Darkness Too Possible Summary

I can agree with Meghan Cox Gurdon about one thing in the article, Darkness Too Visible; YA literature has become much darker than it was in 1967. So what? All of the topics she laments have taken over YA literature are certainly not new. Profanity, kidnapping etc. have been around a lot longer than 1967. Are some of these topics not appropriate for kids at age 13? Maybe not, but that is for a parent to decide. That is, if a parent is actually monitoring what their child reads. Most parents are probably just happy to see their adolescent child reading. How a parent could not find one appropriate book for a 13 year old in Barnes and Noble is beyond me. Maybe she should have done a little research before heading off to the bookstore. She sounds like one of those parents in the 1950’s afraid to let their kids listen to that “subversive” band, the Beatles. …show more content…
Self-destructive adolescent behaviors are observably infectious and have periods of vogue.”? Where does she come up with this idea of “observably infectious”? Reading The Outsiders, in 1967, did not damage kids nor, do I believe reading one of the contemporary novels she mentions will damage them. As Jacob Lewis points out in the article in Publishers Weekly, “Movies and books and TV all deal with millions of subjects that are sometimes uncomfortable to deal with. It’s the way we deal with and introduce subjects into the consciousness.... We can use those resources in art and literature as ways of understanding