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Showing posts from April 21, 2010

Workin' On It Wednesday # 50 -- On Parents and Other Adults

Since I write YA literature, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about what role the parents are going to have in the story. Because my main characters have to have parents*, of course, but parents aren't usually the most interesting parts of the YA story. If they were, that wouldn't be YA, it would just be...A. Recently, Liz B. over at Tea Cozy wrote a post about a New York Times article that dissed the role of parents in YA literature. In that article, author Julie Just says: Maybe you can think of more recent examples than “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (1885) — the gallant, no-good father from “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” (1943)? — but in the classic stories, from “Cinderella” to “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” the hero’s parents are more likely to be absent or dead than cruel or incompetent. ... And then the young adult novel came along. I have a question for Ms. Just: are you high? Seriously? Because on what planet is Cinderella's father not cruel or i