Archive for year 2007

I’m just going to start by excerpting a very large chunk of text, care of Neil Gaiman’s blog:

My 12-year old daughter chose Stardust for a school book report. We purchased it in paperback at Barnes and Noble. From the packaging, it looked like an appropriate fantasy story for her age and her 6th grade teacher approved it. We were very offended to find that it had an explicit sex scene and the word “fuck” in it. The marketing of this book was misleading. Were you intending to mislead children into reading it? Why would you do this?

Nope, not trying to mislead anyone, and I’m sorry you were offended.

Stardust was written and published as an adult novel. In 2000 it was awarded the Young Adult Library Services Association Alex Award given to adult books that young adults enjoy. Because of this, and because of the demand from schools, Harper Collins decided to bring out a Young Adult edition of the book as well. That would be the “Stardust Movie Tie In Teen Edition” up on Amazon these days.

While I’m sure there are many twelve year-olds who would qualify as Young Adults and who can happily read books intended for and marketed for teenagers, just as obviously many of them wouldn’t and can’t, and if you feel yours doesn’t I’m sure you’re right. I’m not as convinced as you are that the sex scene is “explicit”, although the word fuck is definitely there, printed in very small letters. But Stardust is definitely not one of my children’s books, like Coraline or Interworld, or (when I finish it) The Graveyard Book. It’s an adult book, with, in the US, a Young Adult edition as well.

I have to say that Neil’s response was much more evenhanded than mine would have been, were I in his place. I’m not going to argue that the person does not have a right to be offended, because everyone has the right to be offended by anything…that’s just the way things work.

What I take exception to is the fact that this person seems to have assumed that writers have some power over how their books are marketed, packaged, and sold in this country. Newsflash: THEY DON’T. Think I’m wrong? Consider that Harry Potter and the Philosphers Stone was changed to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in the US because the publisher believed it would sell better here with that title, regardless of the fact that the Philosopher’s Stone is an actual item from the mythology of alchemy. The fact of the matter is, even someone like Stephen King probably has little say in how his books are marketed. Publishers are in the business of selling books, and if a publisher thinks he can sell more copies by marketing something as YA when it probably isn’t, he’ll do it, even if the author were to object.

And more importantly, to think that someone would purposefully write a book to mislead children into reading an “explicit” sex scene (and, by the way, Neil’s correct, it’s not explicit unless, I don’t know, you’ve been living in Victorian England for the last decade or two) is probably the most asinine thing I have ever read on the interwebz.

Another thing that seems obvious to me is that this parent is totally unfamiliar with what constitutes “Young Adult” reading these days because in light of some other stuff, I’d say Stardust is mellow.

I’m willing to grant that some of my anger stems from the fact that Neil Gaiman is my personal lord and savior, and I don’t take kindly to anyone attacking him or his work.

But, come on people, if you have a 12 year old who hasn’t ever heard/read/seen/spoken the word “fuck” then either 1. you are in total denial, or 2. your kid leads one terribly sheltered life. Certainly, it is every parent’s right to shelter his or her child. As a parent, however, I question such a decision. I hope to god that when my daughter reaches the age of 12 she can read “fuck” and understand that it is simply a word, it’s power (or lack thereof) is derived completely from how people choose to treat it. It is merely the combination of phonetic sounds that we as a society ascribe some meaning to. And I really hope that she understands that just because society has placed a certain meaning on a certain word does not mean that you must react to that word in the same way.