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This article relates to I'll Give You the Sun
In a controversial article in The Wall Street Journal in June 2011, "Darkness Too Visible," Meghan Cox Gurdon lamented that the world of young adult literature has become too dark – a forest thick with loss, pain, death, and the gruesome details that describe them all. She offered the suggestion that such books might introduce teens to issues such as rape, suicide, and kidnapping, to name only a few, and in doing so, make them feel normal and, thus, "spread their plausibility."
Car crashes in middle grade and YA literature fall to the edges of the box Gurdon drew. They are slightly less horrendous perhaps, and, more important, tend to be accidental acts as opposed to ones perpetrated by someone intent on causing harm. But they are devastating all the same and seem to be popping up in a lot of books lately. In Jandy Nelson's I'll Give You the Sun, Noah and Jude lose their mother in a car crash. In fact, the novel hinges on weaving together what happened before the crash and after. If I Stay, written by Gayle Forman in 2009 – and now a motion picture – is another great example of a car crash-focused novel. Why are these such strong vehicles – pardon the pun – for insightful, comforting middle grade and YA literature? Says Forman in a February 2010 article in The Guardian: "When you're at this age, you tend to be experiencing so much for the first time – first love, first time away from home, first heartbreak – so life is imbued with extra intensity…I think teens are drawn to books that reflect that drama, or which evoke feelings that match the emotional rollercoasters they're riding in their own lives."
In that spirit – showcasing books that embrace teens where they are at – and in the spirit of I'll Give You the Sun, here are my top five picks for beautifully written, hard-hitting middle grade and YA novels that deal, in one way or another, with car crashes.
Filed under Reading Lists
This "beyond the book article" relates to I'll Give You the Sun. It originally ran in September 2014 and has been updated for the October 2015 paperback edition. Go to magazine.
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