Moral obligations of YA literature

Mice by Gordon Reece
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I didn't like this book and I don't feel I have a right to be overly critical of a book unless I can put in the time to explain why - so here goes.

This is a YA book and, whilst I'm not of the opinion that YA literature should shield readers from the harsh realities of the world, I do believe that it has a moral responsibility to treat difficult issues with complexity and insight. As the narrator of the novel notes:

"So much of what Mum was was made up of what she'd read. Is that what our middle-class culture created? People formed more by the books they'd read than the lives they'd lived?" (p.199)

To the extent that this may be true, I was disappointed by the lack of empathy or insight shown in the novel. The main character is a victim of cruel bullying which drives her to decide to suicide. A series of events saves her from taking her own life. She then goes on to murder two people. Despite having been a victim herself, Shelley, the first-person narrator of the novel, shows little or no empathy for her victims. There's a level of egotism that is in itself quite frightening. In another moment of reflection she says:

"After everything I've lived through, surely I'll be able to write something truly great? After all, how many writers actually know what it's like to kill somebody?" (pp.224-225)

And this is where I think the novel fails. Reece didn't convince me that he truly understood his subject matter. Too often I felt that Shelley's introspective moments were there to move me to the next point in the plot rather than to explore honestly this difficult subject matter.

If the novel had been about a less difficult and important topic or if it had taken a much lighter hand to it's subject matter, I could be more forgiving, but if you choose to write a YA novel about these topics you have a moral responsibility to say something that matters. I don't think this novel does.

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Imagine

It’s the complexity of it all

That gives me a headache.

Reimagining John Lennon’s

Song with my Grade Six

Students, we stumbled into

The binary of black

And white as John

And Yoko walk down a

Dark path to arrive

At a white house and

Yoko opens shutters to

Illuminate an empty

Room in a place they

Call “not here”.

The peaceful simplicity of a

Black and white world

Greyed as we walked

Our own path:

Black White,

Wrong Right,

Evil Goodness,

Dirty Clean,

Ambiguity Clarity,

Weak Strong,

Chaos Logic,

South North,

African European,

Female Male,
Innocence,
Experience,

And arrived at a room

Where my illumination

Opened eyes
And minds onto

A world which is increasingly

Hard to see.

David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Gladwell's ideas are as compelling as his prose. The essential premiss is that mainstream views of success produce Goliaths who may be unable to view the world creatively and may lack the resilience to adapt and succeed when times change. The Davids of the world might see opportunities others miss and have the the necessary resilience for success which comes from being an underdog.

It's interesting that several of the case studies Gladwell works through are based on religious figures as there is something of the evangelist in the way Gladwell writes, too. This makes for an easy read - like listening to a sermon on one of the Gospel stories - but did make me wonder at times how much the flow of the story was encouraging me to lazily drift over the rigour of the argument. Not that I have particular reservations about Gladwell's argument, just that he is so skilled with his prose that I wondered at times if I might have forgotten to think for myself.

From my perspective as a Middle School Teacher, I'd like more of my students to think about Gladwell's discussion about universities and the advantage of a 2nd tier university over a 1st tier uni. I particularly liked the argument that we can define success broadly and see opportunities for meaning in many different life paths.

I was given this book by one of Grade 8 students who wanted to know what I thought. I hope this review helps, and a copy of the book will be going into my classroom library to challenge some of my other enthusiastic readers.

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