Reading

Earlier, a mom of two girls in the uniform of their private (Christian) school got my help deciding if Patterson's Angel Experiment would be appropriate for the younger girl. I began with the usual: Well, YA includes books for kids in grades 6 to 12, so it covers a lot of ground. Then we moved to: Let's see what some reviews say. Turns out most said grade 7, and I also read buzz words like suspense, thriller, action, and even "graphic laboratory scenes" just to be sure I wasn't leading the mom astray. She said, Oh, that's fine as long as it's not . . . you know. Which I guess means sex?

Now, I've got VOYA (June 2010) in front of me, and there's a nice interview with Blake Nelson (whose books I now want to read!). After some discussion of including a sex scene, the interviewer asks "Do you find it sad that our culture is so much more accepting of violence than it is of making love?" To which Nelson replies, "Yeah it's weird, . . . [P]arents let kids play computer games all day where you just shoot Middle Eastern people in the head all day, but then freak out if the same kid reads a book where someone has sex."

Not exactly the situation I'd just had, but similar enough to note it, I think.