Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42584
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42584
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Aged 10-12, my understanding of sex was "that's how you make children". It didn't _sound_ like fun, so my understanding of why people would do it, other than to make children, was rather in the "adults are weird" realm. (Adults were also weird in other ways: they drank bitter coffee, and sour wine, and smoked stinky cigarettes, and it's not like any of those things are good for you, so why do them?)

Even sexual attraction was something I had not yet experienced in that age. It was something that I couldn't relate to, a reference with no referent.

For this reason, I do not believe sex has a real place in literature for a middle-grade audience. It's not a question of "appropriateness", so much as a question of the child's ability to connect to what you're writing. A librarian in the US might be more conservative with regards to _why_, but I believe they wouldn't recommend a book with sexual content to a 12-year-old either.

In particular, I would shy away from sexual violence. Your readers do not understand sex very well yet, and suddenly you're telling them it can be something painful that's done _to_ them. That can create a very skewed image in their minds. (I'm not arguing that sexual violence shouldn't be explained to children at all. But it should be done clearly. Children shouldn't be gleaning a skewed image from a story.)

Pregnancy, having a baby and raising it, on the other hand, are themes that appear in books for very young children. Getting a baby sibling is an experience that would be familiar to children.

Peeing and pooping are also quite appropriate subjects for even the youngest children. Terry Pratchett's _The World of Poo_ is an example.

As for killing/murder and other violence, it's not just a question of what happens, but also of who does it, and of how you describe it. If you think about it, even classic fairytales, like _Little Red Riding Hood_ contain themes of murder and attempted murder (the wolf tries to eat, a.k.a kill, grandma and Hood, and is in turn killed by the hunter). Here, the key is: bad people kill unprovoked. Good people only ever kill bad people, and only when they have to (so it's "justice").

A child is in the process of learning 'right' and 'wrong'. If the Good Guy is in a complex situation, and the child doesn't know which way is 'right', he would learn that whatever the Good Guy did is the 'right' thing to do, because that's what Good Guys do. Because of this, you need to be very careful with "complex" themes. If the protagonist does something they should not have, you need to tell your young readers that no, this was not the right thing to do. (The protagonist might know this isn't right and feel guilty about doing it anyway, or they might learn later that they've done a wrong and try to atone. It's not that you can't have those themes at all. It's just that you'd need to be a bit more explicit in exploring them.)

Original score: 7