Books - powerful and vulnerable, all at the same time...

Recently at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival I was asked about my stance on whether we should censor the content of children's and young adult's literature in terms of contentious themes or the inclusion of sex, violence or profanity. I answered, saying what I believe to be true about whether readers need protecting or not. I think children are self limiting. Either they will decide it isn't for them and stop reading or it will be inaccessible to them as a result of their level of maturity (it will go over their heads). Or they will be ready for it, and frankly, a book is a much better way to come across such material where it is presented in context and provides a springboard for understanding and/or discussion. Sometimes it is material that provides wider understanding of an issue and makes them more empathetic. Humanity could definitely do with being more empathetic. Sometimes it is reflecting their own experience and helps them to feel less alone. The most excellent and wise author Judy Blume spoke to the same question here. Or you can hear the mellifluous Benedict Cumberbatch reading out Kurt Vonnegut's impassioned letter to a school district regarding the censorship of his books here. Children and young adults are far more likely to be harmed by the people they know than by the books they read.

And the intramaweb has been aglow with talk of the stoush between Hachette and Amazon. I don't know all the ins and outs. But I think Chuck Wendig's run down on the issue is useful and kinda reflects my own opinions if you want to take a closer look. I'm still looking to be the cork on the ocean.

And a few years back I had a meltdown over Joel Stein's New York Times editorial suggesting adults should not demean themselves by reading young adult or children's books. Obviously as far as Mr Stein was concerned, children's and YA books would never deal with issues or themes that could be of interest or value to adults. He mentioned The Hunger Games, which he had never read. Perhaps he should have come down off his high horse and read the trilogy. This week, this appeared. While the books are a work of fiction, the issues they contain represent real social concerns and author Suzanne Collins has spoken about the different real life events and real world problems that informed her work. And while Guardian journalist Jonathan Jones says the trilogy (and associated movie franchise) is not a manual for changing the world, the themes and concerns present in the books (and movies) have resonated with people and use of the symbolic gesture in the books have provided a platform for drawing wider attention to their fight.

And then there was Benedict Cumberbatch's voice...

I have a big list of things to do - BIG - so I went to the movies and saw Star Trek Into Darkness which I may need to see again for the purposes of quality control and I just watched the first two episodes of Parade's End back to back and it has all messed with my head and I am disinclined to do ANYTHING which means of course I am now posting on my blog. That Benedict Cumberbatch boy is a chameleon with a voice that could lure you off a precipice. I am worried his head will inflate till it explodes because everyone is going round saying he's amazing as Sherlock/Christopher Tietjens/John Harrison/insert latest role here. I'm sorry Benedict but this is unhealthy, you need to be crap at something so you can rejoin the real world.

I liked the new Star Trek. Good work J.J. Plenty of nods and referencing of earlier Star Trek episodes and movies in a reverential kind of way. It was fun telling my co-watcher (middle child) about the scenes that echoed scenes I'd seen in my youth. And yet these fitted seamlessly into the new narrative. I thought it built well on the first movie. And then there was Benedict Cumberbatch's voice. And some good humour, and some excellent running and a stunning spaceship crashing scene and the cleverness of dealing with a spaceship tumbling through space. And then Parade's End focusing on a man struggling to deal with the decline of the rural idyll (yes I am oversimplifying here - sorry). The countryside and the noble tilling of the soil and the sense of community might have been utopia for Tietjens but any society that views cuddling your own child after a nightmare as soft may deserve a little readjustment. All the manners, and the traditions and the contradictions are disturbing and fascinating. And then there's Benedict Cumberbatch's voice. Oh and there's a love triangle. The love triangle is fairly straightforward. One woman is the wife and the other woman is called Valentine. And then there's the man sticking pipes in the bushes so his landowner lord and master can grab one any time and have a smoke - people probably actually did that. I am enjoying it all. So yes I have been waylaid. Let's call it research.

And there has been a lot of sharing and discussion over the last few weeks of Maureen Johnson's gendered-book-cover experiment. You can see her fab article here if you haven't already caught it. I have discussed something similar before. Ms Johnson makes some fair points. It all reminds me of the comment this year in the NZ Post Children's Book Award judges' preface to the finalists. The judges lamented the lack of strong heroines in this year's batch of books. Last year or maybe the year before they probably lamented the lack of books specifically for boys.  I'm not sure why they mentioned it. As if children will falter in their social and gender development without a book this year with a fiesty female character. There is a whole NZ canon out there with heroines and heroes in a variety of genre catering to all readers. Good readers read widely. They can get their heroines and heroes from the wider cache of books from any year, not just this one. Please don't suggest writers should be going out of their way to fill a gap, they're too busy writing the best books about serious and compelling issues with the protagonists that demand their story be told. Or watching Star Trek.