So my moral fiber was’nt affected in the best way but i do think i’ve matured and i am moving on to more useful books that are a better use of my time. For a while the A-list deffinatlly helped out my confidence on acount of one of the characters are fat and got the hot billionare from spain. but that only helped for about two min. untill i got called a fat lard again.

My parents take a quick glimpse at the back of the book and the cover. The covers definatlly don’t give all the details about the book. In particular they dont talk about the sex, drugs, or alcohol.

I have never read the Gossip Girl or A-List series though I was tempted a few time when I was at the bookstore. They sounded shallow and I knew that most of the people in my class read them. I did not buy them and instead I bought the latest clique book. The next day I was reading the Clique in the locker room when a girl in my class saw it and nearly had a heart attack. She (literally) started screaming then grabbed the book from me and paraded it around the locker room. Most people immediatly asked to borrow it. I have a waiting list of (no joke) 12 people to borrow the book.

These books are VERY popular. And if you look at the people who are waiting to borrow the book from me they all happen to be very popular girl, all who read Gossip Girl and A-List.

I go to a (kind of) strict private catholic school. Our head of middle form saw the article and gave a copy of it to all of the teachers. I first heard of it just after the article was released from the school librarian and was shocked. The article is all wrong! The head went on to mail a copy of the article to all of the parents in our grade (and I’m sure other grades as well). Lots of girls now think that they are going to ban the books from school. I think that that is ridiculous. Why would a school ban books? I mean, sure, they have been taken out of the library and the head is going nuts but they shouldn’t ban them. Thats just dumb. I hope that they don’t go though thge entire library and root out all of the ‘inapropriate’ books. Just because a book has a scene in it that may prove to be shocking does not mean it is wrong to let young people read it. All thats going to do is ruin the book selection and leave people with less good books to read!

About putting ratings on books I think that that is a bad idea as well. Sure, manga (japenese comics) is rated and for a good reason, but books being rated is just silly. I agree that if a book does not have that rating on it that says ‘inapropriate’ people will not consider it a good book to read and it will not sell as well (Of course we who know the power of true books will see the real value of it).

I know that what I read does not affect me too much. Sure, if I read a violent book about WW2 and being in the middle of it and seeing other people dying I might be affected and think that humans are horrible for a while but I will eventually get over it. As for the more……. inapropriate subjects on a non violent level, most peole I know have being told stuff about that for a long time and about what to do and what not to do, and don’t drink acahol and don’t smoke and stuff like that. Its not like reading a single book is going to erase almost a lifetime of being told to to do things like that.

If 12-14 year-olds are not truly influenced by what they read/see/hear, then how come we have laws banning the advertising of alcohol and tobacco to people under a certain age?

I have to say that I actually do agree with Wolf–not that parents need to be aware of everything that their children read, but rather that children should be aware of what’s in a book before reading it.

I can’t say I’ve ever read Gossip Girl or any of its spin-offs, but a few things from the article struck me:

1. That through the course of one of the novels, the new girl learns to value her poorer but close-knit family less than she did before. While this is a realistic situation, this should definitely be portrayed as a BAD thing–I’m not saying teenagers can’t think for themselves, but what we (teens) read/hear/see on tv DOES influence us.

2. The target demographic is around 12-14, from what I understand. The sex scene depicted in the article seemed unnecessary and inappropriate for that age group. If 12-year-old girls want to learn about “his viagra [wearing] off just in time,” can’t they ask someone they trust and who will give them a reliable answer?

3. Teenagers ARE influenced by what they read no matter what they say. In one novel that Wolf talks about, a new girl comes to school and is labeled a “Loser Beyond Repair” (LBC.) In an appropriate book, the LBC would eventually notice that she didn’t need to own all the most popular brand-names’ items. In Gossip Girl (or whichever), however, the girl moves up the ladder and by the end of the book IS one of the popular, mean girls. She is now in a position to label others LBC’s. And this is portrayed as a good thing…?

Just my 2 cents (I’m 13),

Josh

And also, I really don’t think that books should get age-labels like movies. When people buy books, most skim through them, so they definitely have some grasp of what they’re getting into. Age-labels on books seems so foreign and wrong, and going with what another comment said: my parents trust me to make my own decisions, which includes my choices in books.

First, the impressionable youth thing. Sandy said fairly early on: “Personally, I feel that teenagers aren’t given enough credit. We are capable of making up our own minds and holding true to our moral codes.” Exactly. While keeping in mind that there are plenty of kids out there who do need guidance, the fact that kids and teens really don’t get the credit for intelligence that they deserve has long been something that bothered me, even after I moved out of my parents’ house. Just reading the above comments of a few teens will give fair evidence that quite a few of us know what we’re doing.

I finally bought “So Yesterday” this weekend and finished it in 24 hours (nice job, Scott) and I was wondering about the lack of brand name mentions. I wondered if maybe it caused copyright issues or some such, but I’ve also long debated this idea myself, and as far as “So Yesterday” is concerned, I think the little comments about “a certain computer company whose logo is a fruit” added something to the book that wouldn’t have been there if Hunter just said “Apple.”

I never read “Gossip Girl” or the others for the same reason that many people did read them. The cover and the title was enough to turn me off. I guessed immediately what they were about, and I was mostly right. Having become increasingly aware of the importance placed on wealth, especially in the last four years, it becomes more and more infuriating to me when I see people who really think that looks and money are all there is to life. I’ve also experienced first hand what I like to call the middle school syndrome, i.e. meanness and being isolated by other kids. And in many cases, these problems carry beyond middle school. So, the short version is, no, I haven’t read any of them. In spite of that, I have read the Georgia Nicholson books. When I read the first book in the series, I hated it and didn’t even bother to finish it, for the same reasons I turned down Gossip Girl et al. But a few months later I got the same book for a birthday present, and on the second reading, I found it extraordinarily funny. I’ve now read almost the entire series. So I suppose it’s a matter of how you choose to take the story. You can take it literally, or as a satire, like Sierra said.

My parents never really talked to me about what I was reading, but I did experience the “real literature worry” that Mickle mentioned. My mom is an English teacher and always wanted me to read classics. As such, I never wanted to read classics.

Warning labels- we’re really screwed if they start doing this with books too. Particularly in recent years, fear has been a strong motivator in many laws and regulations passed in the United States, and putting parental advisory labels on books would just be one more step down the fearful path. Often times the problems experienced by teens come from a lack of parental guidance. The last thing we need is to enforce yet another system that encourages parents to take the easy way out.

As Cara Cara and Mickle mentioned, people often give you weird looks for buying certain books. I have frequently experienced this, and while annoying, I also get a little smug pleasure from it, because I’m not the one missing out.

And that’s it. Wonderful blog post, I’m only sad I didn’t find it until days after it was posted. Great discussion.