MotherReader

I remember when I could be sliced to the core by the words, "Grow up." Delivered with an offhand, disdainful superiority that only a teenager can perfectly master, it was a phrase from my past. But not anymore.

After reading the NYT opinion piece on how adults should read adult books, the phrase jumped into my mind as clearly as if the author Joel Stein was sneering it over his shoulder in the high school cafeteria. Grow up. And I heard it like the wake-up call it was. Yes, it is time to grow up.

It's time to give up children's books. And I'm doing it.

Seriously, I'm not even sure what I've been doing all this time with apparently three thousand years of adult literature just waiting for me. Kidlit and YA can't give me the adult things that an adult needs in reading. For instance, sometimes there aren't enough big words. You know, like pretentious. And while there might be some sex in teen books, it's always played down and rarely described with "throbbing" or the naughty words for our... parts. Okay, so maybe that's not the literary argument, but it is adult.

How is it I've been straying from the subtle shades of literature that only an adult book can employ? I remember this book where the empty chairs in the room so clearly stood for the existential loneliness that lies at the core of each one of us, and yet that isn't revealed in the brightness of day but only in darkness. Though come to think of it, that may be from Goodnight, Moon.

Really the point is in the type of book that can lead us to discover our existential loneliness. Or even that can make us want to use the word existential in a write-up. Oh, and the ennui! How I have missed the ennui. Certainly we can all admit that a teen's struggle to define himself along the expectations of society, parents, and peers all while trying to tune in to his own ever-shifting internal compass is trivial when compared to that sad, bored woman who eats, prays and loves.

So I'm making a pledge with a few others, that as an adult I'll only be reading adult books starting today, April Fools Day.

Whatever whoever chooses to read is their business, of course, but adults whose taste in recreational reading ends with the YA novel need to grow up.

Words of wisdom from Roger Sutton, editor in chief of The Horn Book, a literary magazine about books for children and young adults.

The best response in my book?

I’m rubber
You’re glue
Whatever you say bounces off of me
And sticks to you!

Actually, Liz over at Tea Cozy makes a very good and suitably outraged argument on her blog, but it was that part that stuck out for me, because the original statement is so ridiculous — and in so many ways — that it needed a silly response.

There’s the hypocrisy of the editor of a magazine about children’s literature blasting an entire audience of that magazine. There’s the absurdity of being judged not only by what you’re reading but why you’re reading it. There’s the stupidity of saying that what people choose to “read is their business,” but then making a judgment anyway.

My personal favorite part of the sentence is the phrase “recreational reading.” Apparently, it’s okay to read kids’ lit if it’s part of your job, but not if it’s your fun reading. Only someone with the luxury of reading books at work could make that statement and not realize how inane it is. Librarians, teachers, and booksellers don’t get time on the job to read the books they are expected to know and recommend. They read them at home on their own time, and the line between recreational reading and professional reading blurs, because it has to. After working and the after-hours reading and — hello — having a life, there isn’t necessarily time fit in adult books too.

In the comments of the original post, Roger tries to squirm out of his original assertion by saying that it’s really the people who are smug about only reading children’s books that need to grow up. But that only comes into play at about comment forty-six. I guess by then he was choking on the taste of shoe leather. For me, I only have one more thing to say about the whole thing...

Like, what-evah.