Today my brother brought home one of those ubiquitous Scholastic book catalogues.

It's really amazing what people try to pass off as "young adult literature" (imagine me saying "quote-unquote"). Sure, I still see some of the timeless classics I enjoyed in 6th grade, like Holes and The Giver. I even see some books on McKinley's English outside reading list, like Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell.

But some of these other books are laughable, if not downright idiotic. I see things like the Hannah Montana Poster Book, featuring who else but Disney's own prized pop tart. There's also How I Survived Middle School: Who's Got Spirit?, because middle school is all about pubescent girls and their aspirations to later whore themselves in high school. They even try to wax political with such titles as High School Musical Set and The People Pick a President. It's a pretty novel approach to politics, actually: see which candidate Zac Efron supports and then vote otherwise.

Shame on Scholastic for selling such garbage to ingenuous kids who wouldn't know a classic from a graphic novel (a flowery euphemism for a comic book, by the way). Young adult literature should be written at a young adult's reading level, but not make them dumber as a result of reading it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 7:50 pm and is filed under Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.