(Picture courtesy of Bottom of the Glass.)

This rant article was prompted by Emma Waverman over at Embrace the Chaos writing an article about how she finds YA fiction too dark.  This would be okay as it is her own opinion, but what irks me is that she has condemned the YA genre without having read much of said genre.  Here are some of my thoughts on the matter:

Ms. Waverman has absolutely every right as a parent to be concerned about what her twelve-year-old son is reading.  She has said that she thinks the YA genre is generally dark (particularly since it has books like The Hunger Games) without having read any YA books, aside from a little bit of Harry Potter—at least that she mentions.  My problem is that she seems to dismiss the whole genre out of hand without even truly sampling it.  She proclaims she is an avid reader and a ‘book snob’, but why has she not read these books along with her son if she is so concerned?  Despite what people think, YA fiction is not all that different from adult fiction, which brings me to my next point. Continue reading →