The basic debate here is whether or not a novel written for children should have its content restricted or dialled down, because its aimed at children and god forbid the little darlings understand that the world is not a perfect place. My answer as a in-no-way-biased-aspiring-writer-for-children, obviously, is:
Though actually, first let's play examples. So last year, this book:
It's narrated by a sixteen-year-old boy who, with an assortment of other strangers, is kidnapped and trapped in an underground bunker by a psycopathic (and unseen) Big-Brother-typed character, who messes with their food / sanity / heating / everything else and generally tortures them. It's pretty goddamn bleak. What it is not, however, is - as Lorna Bradbury of The Telegraph described it - a 'uniquely sickening read', that 'seems to have won on shock value rather than merit'. And her statement that 'we are left with the uncomfortable feeling that, like the prisoners, we have spent time being manipulated by a psychopath and pervert', presumably directed at author Kevin Brooks, deserves to be met with no more or less than this attitude:
So there's your basic argument FOR censoring children's books - it'll traumatise them or upset them or make them ask questions the adults around them would rather not answer.
And here are my top three reasons (and there are many more) as to why those arguments are spectacularly missing the point:
1. These are books, not films. A child is always going to be limited by their own understanding when they're conjuring these images in their own head. I'm not going to pretend that a children's writer doesn't have to write with SENSITIVITY to the age of the reader, but there's no reason why that would restrict what it is you're writing about. Look at Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book - the opening of that novel, aimed at 8-12 year olds, features the massacre of the protagonist's family. But because of the WAY it's written, no eight-year-olds were traumatised in the reading of this very important scene.
2. Any and all children have a right to be represented in the novels written about and for them. That encompasses race, gender, social backgroung, religion, AND circumstance. Appalling things can and do happen to children, and for however long these awful things are happening, these children cannot be ignored.
"But what if my perfect little middle-class cherub reads a book about a child who is kidnapped and molested, and is shocked and horrified by it?!" Well, damn right. I imagine that was the point.
3. On a similar, albeit pretty bleak, note: as Kevin Brooks himself has said, children 'don't need to be told that everything will be all right in the end, because they're perfectly aware that in real life things aren't always all right in the end'. As adults, unfortunately we can't pretend that we live in a happy-clappy world where everything works out perfectly in the end, bad people are punished and good, sweet children live the lives they deserve because - and I'm sorry if this comes as a shock - that just isn't the way it is.
Now there are many more facets to this whole argument (such is life), like the 'gatekeeper' parents, Young Adult genre in itself and the hideous concept of 'parental advisory stickers'. But come on people:
If you make a reader out of child, they'll read for the rest of their lives, and if you patronise and lie to them, they're probably going to be less inclined to do that. And what a first-class way to make the world worse.
So, personally, I reckon that as long as there are 'controversial' topics out there, they will and should be written, published and read for children and adults, regardless of how many middle-class feathers are ruffled at The Telegraph.
(Oooh, contentious...)
