The Best Young Adult Novels to Go Out of
Print (and the Author Who Wrote Them) by Lisa Palatino
It
seems that everyone these days has got a problem with teen fiction. It’s too dark, it’s too sweary,
it’s too violent, cry concerned parents and columnists. But is that really a
problem? Books like The Hunger Games, while being violent science
fiction, manages to explore love for family, with a strong female
protagonist who maintains the moral high ground. More than movies, books present
safe places to explore difficult issues. In a movie, a disturbing scene begins
with an alarming and dramatic flare of music, fills the screen with
difficult imagery for a moment or two, and is gone. The viewer is left with
memories of something, but what? Books allow us to confront our fears and turn
them over in our minds. We read at our own pace, and can put the book down
whenever we want. We can flip a few pages back and go over something that gave
us difficulty. While reading, we are not manipulated to feel something
by music, we just have to come to terms with what we read based on
our own experience.
The
American writer Patrick Ness thinks it would be “irresponsible” for such
fiction to ignore the darker side of life. When interviewed on the subject he
said “I always think if you tell the truth about what's difficult, that their
lives can be dark and hard, then when you then tell the truth about what's good,
love and hope and friendship, then they listen to you and take it more seriously
because you haven't lied about what's difficult." Darkness in young adult
fiction is not even a new thing. To Kill a Mocking Bird discusses
rape, Catcher In The Rye revolves around mental illness, Lord of
the Flies features terrible acts done to children by children. Some of the
best young adult fiction from the last thirty, forty, fifty years, is incredibly
dark. Perhaps this is why it resonates. Some of this great fiction is out of
print now, which is a shame, but with many
options for finding books online, you don’t have to be limited by
whats on the shelves at your local Barnes & Noble.
John
Christopher (the pen name of Sam Youd) might be the darkest writer
of young adult fiction that nobody has heard of. In the sixties, seventies,
eighties, and nineties, he explored dark futures and troubled teens. Here are a
few of his best.
The
Tripods Trilogy, 1967-68
If
you’re lucky, this might still be on the shelves of your local bookstore, but
it’s more likely that you’ll have to look online. The Tripods
Trilogy explores a future where life seems to have returned to a pre-industrial
ruralism. Humanity is in the sway of tripods, massive metal
machines which came to earth many years before and now stalk the landscape.
Adults are “capped” with metal wire skullcaps which deaden their
feelings and make them easily traceable. Will, the main character of the novels,
leaves his village on the eve of his capping, and makes for the French Alps
where there are reports of a growing rebellion. The morality of John
Christopher’s characters is very complex, and most of the people in his books
are morally compromised in some way. Will must steal to survive, commit acts of
violence against friends, and earn people’s trust with the intent of betraying
them. He must cut tracking devices from his body with a knife, and make
heart-rending decisions.
Nothing
is simple in John Christopher’s novels. In one chapter of the Tripods
Trilogy, Will is captured and forced to work by an old man
who lives alone in the middle of a river. We, as readers, root for Will but it
is difficult not to feel for the old man when Will steals his boat, condemning
him to drown in the river or starve on his island.
The
Sword of the Spirits Trilogy, 1970-72
John
Christopher specialized in flawed protagonists, and Luke, the main character
of The Sword of the Spirits books is the best example of this. Luke is
the son of a prince in another dystopian future. This time the world
has been ravaged by volcanoes and earthquakes which humanity has blamed on the
advance of technology. Everyone lives in a medieval feudal system where towns
fight towns and worship the Spirits - dancing lights with prophetic abilities,
which appear in darkened spaces. It turns out that technology is not dead but is
only underground. Scientists, who control the Spirits, which are merely
projections, have a plan to unite the torn-up world by leading one prince to
victory over all the others. They choose Luke, and they choose badly. Luke is
selfish and arrogant, testing the loyalty of his friends, and fearing betrayal
at every turn. His unhappy decisions lead the books to a sorry end. Along the
way friends are killed, fathers beheaded, pregnant mothers are electrocuted in
baths, while Luke and the scientists pursue their goals. Few modern writers of
young adult fiction have the courage to present us with such an unlikable main character.
Empty
World, 1977
Neil,
the main character of Empty World suffers post-traumatic stress
following the car accident that killed his parents and siblings. He lives a
detached and unsocial life but doesn’t have time to recover before a new illness
begins to prematurely age, and then kill, everyone around him. In the empty
world that remains Neil meets survivors who all seem to have been mentally
unbalanced by the disaster. In London he meets Clive, who is immediately
friendly, but who robs him during the night and abandons him. Clive must pick
his way around suicide victims before finding two girls, one of whom falls in
love with him while the other tries to kill him. The books is
remarkably anticlimatic but revolves around the decision of whether
or not to unlock a door: to forgive someone and let them live, or condemn them
to die.
An
Old Tradition
If
nothing else, the marvelous and troubling books of John Christopher show that
dark teenage fiction is nothing new. Many of John Christopher’s characters
object to censorship and the controlling of thoughts, and isn’t this what
happens when we limit what young people read? Parents might say it is a matter
of “taste” but this is a small word when what is really on the table is the
freedom to explore. You could do worse than to explore the difficult and
engaging novels of John Christopher.
~Thanks to Lisa for stopping by and sharing her thoughts with us!
