How Far Can You Go in Young Adult Fiction? by guest author Anne Cassidy

Another treat for you this week, as we welcome award-winning author, Anne Cassidy, as our guest at The Edge.

I’ve been writing young adult fiction for over twenty years. My first book was about a violent murder and it involved teen pregnancy/sex/pornography/love. It was called Big Girls’ Shoes (a line that was triggered by an Elvis Costello song, Big Sister’s Clothes). It didn’t sell many copies but it did lay down a kind of template for the books I was going to write.

Since then I’ve written about thirty young adult fiction novels. I’m best known for Looking For JJ, a story about a ten year old girl who killed her friend and was sent to a secure unit. She is released when she is seventeen and the story is about how her life is shaped by what she did when she was ten. This book has violence/pornography/love and lots of other things.

The question of how far you can go is, for me, a matter of taste rather than censorship. My books deal with dark things, adult things and I make no apology for writing them for a teenage audience. When I was a teenager I was desperate to get my hands on adult novels (the more risqué the better) to find out what was really going on in the adult world. I hated the way I was excluded from things in that world. I was expected to be grown up and sensible at school but when it came to knowing what was going on, about life as it was lived, then I was kept in the dark because of my age.

So I would cover just about any dark subject for a young adult audience. The way in which I would cover it would reflect the kind of books I like to read. For example I’ve read a range of serial killer/torture chamber/gore books and frankly I find them laughable. So if I’m writing about a murderer who kills young girls I will have a lot of the violence off camera so to speak. Not because I’m worried that librarians won’t buy my books but because I think it’s better to leave some stuff to the imagination. How scary the film Alien was for NOT seeing the creature. Also The Blair Witch Project. It’s the old saying LESS IS MORE and this works so perfectly for young adult fiction.

The same goes for sex. I like to have sex in my books. My memories of being a teen involved thinking about sex an awful lot (although not doing very much). So any account of teenage life has to have sex in it. However I don’t want readers cringing at sex scenes so I leave a lot of it unstated. I hint, I imply. The unclasping of a belt or the unbuttoning of a shirt might be enough. I think we all know what will happen next.

The main reason that I try to be honest in my storytelling is because I thinks young adults demand it in a way that no other group do. If you try to peddle some made up version of what teen life is like (or what some people wish it was like) you’ll get found out by your readers. They’re a sharp lot. It takes them a long time to pick up a book to read but only a second to put it down again.

Anne Cassidy’s new series THE MURDER NOTEBOOKS begins with Dead Time, which has been nominated for the 2013 Carnegie Medal. 

The second of the series Killing Rachel will be out in March 2013.

To find out more about Anne and her books visit www.annecassidy.com.

Finally, thanks to Anne for being this week's guest author at The Edge.

Banned Books: On no account should you read this …

Edge author Dave Cousins on the curious incident of the dog in the locker.
 
A couple of weeks ago I read an article about a student in an American high school, running a library of banned books from her locker. What started as a small act of rebellion against censorship, turned into something much more significant and interesting, when she discovered that her classmates wanted to borrow and read the books because they had been told they shouldn’t.

“Before I started (the library), almost no kid at school but myself took an active interest in reading! Now not only are all the kids reading the banned books, but go out of their way to read anything they can get their hands on. So I’m doing a good thing, right? ”   


A few days later I read in the press about the cancellation of  an appearance by award winning children’s author, Meg Rosoff, at an independent school in Bath. Having somewhat belatedly realised that the novel she would be talking about, There Is No Dog, explored the idea of God as a nineteen year old boy, the school felt that inviting Rosoff to speak would not be an appropriate reflection of their Christian ethos.  

The discussions that followed this news, both publicly and amongst friends and fellow writers were passionate and wide ranging in opinions. As far as I was concerned this reaction served as a perfect illustration as to why young people should be encouraged to read and discuss books such as There Is No Dog, precisely because they are thought provoking and stimulate debate.  

In an interview on Radio 4’s Open Book programme some weeks before her event was pulled, Meg Rosoff said that her intention when writing the book had been to simply pose questions that would make readers realise that somebody else was thinking about these issues. And that she believed it was part of the writers job “to look at the dark questions of life.”  

I don’t wish to enter into a specific debate about There Is No Dog, or the school’s decision to cancel Meg Rosoff's visit. I would like to suggest however, that books tackling some of these “dark questions” provide an excellent opportunity for schools to engage students in informed debate. Hiding away from an issue or a difficult question won’t make it go away. Ignorance, fear and prejudice will merely continue as a result. Whereas a generation of young people who read widely, and are encouraged to explore different viewpoints and ideas, will surely be better equipped to shape our world in future.  

A final thought. The library in the locker clearly showed that young people like to read what they’ve been told not to. The question is – how can we stimulate similar interest in books that haven’t been banned? Your thoughts on this would be most welcome.

Dave Cousins' debut novel for teenagers, 15 Days Without a Head comes out in January, published by Oxford University Press. On no account should you read it … 


Please note that all opinions in this post are those of the author alone.