LARS'S LIBRARY: KIDS IN DYSTOPIA

I originally wrote this for Lars's Library on The Reading Clinic's site this fall. I can't stop thinking about this trend in kidlit and now have started what I call my 'Dystopia Project.' Maybe more accurately, continued that project with a name. And, as is my wont, a list. Currently, I just finished rereading Nineteen Eighty-Four and am almost finished with Walter Tevis's Mockingbird. Next up is the bestselling Young Adult novel, The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins.

There's definitely a trend in children's literature toward darker subject matter and post-apocalyptic futures. This summer, Newsweek used the recent popularity of Jeanne DuPrau's exciting Books of Ember series as a jumping off point for a discussion of this trend. In 'Scary New World' , The New York Times examines some recent examples.

Instead of viewing this type of literature with alarm, we should see its value as a transitional step. Reading novels about a troubled future pushes children toward the more abstract and critical thinking they will be doing in high school and as adults.

Fiction for younger children is usually anchored to straight-forward narrative that offers lessons and models behavior. As readers grow older, story content changes. Instead of clear resolution, the reader faces endings that are sometimes ambiguous and ambivalent. Authors use irony, satire and analogy to give readers fuller and richer meaning. Because characters' motivations are implied, readers have to infer far more.

This change in literature reflects our development. When we are young, we look for concrete reasons to help us understand. As we age, we begin to think in more challenging and abstract ways. At The Reading Clinic, we see how hard this is for children who already have difficulty with comprehension. We help them to take ownership of language by visualizing stories-making movies in their brains. If this is already an effort with concrete literature, imagine how much harder it is when stories require abstraction.

A staple of freshman and sophomore high school literature courses is Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Dystopian works like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four require us to think about why government created with the best of intentions can result in the cruelest of societies, and how our own culture operates under a set of assumptions that can be harmful. Avoiding direct judgment of authority, they prompt us to question it and understand its dangers.

These are truly abstract concepts. I remember a girl who was handling Shakespeare, but who broke down when faced with assignments that asked her to analyze Brave New World and determine Huxley's purpose and point of view.

One way to prepare children for this jump in literary sophistication is to have them read and discuss dystopian literature in middle school. Teachers often assign books like The Giver by Lois Lowry, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'engle, and The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer. I encourage parents to read them, too. When they are not assigned, I encourage children and parents to read them anyway.

The adventure, young heroes, and hopeful endings of these novels, not to mention the great writing, involve young readers. Once these books hook the middle-school reader, the picture they paint of a less-than-perfect future gives students a way to begin practicing more nuanced reflection. Discussing such novels with their peers and caring adults will help them acquire and polish the higher order thinking skills they will need as they progress through school.