YA books: a cure for optimism

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Hey kids, do you ever feel happy, laugh at funny jokes, dance like no one's watching?  Do you ever take pleasure in uplifting stories that speak to the triumph of the human spirit?  Do you, in short, have faith in humanity?

Let's cure all that for you with your middle school reading list.

Yes, reading YA fiction is an exercise in masochism, offering a dystopic worldview and a sense of the futile struggle for decency in the face of man's inhumanity to man-- in short, it is much like the experience of middle school itself.

Here, a brief rundown of some perennially popular YA titles:

* Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell, 1960.
Island of the Blue Dolphins
When everyone in Karana's tribe is setting sail to leave their island home forever, Karana sees her brother being left behind and jumps ship to stay with him.  Shortly thereafter, her brother is killed by wild dogs, and Karana must survive in isolation for many years with only the animals of the island for companions.  What's even worse is that the book is based on the true story of Juana Maria, who was rescued after 18 years alone on an island, only to find that no one could understand the language she spoke--and she died a mere 7 weeks later.

* Watership Down by Richard Adams, 1972.
Watership Down: A Novel
War seems somehow even more brutal when the soldiers are all cuddly little bunny rabbits.  Humans appear here too, as a kind of faceless, menacing threat of evil--they destroy the rabbits' homes, shoot them, and catch them in snares.  This is "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" but with blood and urine and carnage, and where Mr. McGregor isn't the only antagonist to fear; Flopsy might make a shiv out of a carrot and go after Cottontail.

* Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson, 1977.
Bridge to Terabithia
This is one of those books that the older kids warn you about before you even know the basic plot-- you know beforehand that it's going to be sad, much like Where the Red Fern Grows or the movie My Girl.  So, while you might anticipate Leslie's death, what you don't realize is that the book will also ensure you will never use a rope swing again in your entire life.  Most elementary school-level books encourage imaginative play, but this book's message is unequivocal: imagination kills.  LARPing ruins lives. 

* Good Night, Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian, 1981.
Good Night, Mr. Tom
Books set during World War II are rarely uplifting, and that goes double for YA books.  So how do you make a WWII YA book even more soul-crushing?  Why not add in a heartbreakingly self-loathing, bed-wetting child who is horribly abused by his own mother?  I remember not being able to sleep all night after reading one scene where the boy is locked in a closet for days holding a dead baby.  How can one face 7th grade gym class after something like that?

* The Goats by Brock Cole, 1987.
The Goats
I remember the description of the story on the back jacket of this book began with the words: "Stripped and marooned on a small island by their fellow campers, a boy and a girl..." and that was all I had to read.  I knew what "stripped" meant, but not "marooned," but the co-ed context gave me hope that "marooning" must be the term for one of those tips described in Cosmo that I didn't quite understand yet.  Sure, the kids on the front cover were quite possibly the most unattractive pair I'd ever seen, but still!  Ultimately, despite my imaginative "maroon" ideas, there was no purple prose, just some message about bullying in its stead.  Disappointing.


Lesson learned:
Even at age 13, YA lit confirms it: you will die alone, misunderstood, and unloved, and--if you're especially unlucky--marooned.

"Hatchet"

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Imagine being a kid and riding in a car with an adult--say, your parent or grandparent.  Everything is fine until you smell a fart and you know it's not yours.  Do you:
A) Point and laugh.
B) Say nothing, lest you risk the accusation of "he who smelt it, dealt it."
C) Prepare yourself for your imminent demise.

Me, I would choose C every time.  Because if there's one thing Hatchet taught me, it's that farting equals death.  You remember how Brian's plane crashed and he had to survive alone in the wilderness with only a hatchet between himself and certain death?  Do you remember how that all started?

Let me refresh your memory:

"Now the plane lurched slightly to the right and Brain looked at the pilot.  He was rubbing his shoulder again and there was the sudden smell of body gas in the plane.  Brian turned back to avoid embarrassing the pilot, who was obviously in some discomfort.  Must have stomach troubles."  

If you are in a plane, a car-- heck, an elevator-- and this happens to you, it is not stomach troubles.  Do not ignore the fatal flatulence.

Then, later:

"Now there was a constant odor, and Brain took another look at the pilot, found him rubbing his shoulder and down the arm now, the left arm, letting go more gas and wincing.  Probably something he ate, Brian thought."

No, Brian, don't rationalize this away.  This is serious.  Farting means death.  Farting means death!

So, the pilot dies.  Brian lands in the Canadian woods and has to find food, build shelter, and make fire to survive.  Until things start to go badly and Brian goes mad and keeps repeating the mantra "Clouddown" to himself and tries to pull a James Franco and hack off his own arm with the Hatchet to commit suicide.  "For ages 12 and up" the book says on the back cover.  Indeed!

Now, Hatchet has sequels.  Sequels!  The bizarre premises employed to get our boy back out into the wild with his hatchet are just as ridiculous as you might expect.  According to the publisher's website, in The River, "the government wants him to go back into the wilderness so that astronauts and the military can learn the survival techniques that kept Brian alive" so he agrees and goes back, and of course things don't go as planned. But really, the government needs to pay to learn the survival techniques of a thirteen-year-old boy?  No wonder we're in debt.


Lesson learned:
The only way you will survive after a plane crash is if you carry a hatchet with you on your flight.  You hear that, TSA?


Paulsen, Gary.  Hatchet.  New York: Penguin, 1988.
Hatchet: 20th Anniversary Edition

"Julie of the Wolves"

This book remains pretty popular YA reading.  I liked it, but I remember reading it more as a "how-to" guide for renouncing humanity and becoming a wolf, although I'm pretty sure now that wasn't the book's intention.

Thinking her father is dead, the Eskimo woman Julie is coerced into a marriage at 13 to Daniel, a mentally disabled man.  Daniel says his friends have been taunting him--"Ha, ha.  Dumb Daniel. He has a wife and he can't mate her"--so he tries to rape her.  (This scene is disturbing but brief, and apparently it's gotten this book challenged or banned in several places.  I don't advocate that, myself.  I say, inform yourself, read the book if you choose, and if it warps you you'll have great blog fodder for later!)

Julie escapes, reverts to her Eskimo name, "Miyax," and goes out to live among the wolves.  She gives them names like Amaroq and Nails and Jello, and she acts as a wolf herself.  Miyax nurses from one wolf and even gets another to regurgitate food for her so she can eat it.  This book convinced me that I could effectively communicate with wolves, since I had read all of Julie's hints and tricks.  There were no wolves handy, but I'm pretty sure I tried biting the top of the family poodle mix's nose in order to show I was pack leader.  (It didn't work.  But I wonder if Cesar Milan read this book?)

Amaroq, the pack leader, gets shot from a plane and Miyax mourns.  Then she learns her father is alive, but he owns the plane that is being used to hunt the pack for sport!  Miyax peaces out and heads back out to the wolves.

Lesson learned:
In a pinch, wolf vomit.




George, Jean Craighead.  Julie of the Wolves.  New York: Harper & Row, 1972.
Julie of the Wolves (rack)

"Where the Red Fern Grows"

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This book's reputation precedes it, so I knew going in that the dogs would die.  It is well-established that in YA literature, if there is a dog, it will probably die (e.g. Old Yeller, Sounder) or at least be horribly abused (e.g. Shiloh, Call of the Wild).  So, while it is very sad that the dogs die, reading a YA title with a dog in it is a little like being a hospice worker: you know death is pretty much what they're there for.

Billy orders his coonhounds from an ad in a magazine and has them sent to him in the mail.  Because nothing says "humane treatment" like putting a puppy in a box via USPS.  I am only assuming that this was a conventional practice at the time.

Billy lives in the Ozarks during the Great Depression, so his hunting and killing of raccoons is, again, normal and expected.  His dogs, Old Dan and Little Ann, gain reputations as the best coonhounds in the area.  Rubin and Rainie Pritchard are jealous of the dogs, and bet Billy that Old Dan and Little Ann can't catch the infamous "ghost coon."  After Billy's dogs are successful but Billy refuses to kill the "ghost coon," Rubin knocks Billy down and the Pritchards' mean dog, Old Blue, starts to fight Old Dan.  Suddenly, Rainie shouts that "they" are killing Old Blue, since "Faithful Little Ann, bitch though she was, had gone to the assistance of Old Dan."  (Ann might be a little bitch, but she's not a little bitch, you know what I'm saying?)

When it looks like Billy's dogs are going to win the fight , Rubin threatens to kill the dogs and charges after Old Dan and Little Ann while brandishing an axe.  Here is the part where we might expect what happens to dogs in YA fiction to happen to these dogs, but no.  Instead, Rubin trips and stabs himself in the stomach with the axe.

And he's not dead yet.

Rubin softly pleads for Billy to "take it out of me," a few times, and Billy sees Rubin's hands are curled around the axe blade and he's trying to pull it out himself.  Billy does Rubin a solid and pulls the blade out for him: "The blood gushed. I felt the warm heat as it spread over my hands."  (By the way, bad idea, kids.)  Even though Rubin has just had the head of an axe yanked out of his abdomen, Billy actually believes that Rubin is going to be able to get up.

Then we get what I think must be the most horrifying passage in all of YA literature:
"His eyes were wide open, staring straight at me.  Stopping in his effort of getting up, still staring at me, his mouth opened as if to say something.  Words never came.  Instead, a large red bubble slowly worked its way out of his mouth and burst.  He fell back to the ground.  I knew he was dead."

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm never chewing cherry bubblegum ever, ever again.

Lesson learned:
The pull-out method rarely works.


Rawls, Wilson.  Where the Red Fern Grows.  New York: Doubleday, 1961.
Where the Red Fern Grows