Thread by @racheltoalson

THREAD: On sad/hard/dark stories for children
1. I’ve noticed a somewhat alarming narrative being tossed around in children’s literature circles, particularly middle grade literature. It says: “This story has a little too much sadness/hard topics/darkness for children.”

2. I get it. A hallmark of middle grade literature is its hopefulness, its examination of self (who am I becoming), its bend toward buoyancy and brightness.

3. And maybe we also want to believe that kids in the middle grade age group don’t yet know what the world is like; they don’t know that people leave and lives fall apart and darkness exists in a really big and consuming way.

4. It would be a wonderful world if that were true, wouldn’t it? I would like to live in that world. But I don’t. And I’d like to tell you about my own personal middle grade journey.

5. At 8: I learn what real fear means. I feel it every time my dad comes home from the bar, a storm walking, snapping his belt, threatening a whipping. I hide in my room and try to make myself small & invisible.

6. At 8: My dad leaves for a “business trip” out of state. I don’t see or hear from him for a year. While he’s gone, my mom tries to support me, my bro & my sis. We lose our rented home. No one says why, but I know (parents: kids usually know).

7. None of the books I read (and there were a lot; I’d been reading since I was 4) helped me figure out what it meant for a kid to live in poverty, so shame wrapped its fingers around my ankle and tripped along behind my every step.

8. At 9: I become Second Mom. I make sure my bro and sis do their homework, don’t open the door, stay safe until our mom gets home from work. My worries are the worries of an adult: what to eat, how to make money, must keep them safe.

9. I find no books that mirror my experience. Which turns my experience, once again, shameful and secretive. Walls go up, thick and strong.

10. At 9: A message on our answering machine tells us my dad’s girlfriend is three months pregnant. My mom says it’s a prank call. I can tell by the twisted look on her face & the way the air changes that it’s not.

11. I sure could have used a book to help me process the rage and hate that curled up in my stomach like something alive and dangerous.

12. At 10: My brother says he’s going to jump off a bridge (he’s 11). He means it; he has it all planned out. My mom puts him in therapy and I cry myself to sleep.
13. A book to tell me what I was supposed to feel, what I was supposed to do, would have been nice.

14. At 11: I find a letter in my mom’s sock drawer. It says my dad has a 3yo daughter and another baby on the way. My mom doesn’t divulge this, but she does tell us they’re getting a divorce. I know we’ll never see him again.
15. Books. There were none.

16. At 11: My best friend since birth is adopted by her grandmother, after multiple attempts to live with her drug-addicted mother. She is also 11. Her brother is 10 and gets expelled from school for fighting.

17. At 11: My sister visits a friend. The friend’s grandfather invites her into a dark closet, where he molests her. She is 8. She is 8. She is 8. She doesn’t tell anyone until she’s 26. It takes me a long time to forgive myself for not keeping her safe.

18. No books to tell us how we could possibly survive this insecure, unsafe world.

19. At 12: After a year of no contact, my dad says he wants to see us. We visit him for a summer. I start my period. 1,000 miles away from my mom. With the woman who broke up my mom & dad’s marriage. And the sister who replaced me.

20. That summer I read IF YOU REALLY LOVED ME, the true story of David Brown. Look it up. It was not a book for 12yos—b/c there were none for 12yo me. They were all too happy, too non-dysfunctional, too perfectly positive.

21. At 12: I lash out at some friends b/c of all the anger & hurt & awful hate balled up inside me. I lose friends, I isolate, I try my best to be otherwise perfect. I make the grades, play the part, try not to be a burden to my mom, who’s been through enough.

22. At 12: My mom remarries. I make my stepdad’s life a living inferno, b/c even though I hate him, I want to save the spot for my dad. In case he comes back. In case he realizes his mistake. In case he remembers what he left behind.

23. At 12: My dad doesn’t come back. I slide into anorexia. Surely that will work.
24. A book. Would have been nice. To tell me I was worthy enough, as my broken, imperfect, abandoned self.

25. For kids like me, life sometimes feels like a long, lonely road. Kids who live lives like mine don’t go around talking to each other about their messed up realities. They turn inward and try to process; books to help them do that are essential.

26. As much as we want to believe otherwise, kids like me still exist in our world. And they, too, are trying to process who they are and how they can possibly survive—and maybe more than survive?—their circumstances.

27. If I can give them stories that do exactly that, then I’ve done my job as a children’s book writer.

28. And the kids who don’t live like them, the kids like my sons who have a much better life than I ever, ever did? They need to hear those hard stories, too. They need to know others’ reality.

29. Part of teaching kids radical empathy is exposing them to stories that don’t look like their own lives, stories that could explain why their classmate is so mean sometimes, stories that might shine the light of understanding & love.

30. And that’s worth something, too. It might even change the world. That’s what understanding and love often do. (And maybe I’m an endlessly hopeful person, in spite of my jagged past.)

31. So in conclusion: We can’t be afraid of darkness in children’s literature. We never know when it will save a life.