The Trouble with YA Literature Today

The prob­lem with YA lit­er­a­ture today is— fill in the blank. Some scream that the genre has gone too dark: drugs, alco­hol, dystopi­an tales, pro­fan­i­ty-overkill, parades of para­nor­mal fan­tasies. All true. Oth­ers com­plain about zom­bies and oth­er gore, about witch­es and war­locks and were­wolves. But I have a big­ger bone to pick: orig­i­nal­i­ty, or the lack there­of. That, my friends, is what’s wrong with chil­dren’s and YA lit­er­a­ture today.

Seen any new movie sequels, late­ly? What about remakes? The enter­tain­ment sec­tion of the local news­pa­per reeks of them, and there’s plen­ty more where those came from. But you won’t just find them in the neigh­bor­hood six-plex.  A trip to your neigh­bor­hood book­store (if you still have one) will do just as well.

Here’s what you’ll find. In vol­ume after vol­ume, you’ll meet a char­ac­ter who leaves the only home he’s ever known. He attends a school with famil­iar Goth­ic archi­tec­ture. Along the way, he dis­cov­ers a super­nat­ur­al gift. And, oh yes, the child is an orphan.

Then, of course, there is the sec­ond type of vol­ume. This one fea­tures a teenaged girl who is far away from home. She meets a dash­ing, but rather stand­off­ish, young man she finds her­self attract­ed to. There’s some­thing slight­ly odd about this boy, though. His hand is cold to the touch and some­times his eyes turn blood-red. If this sto­ry­line does not sound famil­iar, then you, my friend, have been liv­ing under a rock.

Chil­dren’s and YA lit­er­a­ture has gone Hol­ly­wood, peo­ple. I’m not talk­ing so much about the pletho­ra of sequels as I am about the pletho­ra of clones: Har­ry Pot­ter-wannabes and Twi­light re-treads chief among them.

Why all the copy­cats? There’s a shake-up in the indus­try, as we all know. The chil­dren’s mar­ket has shift­ed from back­list, to mid-list, to front-list. Then, too, as libraries dwin­dle at an alarm­ing rate, so do library sales, which once account­ed for a large chunk of a pub­lish­er’s bot­tom line. The increas­ing num­bers of titles avail­able on the Inter­net are also hav­ing an impact on cloth-book sales, though few of us are sure of what the end result of this trend will be. I, per­son­al­ly, wave away those who make loud pro­nounce­ments about the death of the book. No, Chick­en Lit­tle, the sky is not falling. It is, how­ev­er, extreme­ly overcast.

I’ll grant you, from a mar­ket­ing point of view, there is rea­son for con­cern. I get that. Because of that con­cern, few­er pub­lish­ers are will­ing to pro­duce the so-called qui­et book. Good Night Moon and Char­lot­te’s Web would have a tough time find­ing a pub­lish­er in this econ­o­my, and that’s absolute­ly crim­i­nal. Lit­er­ary jew­els are not what pub­lish­ers are seek­ing, in the main. Every­one has gone block­buster-crazy. Every­body wants the big book, the run­away best­seller. And who would­n’t rel­ish the out­ra­geous suc­cess of Twi­light? I can under­stand why an author might be tempt­ed to try her hand at cre­at­ing a lit­er­ary clone for a chance at reap­ing sim­i­lar mon­e­tary rewards. But here’s the thing: best­sellers become best­sellers large­ly because they’re orig­i­nal, whether in con­tent or struc­ture.  And, by def­i­n­i­tion, an orig­i­nal is orig­i­nal because it is one of a kind.

But let’s say your copy of some­body else’s idea is suc­cess­ful. Let’s say you do make a few extra bucks hash­ing out that clone. What hap­pens to those sto­ries that are unique­ly your own, those books that you alone were meant to write? Will they ever see the light of day? It’s doubt­ful. And when those extra C‑notes are spent on the house, the car, or the clas­sic Armani, and the hol­low­ness of your “suc­cess” clangs in your ear to dis­trac­tion, what then?

No one can keep you from pour­ing your cre­ative ener­gy into cloning some­one else’s orig­i­nal idea, of course. But if you do, chances are you’ll have lit­tle self or soul left to pro­duce, and enjoy, the bril­liance of your own orig­i­nal cre­ations. And, by the way, your orig­i­nal idea is price­less, sim­ply because it is yours.

My men­tor, James Bald­win, encour­aged me to guard my gift and to write with integri­ty. He warned me not to ever com­pro­mise in the area of my gift­ing. Now, more than ever, I under­stand exact­ly what he was talk­ing about.

When you first dreamed of becom­ing an author, did you have dol­lar signs danc­ing in your head, or were your thoughts filled with liq­uid lan­guage, imag­i­nary vis­tas, and larg­er-than-life char­ac­ters who might leap from the page? I think I know the answer to that ques­tion. Here’s what I have to say to you: write your own sto­ry, not some­body else’s. In the end, you’ll be proud of your­self for hav­ing done so.

9/11: Fragments of Thought

It was a love­ly, late-spring day. The blue sky seemed lim­it­less, and the first fin­gers of almost-sum­mer-sun warmed the air. I’d just fin­ished turn­ing in final grades for the stu­dents of my fresh­man cre­ative writ­ing class at Liv­ingston Col­lege, and was look­ing for­ward to a few days of rest and relax­ation. I was ready to spend some qual­i­ty time with my daugh­ter that evening, with­out the dis­trac­tion of les­son-plan­ning or grad­ing papers. I smiled at the thought.

An hour lat­er, I learned that my not quite four-year-old lit­tle girl had drowned in the swim­ming pool at the home of my care­giv­er. I promise you, I nev­er saw that coming.

My daugh­ter’s death was not a nation­al hor­ror, but it was a per­son­al one. So, when I think of those who suf­fered a loss on 9/11, I need only vis­it my own heart to under­stand their pain. That said, I know their expe­ri­ence was singular.

I dis­tinct­ly remem­ber that day. I had just moved into my house a few days before, and was busi­ly paint­ing and faux paint­ing a wall in my din­ing room when the phone rang. I put down the paint­brush and grabbed the hand­set. My sis­ter’s voice burst through the wires.

“They’re com­ing, Sis!” she cried. “They’re com­ing right now!”

“What? What are you talk­ing about?” I asked.

“Turn on the TV!” she ordered. “Turn it on!”

“Okay! Okay!” I said. “I will.” And she hung up.

There was some­thing very unset­tling in my sis­ter’s voice, and so I left the open paint cans where they were, switched on the tele­vi­sion and sat down to watch the news. I did­n’t get up again for a long, long time.

I grew up in New York City. Every per­son who calls him­self a New York­er either knew some­one direct­ly, or indi­rect­ly, who died in the tow­ers that day. I am no excep­tion. I can tell you, there was grief enough to go around.

Clear­ly, 9/11 was about a great deal more than loss of life. It was about a nation­al loss of inno­cence, as well as loss of even the illu­sion of safe­ty. Every man, woman, and child of us sud­den­ly under­stood that Amer­i­ca is not, in fact invul­ner­a­ble to mod­ern ter­ror­ism. But I won’t try to address the broad­er aspects of this mon­u­men­tal event here. My focus is on per­son­al loss and grief and how we choose to shape that in our lives mov­ing forward.

Why is it still so hard to talk about this? Why is the heartache still so close to the surface?

I’ve suf­fered a great deal of loss in my life, attend­ed too many funer­als, wept my way through count­less memo­ri­als. Giv­en a choice, I pre­fer the memo­ri­als because they allow for moments of humor and shared laugh­ter, moments of cel­e­brat­ing the life, rather than mourn­ing the death, of the per­son for whom we’ve gath­ered to say good­bye. The sad fact is that we all have to say good­bye to some­one, soon­er or lat­er. That some­one might be a father, a moth­er, a friend, or a sister.

A few days ago, I got a call from my broth­er-in-law inform­ing me that my sis­ter, Car­ol, had just been rushed to the hos­pi­tal with a pos­si­ble heart attack. My own heart skipped a beat, and when it start­ed up again, fear held it cap­tive. Late that night, Car­ol, her­self called me from the hos­pi­tal. When I heard her voice on the phone, I began to cry. In that moment, I under­stood how deeply I feared nev­er hear­ing that voice again. Car­ol is fine, now, and I can breathe again. But, I under­stand, intel­lec­tu­al­ly, at least, that there will come a day when I will hear her voice for the last time. Her life is as frag­ile as any oth­er. This most recent close call punc­tu­ates that fact. The events of 9/11 did the same, in spades.

The attack on the World Trade Cen­ter was stu­pe­fy­ing. The wounds are still fresh, and it would be easy to wad up all our grief into a ball of hatred against those who brought the tow­ers down. Some have cho­sen to do exact­ly that. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, that hatred too often extends to the races, cul­tures, and nations that spawned the ter­ror­ists who crashed those planes into the tow­ers. Whole peo­ple groups have been blamed for the dead­ly acts of those few. We need to be care­ful, here. His­to­ry teach­es us that humans of every race, cul­ture and reli­gious per­sua­sion, are capa­ble of enor­mous harm and hor­ror. Think the Mid­dle Pas­sage, the Cru­sades, the Holo­caust, Dar­fur. The list, alas, goes on. Let him who is with­out sin cast the first stone.

Is there evil in the world? No doubt. Should we seek jus­tice? Absolute­ly. But if we allow hatred to rule our hearts, we will become what we hate.

There’s a bet­ter take away from 9/11 than bit­ter­ness and hatred. Life is frag­ile, unpre­dictable, and it is almost always too short. Live into each day ful­ly. Love with aban­don. Take no good thing in your life for grant­ed, espe­cial­ly those you love. Pur­sue your dream regard­less of how long it takes. Time will pass, either way, so use that time to pur­sue what mat­ters. Final­ly, when­ev­er the oppor­tu­ni­ty aris­es, show kind­ness. Each hug, kiss, or deep bel­ly laugh could be your last. And if it isn’t, your day will be rich­er for your hav­ing lived it that way.

Where Have All the Female Illustrators Gone?

For the longest time, I had the dis­tinct impres­sion that there were pre­cious few women illus­tra­tors in the chil­dren’s book mar­ket. Can you blame me? Accord­ing to one not­ed illus­tra­tor, a scant 20% of the illus­tra­tion work goes to women. If that’s true, no mat­ter how you look at it, that’s a pret­ty low per­cent­age. When you set that per­cent­age next to the rather large, com­pre­hen­sive list of female artists avail­able today, the per­cent­age seems even more egre­gious. What’s going on here? Time to ask some hard questions.

Ques­tions are what led me to write this par­tic­u­lar blog. Recent­ly, I approached the edi­tor of a cur­rent work-in-progress about seek­ing out a female illus­tra­tor for one of my new books. The book is writ­ten by moi, a woman, and is about women, and so I thought it only right that the book be illus­trat­ed by a woman as well. He did not dis­agree. So, to help mat­ters along, I decid­ed to put togeth­er a com­pre­hen­sive list of female illus­tra­tors from which to choose. To build that list, I went on Face­book, sug­gest­ed I was build­ing such a list, and asked my FB friends who should be on it. The response? A ver­i­ta­ble del­uge of names! I was pleased, but more than a lit­tle sur­prised. Why did I not have a sense of their pres­ence in the mar­ket­place, I asked myself. I’ve been in this busi­ness for more than 30 years, and yet I had no idea of such a dom­i­nant female pres­ence. What were the reasons?

Are the skill sets of male and female artists sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent from one anoth­er? A female art teacher I spoke with sug­gest­ed that, on aver­age, men have a bet­ter spa­tial sense and a bet­ter intu­itive idea of per­spec­tive than female artists, while women, on the whole, are bet­ter at draw­ing fig­ures. I find that argu­ment intrigu­ing. I can per­son­al­ly think of an artist cou­ple I know for whom that is exact­ly true. But I don’t know how com­mon that is. I do a lit­tle paint­ing, myself, but I’ve nev­er attempt­ed illus­tra­tion, so this is not my area of exper­tise. Still, it would seem to me, for the many dif­fer­ent kinds of books that are pro­duced, more than 20% of them would ben­e­fit as much from the skills of a woman as that of a man, whether or not those skill sets differ.

There may be anoth­er rea­son why the lion’s share of illus­tra­tion work seems to go to men rather than women.

Even a cur­so­ry look at the pub­lish­ing indus­try will reveal that women dom­i­nate the field. How many male edi­tors or art direc­tors do you know? Go on. Count them. If you need more than one hand, I’d be sur­prised. When it comes to illus­tra­tors, which gen­der do you think a female edi­tor or art direc­tor will be inclined to hire? Go on. Be hon­est. And if that male is cute? For­get about it! I’m not blind. I see all the flirt­ing that goes on between male artists and the women who hire them. Still, I’d nev­er thought about how that casu­al inter­play might impact the selec­tion of illus­tra­tors for book projects. (And don’t even get me start­ed on the num­ber of women NOT win­ning the Caldecott!

Do all male artists flirt? No, not all. Does sex­u­al heat always play into the hir­ing choice of an illus­tra­tor? Absolute­ly not. To sug­gest so would be an insult to many out­stand­ing men work­ing in this field who eschew the very idea of using their man­ly charms to secure a con­tract. How­ev­er, to deny that gen­der pref­er­ence is, indeed, a fac­tor on many occa­sions would be, at best, dis­hon­est. That’s not hap­pen­ing here.

So, what is the solu­tion? How can we even the play­ing field for women artists? That’s a tough one. I have a sug­ges­tion, though, a place where we can begin.

We can and should encour­age edi­tors and art direc­tors to do a bet­ter job of shar­ing projects with female illus­tra­tors. We should raise our voic­es when­ev­er we encounter this type of gen­der inequity. And, as authors, we can make a con­cert­ed effort to sug­gest and rec­om­mend more female illus­tra­tors for our own books. That’s my plan, and I hope oth­er authors will do likewise.

Heck, my own future might include cov­er art and pic­ture book illus­tra­tion. If it does, when I ven­ture out into the mar­ket­place, I’d like to find a lev­el play­ing field. Would­n’t you?

“Eyes on the Prize”

Chil­dren’s poet­ry is the bas­tard child of Amer­i­can Literature.

Bet that got your attention.

“That’s strong lan­guage,” you say.  Actu­al­ly, the term is quite appro­pri­ate.  Let me explain.

You can win a Pulitzer Prize or a Nation­al Book Award for poet­ry, pro­vid­ed you write poet­ry for adults. As a poet for adults, the Guggen­heim is avail­able to you, and the Push­cart Prize, and the NEA grant, among oth­ers. Nation­al Poet­ry Month has ded­i­cat­ed sev­en days of its reign for the cel­e­bra­tion of chil­dren’s poet­ry but, then, they don’t give out any awards. There is an NCTE Award for Chil­dren’s Poet­ry, which I myself was pleased to win a few years ago, but that is for a body of work, not an indi­vid­ual book. And that’s my point. There is no major, nation­al award giv­en for a sin­gle work of poet­ry for chil­dren. Why is that?

Mind you, I am aware of, and grate­ful for, the awards cre­at­ed by Lee Ben­nett Hop­kins and, more recent­ly, by SCBWI, but I am talk­ing about an award com­ing from the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion. Where is that award?

At the moment, when it comes to chil­dren’s book awards, all gen­res are lumped togeth­er: fic­tion, humor, non­fic­tion, mys­tery, fantasy—you name it. It is impor­tant to note that indi­vid­ual prizes do exist for humor and non­fic­tion. They exist, one would assume, in recog­ni­tion of the fact that each of these gen­res incor­po­rate a spe­cif­ic set of skills not evi­dent (or usu­al) in oth­er gen­res. That can cer­tain­ly be said of poet­ry, yes? So why isn’t there a major, annu­al award offered in this par­tic­u­lar genre?

On sec­ond thought, for­get the ques­tion. I’ll jump right to the point, obvi­ous though it may be: the time is past due for a stand­ing, annu­al poet­ry award with­in the realm of chil­dren’s and young adult lit­er­a­ture. Period.

I’m thrilled that poet­ry has its own month, and that it does include a spe­cial week rec­og­niz­ing and cel­e­brat­ing poet­ry for chil­dren and young adults. That’s won­der­ful. Now, let’s take anoth­er big step. Let’s cre­ate an annu­al chil­dren’s poet­ry award, with a spe­cial cat­e­go­ry for verse nov­els, may I add. Poet­ry for young read­ers deserves that recog­ni­tion. ‘Nough said.

As much as I love Nation­al Poet­ry Month, there’s some­thing about this time of year that excites me even more: East­er. A few years ago, I wrote a book called At Jerusalem’s Gate, a poet­’s take on the East­er sto­ry, seen from the mul­ti­ple points-of-view of the char­ac­ters who were part of the orig­i­nal sto­ry 2000 years ago. And so, in this month of East­er, I close out with two poems from this collection.

“An Act of Kind­ness” focus­es on the Phar­isee, Joseph of Ari­math­ea. The sec­ond, “To Be Con­tin­ued,” is from the point-of-view of a soldier.

An Act of Kindness

Christ cru­ci­fied lay limp
as any son undone
by beat­ing, cross, and spear,
a Phar­isee the one
to bear him to a place
of rough rock and rest.
Perhaps—this God knows best—
he swabbed away Christ’s blood
with tears, the only bath
the Sab­bath would allow.
Per­haps he chose instead
to kiss the Mas­ter’s brow
and whis­per his goodbye.
Per­haps he mere­ly wept,
while tired mus­cles strained
to roll the stone in place
and sol­diers sealed it tight
to inch by inch lock out
the air, hope, light.

To Be Continued

Don’t tell me he is God.
I pierced his human side,
used my dai­ly-sharp­ened spear.
In time, I’m certain
some­one will explain
how he can be here
preach­ing still
and rising
on the wings
of the wind.