Comments on: Juvenile doomsday lit

By: michele

michele — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 05:14:13 +0000

Thank you, ricki! “Why, pray tell?” is a very good question!

As you say, kids will have plenty of years to be exposed to downer topics and paranoia! Why do we insist on rushing children into adulthood with what they read, what they wear, and many choices they are allowed to make?

The difference between today and decades past is the prevalence of disturbing information all around us today. In times when particular literature was a rare exposure to dark topics, children had more of a balance in their lives. Today kids are experiencing mature issues much earlier than we did–all around them all the time.

“Doomsday” literature might be less close to reality if we let kids be kids, wrote more uplifting books for them, and even offered them some fanciful fantasy. There is nothing wrong with a bit of innocence in childhood. In fact, we could benefit from making it a requirement.

By: ZZMike

ZZMike — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:12:04 +0000

Then there’s James Clavell’s “Children’s Tale”, a short-story version of “the takeover”. Its setting is a schoolroom, the timeline is less than a half hour.
And it’s online:

http://home.comcast.net/~llefler/clavell.htm

(You may remember Clavell from one of his other books, “Shogun”.)

If anybody knows what the last line is about, please post here.

By: Catch Thirty-Three

Catch Thirty-Three — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 19:42:20 +0000

Deidre – Indeed, I was going to say, you are showing your age. In the 1980s, for apocalyptic lit, we kids were either reading books on 1) nuclear war or 2) communist takeovers. That is very reflective of the times in which we grew up. Twenty years from now, there will be a new theme, perhaps, while a bunch of adults will be saying “I remember reading (insert title) about such-and-such environmental disaster…”

The times and subject matter changes but the theme stays the same just as you point out above.

By: Deirdre Mundy

Deirdre Mundy — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:05:31 +0000

Back in the 80′s–when I was around 10, I loved:

USSA– a novel about a communist takeover of America (Think Red Dawn, but for kids)

A Rag, A Bone, and A Hank of Hair — about a future where the human race could no longer reproduce except by cloning

The aforementioned “Tripod” books

Children of the Dust — A Post Nuclear Apocolyptic book

and

Downwind — a disaster book about a power plant meltdown.

My husband really got into the “After the Bomb” books.

Post-apocolyptic kids books have been around for a while— it’s only the nature of the impending doom (was nuclear, now environmental) that’s changed.

By: Required Reading at The Core Knowledge Blog

Required Reading at The Core Knowledge Blog — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 15:29:56 +0000

[...] Juvenile doomsday litÂ at Joanne Jacobs Doomsday books for kids are hot. Are 21st-century children ready to trade in Pooh for a dead polar bear? Do they wish to trade The Secret Garden for apocalypse lit? [...]

By: ricki

ricki — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:40:15 +0000

Let me get this straight: We’re banning “tag” because it’s potentially dangerous and because someone who gets stuck being “it” might get their feelings hurt, and we’re eliminating the concept of honor rolls because the underperforming students might be unhappy, yet we are foisting “downer” books on our children?

Why, pray tell?

I read a lot of escapist literature as a kid. Loved Winnie-the-Pooh and Narnia and the Moomin books and the Oz books. Sure, there was perhaps some minor danger in the books but at least there were happy endings that made me feel that the world at least had the potential to be a friendly place.

The kids will have the next 50-60 years of their lives to listen to all the paranoia on the evening news.

(And yeah, yeah, yeah, I get the stuff about “kids with a parent in jail feel more NORMAL if they read a book featuring that.” But I suspect a lot of kids reading these books are not in the situation the books address).

I still like to read escapist literature.

By: Walter E. Wallis

Walter E. Wallis — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 09:57:00 +0000

Analog SF went through a siege of post apocalypse a while ago – The Postman was one I remember – so I dropped my sub until they came back. I dumped them again when they went Gaia.
Shit happens, but you are better prepared for it if you don’t dissipate your capital building pyramids and cursing the sun.

By: Andromeda

Andromeda — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 01:11:58 +0000

Oh, man, I just could *not* get enough dystopian novels when I was a teenager. I adored 1984, and read everything in the genre I could get my hands on.

Fundamentally, being a teenager was being trapped in an arbitrary and awful world, so dystopias were what spoke to me.

And, as Bart and Mrs. C note, the awful has a long and proud tradition in storytelling. Dystopias were the literature of my adolescence, Greek mythology the literature of my childhood — shot through with death and sex and betrayal, when you get down to it.

And also shot through (in the case of my edition) with Milton and Keats, and deep philosophical questions about the nature and role of God, and all kinds of stuff it’s great to think about when you’re a kid.

Kids live in the world. No point in saying their literature shouldn’t allow them to grapple with it.

By: OmegaMom

OmegaMom — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:54:04 +0000

[...] from that, nothing is roiling my brain right now. OmegaGranny sent me a link to a blog post about kids books and end-of-the-world catastrophism, prompted by a write-up in [...]

By: Bart

Bart — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:20:39 +0000

The Brothers Grimm survive.