Why teenagers need bleak novels

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/26/teenagers-need-bleak-books-carnegie-medal

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I hope that Kevin Brooks, this year's Carnegie medal winner for The Bunker Diary, is feeling feisty. His challenging story of kidnap, imprisonment and moral game-play has raised concerned voices, and even called into question whether the UK's most prestigious literary award for children's fiction shouldn't have gone to a book that was a bit, well, nicer.

I can sympathise. Ten years ago, on the eve of publication of my young-adult novel Boy Kills Man, I received a call from a journalist. An early reader was reported to have been traumatised by the book, I was told, and how would I like to respond?

At the time, I was home alone with my two young daughters. With the phone pinned between my shoulder and ear as I tried to stop them from stumbling into the French windows, I gave a quick answer. I said that I was pleased, along with a brief explanation, and left it at that.

I could've saved my breath. As it appeared in print, I had upset a minor and apparently revelled in the moment. Despite the distractions, I had attempted to reason with the journalist that a reaction of any kind was a result for an author, so long as it served as a springboard for debate. In the case of my novel, a story about Colombian child assassins, I hoped that it would prompt conversations about gun crime and misplaced loyalties. I wasn't pretending to provide any answers, but if I raised questions then I believed my job was done.

I never did find out exactly what effect I'd had on that young reader. I hope they're OK, of course, and with good support maybe even went on to watch action films and play videogames with a deeper awareness that pulling a trigger carries consequences. The episode certainly taught me a thing or two about defending my books while caring for my children, and possibly also hardened my approach. Once, as a guest author at a Scandinavian book fair, a paper was slipped under my hotel room door at dawn. The front page featured a picture of me looking menacing and moody, under the heading "SCRAMMABARN!" Later that day, having wondered why parents actively steered their pushchairs from my path, I learned that this translated roughly as "CHILD SCARER!" From that moment, my patience with the argument that young readers need protecting from the reality of the modern world thinned considerably.

Now the same arguments are being rehearsed about the The Bunker Diary. I love a happy ending as much as anyone, but sometimes life isn't like that. What matters is that we learn how to deal with the difficult stuff, and become stronger for the experience, which is where parents, teachers and anyone who cares about young people come in. In short, that means all of us.

Ultimately, talented writers such as Brooks and countless others in the young-adult fiction field create characters who are at an age where it doesn't matter how bad things get. They're not old or cynical enough to just give up when life gets tough, and will grasp at any glimmer of love, friendship or kindness in the face of adversity. To my mind, that earns bleak books a vital place on the shelf for teenage readers, alongside stories where hope shines through so brightly that we're blinded to everything else.