When Not to Read

Excellent post over at Thoughts of a Shieldmaiden today - be sure to read it if you have a couple minutes. 

I'm really tired of all this rot about "reading levels" and such.  There's too often a temptation to pair reading level with content, and so parents leave it to schools, publishers, and other individuals (with their own agenda) to decide what is appropriate reading.  Of course, "appropriate" translates to anything that pushes the boundary without exactly going over it.  (I don't mind getting specific - I find it ironic that Twilight was lauded for being a "chaste" series, and yet the author's response to the Fifty Shades fanfic was "not my thing, but that's great!")

So....authors have a little bit of responsibility, too.  It would be nice to sit back and believe that YA books will be read by the right audience, but if you've ever been a bookworm, you know that kids who like to read will graduate to the next "level" as soon as they can.  On top of that, younger children want to be part of the same fandoms that their older siblings enjoy.  I'm not saying that some "darker" books don't have a place, but I would advocate getting rid of the YA category and placing books with darker themes in the grown-ups' category.  In the meantime, while we still have this gray-area YA variety, it's worth keeping in mind that somebody very young could end up reading your book, perhaps per the recommendation of their librarian (it happens).