Parents today are placing strong boundaries on young teens on
what they can and cannot read for different reasons; be it
sexual content, coarse language or violent content but every
book has its own amount. I believe parents look at a book their
young teen wants, see it is designated as “young adult” and that
it may contain violent content and coarse language, and
automatically believe their child, who is only in Grade 7 or 8,
is not ready for it and therefore should not be reading such
books. The problem, of course, is those books reflect real life
and are about adolescents living in the real world. Parents
believe that at school, children are in a “safe zone” where they
are protected from all the horrible, mean things of the real
world. That, however, is not true. I’m in the eighth grade and,
trust me, life in books seem pretty clean. There is not much
coarse language — except the usual language because of the once-
in-a-lifetime fight — but these days kids and adults alike talk
to each other pretty regularl