Reading, Writing and Ratings

By Pamela

This summer, I put my nine-year-old on a diet. You see, it was necessary. Left to her devices she would overindulge on unhealthy helpings of Minecraft (or Mindcrap, as I call it), Dragonvale and such. I put her on a technology-limited diet, so I was free to go about my summer without constantly badgering her about her screen-time. She agreed to limit technology to Tuesdays and Thursdays. Now, on any given day that doesn't start with a T, I'm subjected to moans and groans about dragons hatching without her being able to witness such blessed events, but I'm fine with that. I do give her free reign on her Kindle for reading books and she's been a reading fiend.

Last summer she zipped through the Harry Potter series, twice! And she read The Hunger Games books. This summer she's read some classics: Where the Red Fern Grows and The Witch of Blackbird Pond; plus The Help, The Fault in Our Stars, So B. It, Star Girl and more. My concern has not been finding books she wants to read but deciding if the books are appropriate for a child who reads well above her grade level--like many kids do.

Before you accuse me of being negligent or hypocritical, I realize allowing my girl to read The Hunger Games--or even the later installments of Harry Potter might not have been the most prudent move. A more conservative household might not even have the books on their shelves. But I read them before I let her and handed them to her with a word of caution plus the assurance that if she found them at all disturbing, she should put them down and read them another time. Or, if she wanted to talk about them at any time, I'd be here for her. She was fine with them. In all honesty, she howled the loudest after reading Where the Red Fern Grows, sobbing over her breakfast cereal that, "Both dogs died! Both of theeeemmmmm!"

Last week, she ran out of books to read and really wanted to download one to her Kindle, which meant her reading something I hadn't vetted. I thought The Fault in Our Stars might be okay, but texted my older boy's girlfriend, who had read it, and asked for her input. I knew it would be sad, as teens with cancer undoubtedly is, but I wasn't sure about sexual content or language. Katya wrote me back: "definitely some swearing. Not explicit but they do mention having sex. Probably PG-13. Also the literary references are a bit mature." Hmmm. I decided to let her read it and she didn't seem unsettled by any of it. In fact, it's actually opened some dialog between us and she's eager for me to read it, too.

I'll admit: This is the first time I've wished books came with ratings.

It's a hotly debated topic and I'm not sure why. We have movie and television ratings, even music ratings nowadays. Why not books? A recent article in The Wall Street Journal explored the world of dark YA and US News and World Report wrote about the same. But critics of book ratings worry about censoring and book bannings. I have to disagree.

As a mother, I'd welcome a rating system for books. As a writer, I don't think this bothers me at all, but I'm not sure others agree. Maybe the better alternative is a review site that deals with rating content of books, movies, video games, apps and more. Common Sense Media allows you to search a book title (or game, app, etc.) and view the level of violence, language, sex and such contained within. Had I known about this site earlier (truth is, I found it while researching this blog post) I might not have let my girl read The Fault in Our Stars as it rates it as Age 15, mostly due to the mature subject of teens coping with terminal illness. But I was also unable to find a few titles she's recently read, so their list is not as comprehensive as I'd hoped.

If we ever see the day when books are rated, I'm not sure if it will keep kids from reading mature content. Likely it will cause them to reach for books rated as explicit and possibly hide them from their parents. I know I read Stephen King, V.C. Andrews, John Saul and Robin Cook as a young teen and my mother had no idea what I was exposed to. For that matter, I read Shakespeare, too, and it doesn't get much darker than teens dying in the name of true love!

So, writers and authors: Would it bother you to see a rating system applied to literature? Why or why not?

Literary Crushes

By Kim

As an avid reader from the age of three and a sucker for a good love story, I confess I’ve fallen in love with more fictional men than real ones in my lifetime. Most are transitory infatuations that last only as long as it takes for me to finish a novel or until they do or say something that annoys me, whichever comes first. I don’t remember their names a month later.

Some remain with me, luring me back to their pages so I can again experience that heady rush. I don’t always get it. At nineteen, I loved Emily Bronte’s Heathcliff. Twenty years later, I wonder why. My opinion about Diana Gabaldon’s Jamie Fraser has not changed since 1992, however. I’m sure I’ll feel much the same about Cathy Marie Buchanan’s Tom Cole and Stephanie Cowell’s imagined version of Claude Monet.

I met my first literary love at twelve, when my mother gave me my first copy of Jane Eyre. Ever since, Edward Rochester is like the bad boy ex-boyfriend I’d take back in a heartbeat, damn the consequences. I forgive him the moodiness, the mind games, and even the mad wife imprisoned in the attic. Each time a movie version comes out, I’m at the theater and praying that the actor in that role fits the image in my mind. He never does, though Toby Stephens was my favorite.

My eldest daughter is now almost twelve and she, too, has fallen in love for the first time. The object of her affection: Peeta Mellark from The Hunger Games. As soon as she finished book three, she immediately picked up book one again, so she could have “her” Peeta back the way she wants to remember him.

How about you? Who are your literary crushes?

What to Omit, What to Add

By Susan


Last night, my older daughter, her best friend and I went to the premiere of The Hunger Games. It was a first for all three of us—a midnight showing— yet we'd been planning and looking forward to this moment since we'd all three read and devoured Suzanne Collins' first book of the trilogy with the same name over a year ago.

As the lights lowered and the noise surrounded us, I made a conscious decision to think about the story structure as we paced through the film. How did the screenwriters incorporate the back story? What about the nuances of the relationships, and the details of the plot points? Would the movie be true to the novel that both my twelve-year-old and I loved so much? As the movie unfolded, I noticed small changes—details omitted, scenes altered. Bits were left out, the depths of relationships were minimized, and the action, rather than the internal character struggles, carried the story forward in a balance of both compassion and killing (it is—after all—a movie about teenagers forced to fight to the death).

Yet overall, the movie was a smash: true to the novel, telling in its complexity, and cast with superb actors to carry the narrative.

It made me think about my own manuscript and the suggested edits currently in my hands, given to me last week by my steady, blunt and brilliant agent, Leigh Feldman. What to omit? Where to minimize? And when to alter?

It also made me think about another movie I'm looking forward to—Blue Like Jazz—a new film based loosely on the memoir of writer Donald Miller. By his own admission, the movie contains many scenes and even plot points critical to the film that never happened in his life. Yet in the quest for a good movie, he chose to rewrite his own history for the screen—building his life into the framework of a story. The book was one thing, and the movie, which opens in April, will be a completely different animal.

Don Miller has spoken candidly about both the memoir and the movie. In admitting he'd written the book for himself, as a rolling narrative of his own journey through his faith, success, and failures, he agreed to retell his story in order to create a product fit for the screen. I suspect that the movie will contain the soul of his memoir, and the tone of his struggles, if not the plot point specifics perhaps expected by die-hards who love books and expect the movies to follow suit.

Sometimes, the choice of what to omit alters the story and transforms it into something different—as will be with Blue Like Jazz. Yet sometimes, as with The Hunger Games, the changes are small. Time-saving, detail-minimizing, and story-shortening avenues to the same destination.

And for my story? After my first round of Leigh's suggestions, I removed an entire subplot storyline, cut full paragraphs of musings that detracted from the heart of the story, and rebuilt a character's arc based on her active participation in the civil rights movement of the 1960s rather than her thoughts on the movement itself. It altered the story in ways I would not have seen without Leigh's brilliant nudging. I liken these edits to the way a filmmaker would slash my story for the screen—making it stronger by breaking it, polishing it by cutting out the ruminations, and finding a way to tell a bigger story for a broader audience instead of seeing life only through the eyes of the protagonist.


It will be a better story because of my attention to the details of my edits. I'll maintain the soul and the tone of my story without compromising the core plot. Yet as it shifts beneath my hands, I think of only making it the best possible novel I can write. The same way, I'm sure, Suzanne Collins and Donald Miller looked at their books-turned-cinema. Make it work and make it better. But make every tweak count.