Sherman Alexie On Why The Best Children's Books Are Written In Blood

WSJ:

Recently, I was the surprise commencement speaker at the promotion ceremony for a Seattle alternative high school. I spoke to sixty students, who'd come from sixteen different districts, and had survived depression, attempted suicide, gang warfare, sexual and physical abuse, absentee parents, poverty, racism, and learning disabilities in order to graduate.

Read the whole story: WSJ

Comments

[thebigbike]

07:49 PM on 06/10/2011

Dear Mr Alexie. Thanks for a powerful statement of some vitally important truths. young adults, and kids DO NOT need "adults" to lie to to them to pretend that sh*t isn't happening to them, especially those to whom he worst sh*t is happening. and those to whom the worst isn't happening? they MUST know that it does happen. I spent 10 years as a volunteer reader-out-louder to a 6th grade class of working to middle class students. every book that rang true to them that absorbed them was one of the honest ones. I must have abandoned at least one a year when they tuned out of saccharine and sodium vapor lights masquerading and sweetness and day light or moonlight. The teacher I worked with was a really brave one too, I think it made a positive difference here and there

[hilaritee]

10:51 PM on 06/10/2011

bigbike, i am really curious. do you remember some of the titles that resonated with those students and which ones you phased out? i teach a children's lit class to future elementary school teachers and constantly deal with their discomfort over the idea of teaching with books that are too realistic. my basic retort is that it is a heck of a lot easier to read about something difficult than to have to live through it.

[thebigbike]

11:33 PM on 06/10/2011

One of the ones that was a "hang on every word" was one of Walter Dean Myers, though I can't remember the title right now,and we were told not to read it again. there was also one b y Chris Crutcher about a mixed race adopted high school athlete who was helping out a - as I remember - with a child protective services situation with a very young biracial child who was being abused by her stepfather. That was the last one I read, before the end of the last year I did that, and was not invited back... Even "Where the Red Fern Grows- a perennial in that school - was better received than "I washed Al Capone's Shirts, [or whatever it's name was] . Avi's "Crispin/Cross of Lead" had a little interest

[Winston Grant]

12:31 PM on 06/10/2011

This is true. The best books for the young are NOT bowdlerized BS: they should always contain tremendous helpings of truth and honesty, because lying to the young does not serve them--having to unravel implanted lies and half-truths decades later is just hateful--and a waste of time; "If I'd Only known this SOONER" ..Should be a phrase that fades out of the lexicon if YA literature is doing it's job--preparing the young for their actual future. kids need the REAL story, because when their life goes south, they need to understand it can be DEALT with, and what they read should reflect that.