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Suicide and Depression in YA: A Discussion and Book List

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“So I guess that’s why it doesn’t feel like talking about my mental health is tantamount to airing my dirty laundry. Instead, to extend the metaphor, it feels like I’m just hanging my regular old laundry out to dry. And I’m hanging it somewhere visible, like a laundry line strung up between two buildings or something. And everything – absolutely everything – that I wear is on that line. My cute little sundresses are there, as well as my jeans, my shorts, and a variety of tops. But my underwear is also hung up there – even the big old comfy granny panties – and my bras and thongs are there too, waving like flags in the wind. Because we all wear underwear. Everyone knows that people wear underwear. Everyone knows that underwear needs to be washed and dried before you wear it again. So why should it be embarrassing to hang it outside?
Everyone knows that mental illness exists; everyone knows the devastating effect that it can have, both on the people suffering from it and their friends and families. This is not new information – it’s something that we’ve known forever and ever. But the hush-hush way we’ve developed of discussing it and dealing with it clearly aren’t working. So let’s finally start talking about it, because that’s the only chance that we have of beating it.” — from Airing My Dirty Laundry by Anne Theriault

The two final paragraphs from this blog post really resonated with me last week when I read them. Everyone knows mental illness exists, everyone knows that the effects of mental illness can be terrible, and yet, people don’t want to talk about it. It’s not a pleasant topic, but it’s one that needs to be addressed and needs to be approached with more honesty and compassion. 

Over the last year, depression and suicide have seen more time in the spotlight. Ned Vizzini’s suicide, followed by Robin Williams’s — and the near 40,000 suicides that happen per year in the US — make it clear we need to be talking about this more. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in America. While depression is not indicative of suicide, the two are linked together in a way that makes talking about them in tandem make sense.

There’s a mythology that surrounds depression and suicide, particularly when it comes to creative types. It’s a mythology that’s exceptionally destructive and belittling to all those who suffer from mental illness, and it’s this: that that anguish is what causes the best work to happen. 

Following Williams’s death, I read the comment far too often that creative people are most likely to suffer because that suffering is where art is born. It tends to be the complete opposite. Creative types don’t see depression as what drives them. The best work isn’t made when they’re down, but rather, when artists are up. When down and the work isn’t coming together, it actually further fuels the depression/anxiety cycle, making it even more difficult to create and engage in a healthy way. Myra McEntire and Stephanie Perkins have both written about this and the ways that depression has impacted not just their careers, but their personal lives, as well. 

Part of why people believe and engage in this myth telling is because it’s easier than trying to make sense of an illness that often doesn’t appear to have a root cause. How could someone talented or successful be depressed? How can someone who seems to have it all together find it difficult to get out of bed, to take a shower, to want to talk with the people who love and care about them? When people choose to look at an illness through that set of lenses, they blame the victim, rather than educate themselves on the disease. 

When we do that, we further stigmatize those who are suffering from depression, making them less likely to seek treatment or practice necessary self-care and preservation. 

One of the most memorable moments of my career in librarianship came at the very end. I’ve worked with teens for many years, and one of the reasons I like working with them and advocating for them is because they’re far more likely to be open minded and receptive to ideas and tough discussions than adults can be. But nothing really got to me and emphasized the importance of having resources available — and being a resource myself through listening, advocating, and being in tune with the array of challenges teens face — than when a teen got up during one of our programs and delivered a piece of slam poetry about a friend. 

She’d been quiet during the event. Her cousin had been urging her to get up in front of the (small) group of mostly adults and some teens who’d come to the program. She’d written something while listening to other performances, and her cousin really hoped she’d share. 

After she performed the piece, she stood at the front and accepted the audience applause shyly. But she didn’t leave the front of the room. She stood there, as if she needed to say more or explain what her piece was about. With more encouragement from her family, she explained that her friend had committed suicide just days ago, and the piece was a tribute to her friend. 

The room went silent. People didn’t try to distract themselves. They sat. They’d heard exactly what she said and took it in, thinking about not just what that meant on a grand level, but what it meant right here and right now for a young teen girl to get up and express her feelings about the situation while the wounds were so fresh. What do you do with that? What can you do with that? 

When the event was over, there wasn’t a single person who didn’t approach her, offering kind words or a hug. Many had said something after they’d collected themselves, encouraging her never to stop working through her feelings with words like she’d just done. And that she’d done so openly. 

I put together a display in the teen area the next day of books about “tough issues”: realistic fiction tackling mental illness and suicide. I knew if one girl who was hurting, others were, too. The books did not last long on the display. People were looking for these stories. And as I saw again on social media in the wake of Williams’s suicide, people were asking for books about depression and suicide. Books and art, of course, are ways into talking about mental illness and suicide, as they allow a space for thinking, for considering, and for making sense of them privately. 

That’s why hearing a teen girl sharing a poem about it left such an impact. She shared. 

With that, here’s a thick list of YA titles that explore depression and/or suicide. Again, these aren’t inextricably linked: one can be depressed and never suicidal, while one can be suicidal and it’s not borne of depression. Likewise, depression is often linked to other mental illness, but I’ve tried to focus on those stories where depression is the primary force. I’ve limited myself to realistic fiction, but feel free to offer up additional titles within any genre of YA in the comments. These stories focus on depression and/or suicide from a wide array of perspectives. 

All descriptions are from WorldCat. A handful of additional titles, which I’ve not included on my list, can be found at Disability in KidLit. 

 

I Swear by Lane Davis: After Leslie Gatlin kills herself, her bullies reflect on how things got so far.

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher: When high school student Clay Jenkins receives a box in the mail containing thirteen cassette tapes recorded by his classmate Hannah, who committed suicide, he spends a bewildering and heartbreaking night crisscrossing their town, listening to Hannah’s voice recounting the events leading up to her death.

Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta: Sixteen-year-old Francesca could use her outspoken mother’s help with the problems of being one of a handful of girls at a parochial school that has just turned co-ed, but her mother has suddenly become severely depressed.

Fat Kid Rules The World by K. L. Going: Seventeen-year-old Troy, depressed, suicidal, and weighing nearly 300 pounds, gets a new perspective on life when a homeless teenager who is a genius on guitar wants Troy to be the drummer in his rock band.

Hold Still by Nina LaCour: Ingrid didn’t leave a note. Three months after her best friend’s suicide, Caitlin finds what she left instead: a journal, hidden under Caitlin’s bed.

Impulse by Ellen Hopkins: Three teens who meet at Reno, Nevada’s Aspen Springs mental hospital after each has attempted suicide connect with each other in a way they never have with their parents or anyone else in their lives.

By The Time You Read This, I’ll Be Dead by Julie Anne Peters: High school student Daelyn Rice, who’s been bullied throughout her school career and has more than once attempted suicide, again makes plans to kill herself, in spite of the persistent attempts of an unusual boy to draw her out.

Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick: A day in the life of a suicidal teen boy saying good-bye to the four people who matter most to him.

This Song Will Save Your Life by Leila Sales: Nearly a year after a failed suicide attempt, sixteen-year-old Elise discovers that she has the passion, and the talent, to be a disc jockey.

The Death of Jayson Porter by Jaime Adoff: In the Florida projects, sixteen-year-old Jayson struggles with the harsh realities of his life which include an abusive mother, a drug-addicted father, and not fitting in at his predominately white school, and bring him to the brink of suicide.

Survive by Alex Morel: A troubled girl is stranded in an arctic winter terrain after a plane crash and must fight for survival with the only other boy left alive.

Try Not to Breathe by Jennifer R. Hubbard: The summer Ryan is released from a mental hospital following his suicide attempt, he meets Nicki, who gets him to share his darkest secrets while hiding secrets of her own. 

And We Stay by Jenny Hubbard: Sent to an Amherst, Massachusetts, boarding school after her ex-boyfriend shoots himself, seventeen-year-old Emily expresses herself through poetry as she relives their relationship, copes with her guilt, and begins to heal.

Crash Into Me by Albert Borris: Four suicidal teenagers go on a “celebrity suicide road trip,” visiting the graves of famous people who have killed themselves, with the intention of ending their lives in Death Valley, California.

Glimpse by Carol Lynch Williams: Living with their mother who earns money as a prostitute, two sisters take care of each other and when the older one attempts suicide, the younger one tries to uncover the reason.

Fall For Anything by Courtney Summers: As she searches for clues that would explain the suicide of her successful photographer father, Eddie Reeves meets the strangely compelling Culler Evans who seems to know a great deal about her father and could hold the key to the mystery surrounding his death.

Saving June by Hannah Harrington: After her sister’s suicide, Harper Scott takes off for California with her best friend Laney to scatter her sister’s ashes in the Pacific Ocean.

Suicide Notes by Michael Thomas Ford: Brimming with sarcasm, fifteen-year-old Jeff describes his stay in a psychiatric ward after attempting to commit suicide.

Blackbox by Julie Schumacher: When Dora, Elena’s older sister, is diagnosed with depression and has to be admitted to the hospital, Elena can’t seem to make sense of their lives anymore. At school, the only people who acknowledge Elena are Dora’s friends and Jimmy Zenk–who failed at least one grade and wears black every day of the week. And at home, Elena’s parents keep arguing with each other. Elena will do anything to help her sister get better and get their lives back to normal–even when the responsibility becomes too much to bear. 

Everything Is Fine by Ann Dee Ellis: When her father leaves for a job out of town, Mazzy is left at home to try to cope with her mother, who has been severely depressed since the death of Mazzy’s baby sister.

Silhouetted By The Blue by Traci L. Jones: After the death of her mother in an automobile accident, seventh-grader Serena, who has gotten the lead in her middle school play, is left to handle the day-to-day challenges of caring for herself and her younger brother when their father cannot pull himself out of his depression.

Drowning Instinct by Ilsa J. Bick: An emotionally damaged sixteen-year-old girl begins a relationship with a deeply troubled older man.

Get Well Soon by Julie Halpern: When her parents confine her to a mental hospital, an overweight teenaged girl, who suffers from panic attacks, describes her experiences in a series of letters to a friend.

Wild Awake by Hilary T. Smith: The discovery of a startling family secret leads seventeen-year-old Kiri Byrd from a protected and naive life into a summer of mental illness, first love, and profound self-discovery. *Read Hilary’s guest post on mental illness in YA fiction, too, while you’re at it. 

Crazy by Amy Reed: Connor and Izzy, two teens who met at a summer art camp in the Pacific Northwest where they were counselors, share a series of emails in which they confide in one another, eventually causing Connor to become worried when he realizes that Izzy’s emotional highs and lows are too extreme. This book deals with bipolar disorder. 

Falling Into Place by Amy Zhang (September 9): One cold fall day, high school junior Liz Emerson steers her car into a tree. This haunting and heartbreaking story is told by a surprising and unexpected narrator and unfolds in nonlinear flashbacks even as Liz’s friends, foes, and family gather at the hospital and Liz clings to life.

Ferguson, Race, Civil Rights, Social Activism, and YA Fiction: A Round-Up of Reading

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Rather than write a “This Week in Reading” post this week, I thought it would be more worthwhile to instead round-up and share some of the great book lists and discussions I’ve seen centering around good reading for those interested in discussing and thinking about the situation in Ferguson. The bulk of these resources are geared toward children’s and young adult lit, though some posts go a bit beyond than, as well as a bit beyond books. Topics include race, civil rights, social activism, and privilege.

There are countless angles working here, but they are all important and worth thinking and talking about.

I can’t add anything new or thoughtful to this discussion, but what I can do is give space to those who are generating much-needed and valuable resources and elements of conversation. If you know of additional book lists or topical guides worth mentioning, please drop them into the comments. I’m happy to continue revisiting this.

  • Lyn Miller-Lachmann talks about two YA titles — one out now and one coming out this fall — and the ways that writers and artists respond to social justice. I’m including this post specifically because I cannot get Kekla Magoon’s forthcoming How it Went Down out of my head these last couple of weeks and hope it shows up on your to-read lists. 

  • At Book Riot, Brenna Clarke Gray suggests 5 good books about race in America. These are all adult titles, but teen readers who are interested should be able to read and think about them. 

Both images are from the Ferguson library. 
The left, from the director, and the right, from their Instagram account.

Female Sexuality in YA Fiction: A Look at the Landscape

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The more I write and think about YA, the more I find holes within it. Part of it is knowing I haven’t — and can’t — read everything. But part of it is that there simply are holes in the category.

I turned in a draft of the Q&A that will be a part of Amber Keyser’s The V-Word last week, and after having spent almost a year now reading and thinking critically about the ways that female sexuality are rendered in YA, there are definite places where YA can and should do better. I’ve been keeping an eye on this since writing about positive portrayals of female sexuality last summer,  and more, I’ve been keeping an eye on the discussions about sexuality as it’s depicted in YA.

The depictions of sexuality in YA matter because these are safe spaces for readers — teen readers, especially — can think about, explore, and consider what it means to be a sexual being. We don’t talk openly or honestly about sex as a culture, and we certainly don’t talk about it in positive, affirming, and empowering ways with teenagers.

With those thoughts in mind, I thought it might be worth talking about where we’re doing okay and where we could and should be doing better when it comes to sexuality in YA. What are we seeing? What aren’t we seeing? More specifically, I’m talking about female sexuality (and that extends, of course, to gender identity on a larger scale) and I’m talking about more realistic novels than fantastic. Which isn’t to say fantasy or other genre fiction doesn’t add to the discussion. It’s just not my strongest area of knowledge. I’d love any input or thoughts other YA readers may have on this topic, so feel free to think with me in the comments. This isn’t meant to be comprehensive but instead, something that spurs some thinking and discussion.

I’m fully aware there are presses publishing books that explore some of these topics — but accessibility is an issue, especially for teen readers. If it’s not something that’d be easily found on a library shelf, in a classroom, or in a bookstore, getting these books can be a challenge.

Virginity & Sexuality As Choice


When I was working through the books I’d read and doing research on sexuality in YA, one of the topics I had a really tough time with was virginity. It seems counterintuitive for virginity to be a tricky topic to find in YA, but it is. There are a few books in mainstream YA which tackle virginity — Terra Elan McVoy in Pure is an example, as is Purity by Jackson Pearce — but there aren’t many more.

Could it be because if sex and sexuality aren’t addressed in the novel in some capacity that we default our thinking to virginity? In other words, if we don’t know the character is sexually active or that she is living a pure life and that’s one of the subplots, if not the main story plot, do we just assume she’s a virgin and that’s it?

Not every book in YA is going to address sexuality, nor should it. It’d be silly to have these topics shoehorned into every novel and it’d be disingenuous to story, to character, and it’d be unfair to readers who’d be given something that doesn’t need to be there (which then makes reading a chore and makes it feel like a lecture, rather than a pleasurable pursuit). But what I want to know is why virginity outside of a religious/spiritual choice isn’t more common in YA? There’s nothing wrong with that choice, and I know it appears with some frequency in fiction geared toward that readership, but it seems to be the biggest piece of the virginity puzzle in YA when I’m not sure it’s the only piece we should be seeing.

Perhaps the best example of this I could find in fiction was Melina Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi. This book is 22 years old, and yet, it did something really progressive and powerful that I’d like to see in a lot more YA today: Josie, the main character, is being physical with her boyfriend and enjoying it, but she then tells him she’s not ready to have sex with him. He goads her a bit about it, saying that she’s being ridiculous, especially since they’re having a good time, but she pushes back and tells him that her body and her choices about sex are her own and right now, she’s not feeling like she’s ready to have sex for the first time. This is a really powerful scene in the book, and one that made me pause and wonder why we don’t see more of this.

Where are girls who are choosing virginity because it empowers them to do that, outside of a religious choice?

I’d like to see more girls who are choosing virginity because that matters to them and because it makes them feel good to take and have that ownership over their own bodies and their own sexual lives. Not out of fear, nor out of duty. But because it’s exactly what they want.

Prude Shaming

The last few years have offered up a solid array of titles that explore slut shaming. Jillian and Mariko Tamaki do a great job of this in This One Summer, and there’s an especially good scene when the younger girl, Windy, tells Rose she’s unfairly labeling and judging other girls she doesn’t know — and she’s doing so in context of the sexual lives she knows nothing about. Jennifer Mathieu digs into slut shaming in her debut novel, The Truth About Alice, as well. There are other books that look at it with less focus than these two, but the important thing is that it’s there.

Is prude shaming though?

Perhaps because it’s tied into the fact we don’t see enough virginity-as-choice in YA (whether because of a religious reason or not!), but there’s also little exploration of what happens when you’re shamed because you’re choosing virginity.

I’ve seen bits and pieces of it — and even in Marchetta’s novel, Josie’s boyfriend picks on her when she stops him in that moment — but we need more. I’d love a book like Mathieu’s but showing the reverse: what happens when a girl’s choice of virginity becomes her downfall or the reason that she’s seen as any number of unsavory things? What happens when she asserts her right to choose not to do something makes her the center of bullying or the target of a community’s rage? Or what about when someone is asexual and simply isn’t interested in sex at all?

Even more, there are times when being a virgin isn’t a choice for teens. The opportunities for teens to have sex are far more limited than they are for adults. There’s a lot of ground to cover when it comes to virginity in YA, and I think prude shaming is a large facet within it.

Diversity


The biggest — and I mean biggest — failure in YA fiction when it comes to female sexuality is in diversity. And I mean diversity of every make, shape, and form possible.

Books that are doing a great job of portraying female sexuality have whiteness in common. It’s exceptionally rare to see a YA novel that tackles sexuality in a positive light that features a character of color. Hannah Moskowitz’s forthcoming Not Otherwise Specified (March 2015) features a queer character of color who is open, honest, and proud of her sexuality. She’s portrayed as enjoying female and male partners. Nina LaCour offers us a mixed race main character in Everything Leads to You, where she’s the center of a lesbian romance.

Both of these are rare sights.

In thinking about sexuality in YA, I had a near impossible job pulling out characters who were disabled discovering sexuality. Indeed, disability in YA already commands but a tiny part of bookshelves as it is, but the only discussion I could think to talk about in terms of a disabled person owning and exploring her sexuality was this powerful post by Kayla Whaley at Disability in KidLit. That isn’t a novel, though. It’s her life. Why aren’t we seeing more books like that?

If we consider mental illness a disability, we might be able to add more titles to the positive portrayals of female sexuality in YA mix — and even then, we’re not getting very far — but for stories featuring physically disabled main characters, the landscape is bleak.

More, we don’t have much diversity in terms of sexual choice itself. I noted above that we don’t see asexual characters (and asexuality is not the same as when we consider a default virgin narrative). We don’t see pansexual or demisexual characters. We don’t see many bisexual characters, though we’ve seen a few more in recent years, including Sophie in Tess Sharpe’s Far From You. We don’t see characters often who make choices outside of the one partner model — there is one I can think of but won’t spoil since it’s a semi-recent title. We also don’t see characters who see their sexuality as fluid and shifting; a lot of that may simply be because the teen years are about exploration and they’re a relatively short period within one’s lifespan, so discovering that fluidity can be tougher.

Female Masturbation


I’d actually begun an entire blog post titled “Going There: Female Masturbation in YA” a couple weeks ago, after reading this tweet from Andrew Karre:

I’m not sure if it’s because I was paying more attention over the last year or if it’s because I’ve come to dig out the cute way we talk around girls masturbating in YA, but this is something I think we’re seeing more than we believe we are. Could we do better? Absolutely. We can do better in not just seeing it happen more frequently, but we can do better in not being shy about describing what’s going on when a girl’s enjoying solo sex (fading to black or being euphemistic in a way that only those who are clued in know what’s happening).

When I served on Outstanding Books for the College Bound last year, one of the titles I nominated for one of the subcommittees I was on was Rookie: Yearbook One. It seems like a bit of an odd ball choice, but it’s an amazing resource. Besides diving into music and film and fashion and culture, this particular volume offered a really honest and blunt piece about why masturbation is important and why girls can feel empowered by knowing their bodies.


Rookie might not be hitting mainstream YA readers, but the fact that one of the biggest publications for teens, spearheaded by a teen, tackled this topic and found it important enough to feature in their print edition says a lot to me about how this is a topic teen girls are interested in and are talking about.

Beyond Rookie, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see masturbation pop up not just in Sarah McCarry’s All Our Pretty Songs, which I noted in my prior post on this topic, but I’ve seen it in other recent reads. There’s Julie Halpern’s The F-It List. There’s Anatomy of a Boyfriend by Daria Snadowsky (an older title, but a book that is entirely about female sexuality and highly recommended). There’s the classic from Judy Blume, Deenie, as well as Kody Keplinger’s The DUFF.

Then there’s Fiona Woods’s Wildlife, too, out in September, that I can’t recommend highly enough. Beyond featuring masturbation, Wildlife explores numerous facets of sexuality, and it’s empowering and validating in a way teen girls need to read and see, whatever choices they make for themselves.

We can keep doing better with this aspect of sexuality, and I hope that we do. Let’s see more diverse representations here. The majority of these stories are middle class white females — and we know there are many, many more types of girls than that. Let’s see this become a normal thing, rather than something that has to either be danced around or something that, when we read it, sticks out because seeing it called as much is a pleasant surprise.

Or, as I noted in the Q&A, it’d be great if we didn’t have to keep calling it female masturbation, as if it’s something wholly different than masturbation, period.

If you’re still thinking about this, I highly recommend reading Andrew Karre’s follow-up blog post to his tweet, regarding the comments teens in the workshop he and Carrie Mesrobian had. It’s insightful and I think not only shows what is and is not being seen by teen readers, but I think it speaks to why we can and should be having these conversations with teens.

They aren’t dumb.

Censorship, Challenges, and Other Forms of Protest: A Reading List

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If you haven’t kept tabs on recent book challenges popping up around America, one that’s drawn a lot of discussion recently comes out of the Cape Henlopen School District in Delaware. In early July, the school board made the decision to remove Emily Danforth’s The Miseducation of Cameron Post from a reading list for incoming freshmen. The board cited language as the issue, stating it was inappropriate for the age group for which the list was intended. 

Of course, this drew a lot of criticism not only because of the attempt to pull a book but also because it happened to be a book featuring a lesbian main character. It would be hard not to see that there was more to this story than meets the eye. A couple of worthwhile reads come from Jill Guccini, one over at Book Riot and one over at After Ellen.  

Last week, the board went to make a final decision on the book, and after choosing to put the book back on the reading list, the list was then pulled all together. The board chose to reinstate an old summer reading system, in an exercise of power that undermined the hard work of librarian who created the book list and the educators who know how to work with students reading from it. Of course, the real losers here are the students.

There’s a lot more going on than meets the eye, though, and close readers of the article will note that the ACLU became involved in this situation. It’s hard not to wonder if the board’s decision wasn’t exactly what they said. Instead, their decision was a way around a potentially bigger, messier situation. If the board really cared about the profanity issue, as they claim to, then some of the classics that are being taught to students this same age would certainly raise the same sorts of “concerns” that Cameron Post and any of the other YA titles on the list do. So, no, it’s not about the language concerns. In this instance, it isn’t ignorant to see the potential lawsuits that could have spun from this and by removing the entire list, the board absolves itself a bit from looking like the close-minded, fearful body they’ve shown themselves to be at this point. 

Every year around this time, book challenges seem to dominate the book news world. Leila’s done a great job rounding up recent ones and highlighting where they’re at at this point in time. I talked a little bit about why the summer and beginning of the school year tend to be favorite times for challenges last fall over at Book Riot, too. This isn’t surprising and that might be why it’s so disheartening and aggravating as a reader, as a librarian, and as someone who cares about teens. 

I applaud those who can keep writing about this topic — it’s something I tackled before but I don’t think I can keep talking about. My feelings are exactly the same, and every time a board makes a decision to take books away from kids, I can’t help but get upset about how little faith those adults have not just in the teens, but in the educators and librarians who are trained, competent, and eager to talk about these stories with those students. It’s a vote made out of fear. 

I kept a particularly close eye on the outcome of the vote on Looking for Alaska in Waukesha, Wisconsin last week because it’s not far from where I live. The book will remain in the curriculum, but it got me thinking about how issues like this impact the children of parents who are bringing them up. What must it be like to be the teenager who has a mother trying to get a book pulled from the classroom? What are they thinking? What will their experiences be like in the classroom now? How will their peers treat them? There are a million questions there that I think are far more interesting and insightful than the ones about why adults choose to pursue these challenges.  

So rather than continue to talk about the issues, I thought it could be interesting to create a book list of YA books that talk about censorship in education or that explore what happens when parents or a school make an effort to keep information and experiences out of the hands of students. In some of these titles, it’s the central issue. In others, it’s a secondary thread in the story. Not all of these center around book challenges, and many of the titles are older. 

If you can think of other YA books where censorship — in schools or in the community — or where parents (or students!) are challenging some aspect of curriculum, I’d love to know. Most of these titles were suggested to me via Twitter, so thanks to everyone who threw an idea at me. 

All descriptions are from WorldCat. 

The Day They Came to Arrest the Book by Nat Hentoff: Students and faculty at a high school become embroiled in a censorship case over “Huckleberry Finn.”

Smile Like a Plastic Daisy by Sonia Levitin: A high school senior, concerned about the fight for women’s rights, finds herself suspended from school and the focus of community debate following a confrontation at a swim meet during which she removed her shirt.

Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith: Austin Szerba narrates the end of humanity as he and his best friend Robby accidentally unleash an army of giant, unstoppable bugs and uncover the secrets of a decades-old experiment gone terribly wrong. 
* In this one, The Chocolate War is brought up as a book that’s causing problems in the school.

Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker: High school junior Lacey finds herself questioning the evangelical Christian values she has been raised with when a new boy arrives in her small town.

Evolution, Me, & Other Freaks of Nature by Robin Brande: Following her conscience leads high school freshman Mena to clash with her parents and former friends from their conservative Christian church, but might result in better things when she stands up for a teacher who refuses to include “Intelligent Design” in lessons on evolution.

Save Halloween! by Stephanie Tolan: Is Halloween really the devil’s holiday? Joanna’s family never celebrated Halloween – her father’s minister who doesn’t like kids dressing up as witches and devils. But nobody worries about Joanna’s deep involvement in a class Halloween pageant until Uncle T.T. comes to town with his fiery crusade to abolish Satan’s own holiday.

 
Americus by MK Reed and Jonathan Hill: Oklahoma teen Neal Barton stands up for his favorite fantasy series, The Chronicles of Apathea Ravenchilde, when conservative Christians try to bully the town of Americus into banning it from the public library.

Rapture Practice by Aaron Hartzler: Aaron Hartzler grew up in a home where he was taught that at any moment the Rapture could happen — that Jesus might come down in the twinkling of an eye and scoop Aaron and his whole family up to Heaven. As a kid, he was thrilled by the idea that every moment of every day might be his last one on Earth. But as Aaron turns sixteen, he finds himself more attached to his earthly life and curious about all the things his family forsakes for the Lord. He begins to realize he doesn’t want the Rapture to happen just yet — not before he sees his first movie, stars in the school play, or has his first kiss. Eventually Aaron makes the plunge from conflicted do-gooder to full-fledged teen rebel. Whether he’s sneaking out, making out, or playing hymns with a hangover, Aaron learns a few lessons that can’t be found in the Bible. He discovers that the best friends aren’t always the ones your mom and dad approve of, the girl of your dreams can just as easily be the boy of your dreams, and the tricky part about believing is that no one can do it for you. In this coming-of-age memoir, Hartzler recalls his teenage journey to become the person he wanted to be, without hurting the family that loved him. 

 
The Sledding Hill by Chris Crutcher: Billy, recently deceased, keeps an eye on his best friend, fourteen-year-old Eddie, who has added to his home and school problems by becoming mute, and helps him stand up to a conservative minister and English teacher who is orchestrating a censorship challenge.
Dancing in Red Shoes Will Kill You by Dorian Cirrone: Sixteen-year-old Kayla, a ballet dancer with very large breasts, and her sister Paterson, an artist, are both helped and hindered by classmates as they confront sexism, conformity, and censorship at their high school for the arts while still managing to maintain their sense of humor.

The Trouble With Mothers by Margery Facklam: What is a boy to do when his teacher-mother’s historical novel is given as an example of the kind of “pornography” that should be banned from schools and libraries?

Defining “Debut” in Young Adult Novels

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A couple of years ago, Rachel Hartman was a Morris Award finalist, and she went on to win the award in early 2013. The Morris award, for those unfamiliar, is given annually by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), which is a division of the American Library Association (ALA). The award, which started in 2009, honors “a debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens and celebrating impressive new voices in young adult literature” (from the award’s webpage).

When Hartman’s novel was named on the short list, I wrote about how it raised some questions about what the word “debut” really means. Hartman had self-published a book a couple years prior, meaning that in the purest sense of the word, Seraphina wasn’t really a debut novel. For the purposes of the Morris, that self-published book didn’t infringe on the eligibility of Hartman’s novel being recognized. Since self-publishing is still relatively new — relative the key word there — these sorts of technicalities were still being considered when it came to award eligibility, and now it’s made much clearer in the official policies for the Morris. A debut novel is the first book by an author that’s been available in print or made available through a US publishing house.

Over the last few years, it’s impossible not to take note of how the word “debut” has been applied liberally to books in the YA world. It’s become a marketing tool, as a way to sell a book to an audience. In many ways, this makes sense: it can be hard for a new author to gain any sort of traction in a market where there are huge, well-known names that are exceptionally popular, that dominate bestseller lists, that are seen in airport bookstores and on big displays in bookshops, and which show up in co-ops in online retail spaces. To be a new author without a huge, guaranteed audience is to look at the bottom of a huge mountain without much climbing gear and with little or no experience.

But it’s also an opportunity.

That label of debut has become currency in a way. In many ways, it’s a sort of salve to those readers who are tired of the same old same old in YA. This debut novel is a new opportunity, a change from everything that’s already out there. Rather than debut being a thing that maybe you shouldn’t know about a book, it’s instead become a means of promoting the book. It’s not a pejorative term; it’s the exact opposite.

I’m a sucker for debut novels personally. I love seeing someone’s first story on the page. I love thinking about what and how that story did and did not succeed, and if it’s been a good reading experience, I look forward to seeing what their sophomore and subsequent efforts will look like. There are authors who I feel I’ve been reading their entire careers, and there’s something exceptionally fun about watching them go from debuts to seasoned authors. To see how their styles have grown, how their ability to weave a story has become more masterful, to see themes and trends that emerge, whether they’re intentional or not (some authors write certain things in all their books even they’re unaware of it — I’ve noticed, for example, an author who always wove hand or finger imagery into her work and another who always seemed to have something with mothers in hers, even if the mother wasn’t the thrust of the story). The label “debut” to me is exciting — that’s part of why I keep track of them each month. It’s a way for me to keep track of these new voices and make note of what I should be picking up.

“Debut” has become a full-force marketing tool, and the ways in which the word has become stretched makes it near meaningless for me anymore when I see it in a catalog description or an author bio. What should mean first novel — the first book that author has ever written — has instead morphed into something more meaningless. “Debut” has been frequently put in front of the words “young adult novel” in recent years, which means that no, the book isn’t actually the author’s first, but it is his or her first novel written for young adults (and whatever that means, too, since “for young adults” is essentially meaningless as well — young adult may be a category of books, but did that author whose book is being marketed as young adult really write for that audience or did that decision get made on another level?).

In some ways, the word feels apologetic when applied like that. We’ve all read the villainization and the apologia for young adult fiction too many times for me to reiterate here.

In other ways, it feels like it’s a too-easy way to garner some buzz for the book. The author’s written other books, but this one, it’s different because it’s a YA book. They’ve done exceptionally well in other areas, so this debut into a new category of fiction is exciting since it’s their first.

The story — what the book is about — can get lost in those conversations. The story is, of course, what most readers care about. Sure, they’ll care about Big Name authors making a YA foray, but that’s double edged: sometimes that YA foray can be met with scoffs by readers who are devoted to a particular author.

Sometimes, an author changes his or her name when writing that debut young adult novel. Perhaps they’ve published prolifically within a genre and now that they have a YA story in mind, they want to build a new brand around it. That’s the case in one “debut young adult novel” that will be out later this year.

Or perhaps they did write a young adult novel but they published it under a pseudonym and now they’re publishing their “debut young adult novel” under their real name. That’s the case in one or two “debut young adult novels” I’ve seen pop up in recent years, too. Do those who have written young adult novels initially who go on to publish an adult novel have their books sold as “debut adult novels?” I’m not sure I’ve seen that. Then again, I’ve seen that sort of move happen less frequently than I have seen adult novelists becoming young adult novelists (by choice or by luck).

In one case this year, I’ve seen a novel marketed as a “young adult debut thriller,” published with the author’s initials as the first name, rather than her full name. This not only redefined what debut meant by including the word “thriller,” but it also served the purpose of looking like an actual debut novel because the author’s name changed. So while she may be trying to build a different brand around a new writing style — one the fans she’s already grown may not necessarily be into (think Nora Roberts / J. D. Robb) — the marketing of the book pulls a sleight of hand, making it look like something that it’s really not.

I’ve been tricked before, and that leaves a sour taste in my mouth. “Debut” to me means one thing, and it means only one thing. But do I maybe care too much about the purity of the word? Then again, I wonder why it’s necessary to use unless there’s a meaning behind it.

For me, the word “debut” doesn’t skew the reading experience unless it’s been qualified. Then I judge it a little tougher. I want to know why it was important enough for that word to be a selling point or a feature, over what other things could have been played up instead. There’s a story to the story, rather than a story of the story.

So why all of the insistence on the word “debut” if it’s being used with a load of qualifiers?  Does the word really move copies of the book? Does the word “debut” offer a certain leeway with readers? What about with reviewers?

What makes “debut” a word with such sex appeal and do readers — those without any interest or knowledge of the bigger book world — even care?