Nonfiction Reading Response to The Sick-lit Books Aimed at Children

     Tanith Carey's "The Sick-lit Books Aimed at Children," published by Mail Online, discusses young adult fictions best selling books with morbid plots not suitable for children who will soon follow after the dark themes in the books. She mentions many names of popular books read by young people with plots full of death, self-harming, rape, and suicide. She then goes on to kids who have taken on the bad issues in books rather than learning from them. One example, a girl who every time she read Red Tears would reach for a blade after wanting to cut even more. She talks about how young people are when they read these books. She concludes by saying if parents talk to their kids about the issues in books its OK. But they definitely shouldn't read them alone.

     To get her point across Tanith Carey uses a lot of craft moves. She uses the term sick-lit instead of young adult literature to stress how awful the topics in the books are. She includes words like distasteful and morbid. She addresses the counterclaim with a quote for an author Phil Earle saying books help kids feel like their not alone and give them a sense of hope. But Carey quickly shoots that down by saying that their are other ways to teach kids about harsh issues. She also always says 11 year old or 12 year old to show how young the kids really are.

     Personally, I don't agree with the article at all. Having read some of the books she mentioned, I know that they teach teens rather than scaring and encouraging them do then same thing as in the books. The Fault In Our Stars by John Green was one of the books she talked about. This book taught me a lot about accepting death and coping with huge changes in our lives. I know that many other teens love it too. Or it wouldn't be on the teens best-seller list for a half of a year. One line that stood out to me was, "The blurbs for the 'teen sick-lit' trip over themselves to promise their books will drive readers to tear or leave then devastated."She used so many harsh and dramatic terms to get her point across.