Julia’s riposte
Lawrinson, that is, not Gillard. Julia has a letter published in today’s Review section of The Australian in response to last week’s article on YA literature. Unfortunately, these letters, unlike those in the main section of the papers, don’t seem to be online.
Julia, if you are out there, please give me the nod, and I will copy it faithfully here for FF blog readers.
Note (28/9/08): Thanks Julia for putting a copy of the letter to Review in the comments.
September 28th, 2008 at 9:48 am
Hi Judi,
The letter reads:
I don’t know what books Rosemary Neill has been reading, but there must be a bit of the-blind-men-and-the-elephant syndrome at work in young adult and children’s literature. Requiem for a Beast may well be very dark, but it is also terribly moving and thought-provokingly beautiful; Marty’s Shadow may contain a near-suicide scene, but I read it as a novel about the redemptive power of love; and I would far rather my 11-year-old daughter read Gleitzman’s Then than watch Neighbours. And if there is a skerrick of evidence that teenagers have been traumatised by reading so-called gritty YA books – which, after all, can so easily be put down – I’d like to see it.
September 28th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Thanks, Julia. I think we’d all like to see the evidence of teenage trauma occasioned by reading.