Response to 'Darkness Too Visible'

           The article, ‘Darkness Too Visible’, by Meghan Cox Gurdon is about how young adult books can affect negatively on young adults. She shows that young adult books can be very inappropriate and reading them will surround innocent young readers with damage and losses. For example, she states, ‘No family is obliged to acquiesce when publishers use the vehicle of fundamental free expression principles to try to bulldoze coarseness or misery into their children’s lives.’ Clearly, she is trying to prove to parents and guardians that no families would want their children to read books about the dark things that exist in the world. She depicts that a child’s and tenderness of heart is very important but reading young adult books can ruin that.

Meghan Cox Gurdon used many craft moves to make the readers feel a certain way. For example, she uses many loaded words to describe young adult literature. She describes them as ‘grueling material’. Her description of the books aim to make readers feel horrible about today’s young adult books. This was also an example of the author’s bias and how she is against these types of books. Moreover, describing it so negatively gives the readers a visual image of the material and how it can bring misery into a child’s life. To strongly support her claim she includes a mother’s perspective in the article. After a mother was looking for a good book to gift her daughter in Barnes and Nobles she said, ‘nothing, not a thing, that I could imagine giving my daughter. It was all vampires and suicide and self- mutilation, this dark, dark stuff.’ The author provides this quote to make the readers realize that young adult books are unfavorable to parents. Meghan Cox Gurdan wants the readers to see how gruesome today’s young adult books are in the perspective of a caring and loving mother. However, getting a perspective only from a mother doesn't show that much opinion on young adult literature as a whole. She never mentioned the perspective of a young teenager on young adult books, which would most likely oppose to the author’s claim. After all, who would know better about a harmful affect caused by reading young adult books? Of course the majority of people who actually read those types of books, which are teenagers.

Although, Meghan Cox Gurdon strongly supports her claim with supportive evidence, I disagree with her. Letting young teens read books about the things that might happen in real life will prepare them for the worst. Reading young adult literature does not only teach teens about horrible things that could happen in life but also teaches them to valiantly act upon it. If readers do not get exposed to the dark and horrible things then facing them on firsthand would be a fearful experience. Therefore, learning negative things before they actually happen will help young teens to deal with the problems that they might be facing in the future.