them and refused to review them because she didn’t think they were appropriate for an LDS audience — so there you have both ends of the spectrum.) 

Do I think these books should be banned from LDS homes?  Actually, I don’t.  For one thing, your pre-teen and early-teen daughters have probably already read them.  But the other reason is that these books can give parents a terrific opportunity to discuss with their daughters (in a non-panicked, non-judgmental way) that they may come upon the human equivalent of vampires in their own lives, and that they need to prepare now to be smarter than Bella is. 

Girls need to know that no matter how cute the guy is, or how much he says he loves you, there is nobody who is worth sticking around for if he’s going to beat you or your children, or if he’s going to take you away from the Church, or if he’s going to do any one of a number of things that could destroy you and the generations that come after you.  Your daughters need to know there are other options.

There are apparently going to be five books in this series.  You can bet your booties I’ll purchase the other two as they come out, in hardback, so I’ll be able to discuss these books with the Young Women in our ward.  I’ll probably be screaming at the idiot protagonist all through them, but the discussions will be worth the frustration.

I also have a hidden agenda for continuing this series.  I have fingers and toes crossed that by the end of the story, Bella is going to decide that perhaps her immortal soul is just a teeny bit more important than having a boyfriend, even if he is the cutest thing on the planet, and that she’s going to finally grow a spine and say goodbye to her undead companion. 

One can hope.

There you have it, friends and neighbors.  I’m off my soapbox now.  If you want to throw rotten fruit at me, please throw berries.  I bruise easily. 

Let’s start a new topic next week.  I’m sure you’re all ready for something new.  If you'd like to write in, send your thoughts to meridianmagazine@aol.com. Put something in the subject line that will let me know your letter isn't spam. And when you write, be sure to include your full name, city and state or province. (If you'd rather be semi-anonymous, sign your name as “A Reader from Michigan” or “Sandy from Timbuktu.” The important thing is that we hear from you.)

Until next time — Kathy

This will never be a civilized country until we expend
more money for books than we do for chewing gum.

Elbert Hubbard