The other day I volunteered at our school book fair. I love book fair, it's like having the kids section of Borders right in the school. The shelving units supplied by Scholastic Books lined the school's downstairs hallway starting with preschool books moving to level one and two and then on to Goosebumps, etc. As I was moving toward the YA books I recognized several books I'd seen on some of the romance blogs I'd stumbled into while blog hopping over the last month--I probably couldn't find them again if I tried.
There's a part of me flinching when I think about kids stumbling into these same websites and blogs with borderline adult content when they're looking for are YA books. Before anyone is offended I realize parents should know what their kids are looking at on-line or reading, but we also know how kids are and I know I read things as a kid that weren't age appropriate either.
Being a parent of a child who has the ability to read anything changes ones perspective somewhat. I'm not going to get on a soapbox and preach against blogs that review or talk about both erotica/erotic romance and YA novels, but it's something to think about.
I'm off my mini-soapbox :) Have a great day and happy reading.
2 comments:
I've actually thought about this quite a bit, but I didn't come up with a definitive answer for Book Thingo except that we review what we read and generally don't review anything more suited to pre-adolescents. I suppose it helps that we don't often review the more explicit erotic romances.
Then again, I remember being 12 and huddling together with friends during lunch to share paperbacks filched off our mums' bookshelves. Some of them were pretty eye-opening. This isn't something new in the history of young adults...
bookthingo--that's just it, it's been on my thoughts since I came back to blogging last month. The book fair at school brought it to the forefront.
I don't think there is a particular answer, because it will be different for everyone.
And I totally agree it's not new :)
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