I came upon this blog/poll the other day:  Twilight Controversy | books, Breaking Dawn, Buzz Poll | BuzzSugar – Movies, TV, Music.  It raises question of who carries the responsibility when it comes to content in Young Adult (and Juvenile, for that matter) books. 

It seems the consensus of the comments said the responsibility was with the reader and the reader’s parents.  The reason for this is that freedom of expression was important and a writer needs to have that freedom.  Yes, a writer needs to have that freedom and the writer has that freedom.  Whether it will be published or not is another matter. 

Which leads us to bringing the publisher into play — what is the publisher’s responsibility?  We all know that publishing is a business and the object is to stay in business and make money, so if a style or a theme is popular, then they are bound to publish it.  I would imagine there are some limits, however.

Some of those who replied with the freedom of the writer angle thought the parents should be monitoring what their child was reading.  That’s good, except some parents have little time because of work and other responsibilities.  I think this might be a cop-out, though.  There is always some time for connecting with your child.  of course, some parents just don’t care. 

A few were of the opinion that the writer does have a responsibility regarding content.  In some ways, I agree for the reasons in the previous paragraph. But I know that I would not want to be hampered if I came up with a winning plot and theme, if I was inclined to write one that was questionable, that is.  (You might want to read my previous post here.}

It is a very difficult question to answer and I don’t think there is an answer.  I sometimes grow concerned about some of the subject matter in the novels for YA, but then I peruse the stack of other novels on my desk and see all the books in the genre that do have wonderful stories with great plots and responsible content. 

I think what it boils down to is this: If a young adult is prone to reading stories about vampires and zombies and whatever else lurks in the dark, it won’t matter if it is in a young adult novel or not.  There are plenty of sources elsewhere to get whatever the child wants to read.