Steven Nava

Mary Warner

28 November 2007

Young Adult Literature

 

The True Problem Novels

 

Everyone knows that adolescence is a fully challenging time of life. Teens live at a tumultuous crossroads: they are neither children nor fully-equipped adults, and they feel less understood than ever as hormones take them on unforgivable rollercoasters. However, on top of the regular worries that accompany becoming an adult, many teenagers experience very serious issues that go beyond the mainstream problems that puberty and peer pressure brings. Many live under radical circumstances: nontraditional family structures, social ineptitude and severe persecution from their fellow peers may cause teens to act out or have out of the ordinary experiences. Even students with normal backgrounds can fall into dramatically different lifestyles than their classmates, which is why it is more important than ever for them to read critical problem novels.

The specifically selected problem novels don’t highlight things that every teen has or ought to experience. Rape, homosexuality, abortion, gangs, suicide, abuse, teen pregnancy and school shootings are just a few of the issues taken on in the novels set forth. The subjects of these novels are often ugly and dismal, but this doesn’t prevent them from being useful and relevant to teens and those trying to guide them. Some of the problems written about belong almost specifically to the young adult world, which makes them all the more powerful for readers looking for guidance.

Sex, drugs, violence and alcohol are the kinds of topics that concern adolescents today, and yet they are many times avoided because they are considered too controversial for younger people to handle. By reading critical problem novels, many teens will be able to comprehend the varying lives their peers go through, and hopefully will be able to react to them. We as teachers need to read between the lines of students’ lives to realize that they are not all well-adjusted, popular kids who avoid premarital sex and go home to two-parent families and hot dinner on the table. Their experiences vary, and the material that they read should vary accordingly to provide guidance and understanding.

My annotated bibliography includes not just the problem novels, but critical problem novels: they are novels containing issues that if read, discussed and written about, may cause the desirable changes in youth that just talking about the issues could never bring about. By stepping into the shoes of troubled protagonists, young adult readers can gain a new sensitivity for the needs and problems of those who are completely different from themselves, or find support to cope and come to terms with things that have already happened to them. The works in this bibliography all deal with individuals facing not the ordinary everyday pressures of all teens—school, friends, family, peer pressure and drama—but the critical issues that are here portrayed in their raw, realistic form. As for readers turning to literature to find out more about different kinds of people and experiences through literature, there isn’t anything better for young adults.

 

Block, Francesca Lia. Girl goddess 9: 9 stories. New York: HarperCollins, 1996.

 

This short collection of nine stories is about girl goddesses of every age, shape, color, and size, wearing combat boots and spiky hair or dressed all in white. One girl has two moms, another has no mother at all but a strange blue skinned creature that lives in her closet. One is a rock star groupie, another loves dancing and reading poetry and having picnics in the backyard when the moon is full. These are stories about girls discovering that the world is not a simple place and that there is more than one way to live. (Harpercollins.com) These varied girls live outside the norm in every case, and represent the nonconforming individuality hidden in all of us. The writing is seriously strange, but the quirky presentation makes these stories an engaging take on homosexuality, drug use, and teen sex that readers will expect but can also learn from. This novel is about acceptance, not chastisement, and it encourages not only alternative ways of living but also being yourself.

 

Chbosky, Stephen. The perks of being a wallflower. New York: Pocket Books, 1999.

 

Charlie is an introverted freshman in high school when he meets Sam and Patrick, two seniors who help him escape being overly contemplative and socially unaware. Through a teacher’s insightful book suggestions and discussions as well as his social outings with friends, Charlie becomes an independent, thoughtful character who finally learns to “participate” instead of being a wallflower. Charlie faces the obstacles of many touchy subjects such as suicide, homosexuality, drug and alcohol abuse, underage sex, and sexual abuse. However, none of it is presented in a shocking way, and Charlie is presented as such a genuinely naïve character that the issues become an essential part of Charlie’s formative years. While Charlie may seem the innocent bystander for readers looking to point the blame at his experiences at friends, it is the earliest issue he must deal with, abuse, which causes him to be the way he is.

 

Crutcher, Chris. Staying fat for Sarah Byrnes. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.

 

Sarah Byrnes is tough as nails; since her irrational and evil father burned her at age 3, she has developed defensive mechanisms against everyone she knows, but one day, Sarah finally reaches the limits of endurance and lapses into silence. Eric, an amazingly good swimmer despite his heavyweight size, struggles to uncover Sarah's nightmare past and find a way to help her. The two outcasts had been best friends for years, both of them apparent victims of “the terminal uglies.” However, Eric finds that it is their unwaning friendship that keeps them together in the end. (Amazon) The story has it all: intense examination of values, normal teen concerns with friendship and personal growth, sports, dates and, above all, an interesting and likable narrator who make readers smile despite the pain, danger and abuse described. A running subplot involves a classmate’s dramatic suicide attempt after many class discussions involving the existence of God, the nature of man, and an abortion he claims never happened. The mentors of Eric’s world can be mentors for the young adults reading the novel, and as his teacher and mother’s boyfriend calmly explain about abortion and suicide, teen readers will find that they have guides of their own. This book opens your eyes to make you consider that not all students you see have it together all the time.

 

Degrassi: The new generation. Prod. Epitome Pictures Inc. The N.
        Toronto, Canada. 2001-

 

Degrassi is a Canadian ensemble show that deals in a realistic way with situations many teens face—including sexual identity issues, date rape, drug use and school shootings—in a frank manner without sugar-coating (Whitney). Degrassi has been running for six years in the United States, and though its cast began as pre-adolescents, many have moved throughout grade levels, with some of them now in university. As their ages have changed, so have the topics they deal with, and the show has become more mature as years have progressed. Every single episode has dealt with some kind of major teen issue, so if you can name an issue, it has probably already been featured as the focus of a story arc. From the critical problems discussed in the rest of these books to teen cancer, teacher-student relationships, erectile dysfunction, and many more, Degrassi has probably already covered it. The show is realistic enough to not always provide easy solutions, although by the end of each episode whatever given problem has been introduced is pretty much clearly resolved. Because of its all-inclusive nature, teens who watch the show will benefit from an expanded knowledge about their peer’s experiences and have a resource to turn to if they inevitably experience one of the incidences the show features. Long running characters have developed over the years into likable characters, but even the best loved are not saved from making bad decisions or falling into unfortunate behavior, so viewers get a powerful sense that no one is perfect and recognize a sense of realism that reflects their own lives.

 

Finn, Alex. Breathing underwater. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

 

Nick Andreas’s classmates think of him as rich, popular and perfect, but they don't know the truth about his turbulent home life with an abusive father. As the novel opens, Nick finds himself in court, facing a restraining order by his girlfriend, Caitlin. He is sentenced to six months of counseling and to write 500 words per week in a journal, explaining what happened from the day he met Caitlin to the present. Set in Miami and told in a split narrative, the novel juxtaposes Nick's journal entries about his past relationship with Caitlin alongside the current challenges of going back to school with his friends turned against him, his counseling sessions and life with his father. Gradually, he begins to recognize his own responsibility in how events played out (Amazon). Domestic violence is not so easily visited, but Finn attempts to get at the root of the problem through his exploration of an angry young man, another book told from the rare perspective of the male’s side. The novel is cautionary in that it warns that your own actions have repercussions on people other than yourself, yet it is also telling in the factors that precede abuse. This would be a particularly good book for teens with short tempers or a family history of domestic violence.

 

 

Johnson, Angela. The First Part Last. New York: Simon Pulse, 2004

 

This novel tells the story of a young father struggling to raise an infant. Bobby, 16, is a sensitive and intelligent young man whose parents are supportive but refuse to take over the child-care duties, so he struggles to balance parenting, school, and friends who don't comprehend his new role. Alternate chapters go back to the story of Bobby's relationship with his girlfriend Nia and how parents and friends reacted to the news of her pregnancy. Flashbacks lead to the revelation in the final chapters that Nia is in an irreversible coma caused by eclampsia. (Amazon) Rarely is the topic of teen pregnancy explored from the perspective of a male protagonist. As a father and teenager looking back on his short life, Bobby enlightens teenagers who do not think about the consequences of experimenting in sex and also offers the wisdom of a teen that has been down the path of having a baby. Bobby is a reminder of the unforeseen responsibility and unselfishness required to raise a child, and his trials as a single parent could ward off teens who do not think about the cost of supposedly harmless sex.

 

McCormick, Patricia. Cut. New York: Boyds Mills Press, 2000.

 

Whenever Callie feels hurt or angry, she cuts herself on her hands and arms. Because of her inclination to hurt herself, her parents send her to a mental hospital (oops, I meant "residential treatment facility"), but Callie feels like she doesn't belong there. When even cutting can't help her pain inside, she knows she has to reach out to others, even if she views her peers—inflicted with anorexia, overeating, and substance abuse—as more damaged than herself. “Although initially she refuses to speak, her individual and group therapy sessions trigger memories and insights. Slowly, she begins emerging from her miserable silence, ultimately understanding the role her dysfunctional family played in her brother's health crisis and own self-mutilation” (Amazon). Readers will recognize that everyone at the facility Callie must attend is dealing with their issues in their own way, but they all seem to have one thing in common: their inward destruction is a self-created defense from people oblivious to their needs (Amazon) This is a sad but ultimately hopeful book that will help readers understand a troubling habit of self-destruction affecting many teenagers today.

 

My So-Called Life. Prod. Touchstone TV Productions. ABC Television Network. 1994.

 

My So-Called Life was a short-lived teen drama on television in the early nineties. This, I believe, was the first TV show to get adolescence dead-on, and as teen viewers watch Angela face the trials and tribulations of her fictional high school, I believe they will feel the same way. During Angela’s freshman year, the show explores child abuse, homophobia, teenage alcoholism, homelessness, adultery, kinky sex, school violence, gun control, same-sex parenting, censorship, drug use, and many others. Angela’s world isn’t full of the conveniences of other worlds like it. While a lot of shows brought up these themes as a one-time issue that would be introduced as problems at the beginning of an episode and resolved at the end, in My So-Called Life they were just a part of the world. (Wikipedia) The very title of the show emphasized how the perception of meaninglessness that many teenagers experience is the main theme of the series. The world, however, is filled with meaning that teens can learn from because it is so very real. Angela receives pressure from her boyfriend to have sex, her friend Rayanne struggles with alcoholism, and her other friend Ricky has difficulty coming to terms with his homosexuality. These kinds of issues take a back seat to the emotions that the characters play them out with, however. As teens struggle with their own feelings, this may be the one show that really understands where they’re coming from.

 

Credibly renders

 

Myers, Walter Dean. Monster. New York: HarperCollins, 1999.

 

"Monster" is what the prosecutor called 16-year-old African-American Steve Harmon for his supposed role in the fatal shooting of a convenience-store owner. But was Steve really the lookout who gave the "all clear" to the murderer, or was he just in the wrong place at the wrong time? The reader becomes both juror and witness during the trial of Steve's life, which is chronicled in the proceedings through a movie script format. Interspersed throughout his screenplay are journal writings that provide insight into Steve's life before the murder and his feelings about being held in prison during the trial (Amazon.com). As readers, teens will be forced to decide what they do and do not believe. The book raises questions about the ambiguous nature of truth, and also touches on sensitive issues such as racism, gangs, guns, and extreme violence. Although Steve is found innocent the book actually leaves the novel’s biggest question open-ended: did he do it or not? Whether or not he is really guilty as a lookout, readers are warned of the danger that simply “mixing with the wrong crowd” can lead to.

 

Strasser, Todd. Give a boy a gun. New York: Simon Pulse, 2002.

 

For as long as they can remember, Brendan and Gary have been teased, harassed, and otherwise humiliated by the student body of Middleton High School. When they can endure no more, the boys set out to get revenge on their tormentors by arming themselves with their neighbor’s guns and trapping the student body in the gym during a dance. In the course of the shooting Gary kills himself and Brendan ends up in a coma, but not before they shoot a student and the principal. This fictional account of a school shooting committed by a pair of teens in reaction to the endless bullying and suffering they cannot escape is presented through interviews with fellow students, teachers and administrators who all saw the signs but did nothing about it. There are footnotes throughout the book containing real facts and statistics about gun deaths, bullying, and teen violence that add an authenticity to the story, which is as cautionary as it is counseling. Teachers and students alike are welcome to find ways to prevent tragic occurrences such as the one described in this book from happening, and hopefully this will get students to look at the causes from all perspectives. The issue of guns, teasing and bullying are explored here, and while there are no easy solutions one book can present, young adult readers will be more familiar with the causes of school shootings, which hopefully will prevent their escalations.

 

Additional resources:

 

Amazon. Retrieved 11/28/07: <www.amazon.com>

 

“My So-Called Life.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 17 Nov 2007, 10:55 UTC.

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 28 Nov 2007. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_so-called_life>

 

School Library Journal Retrieved 11/28/07 <www.schoollibraryjournal.com>

 

Whitney, Daisy. "Canada’s ‘Degrassi’ Top Draw for the N." Television Weekly 2005: 

Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Martin Luther King Jr. Library, San Jose, CA. 11/28/07 <www.ebscohost.com>