THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 25, 1996 TAG: 9602270478
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BILL RUEHLMANN
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
In our grow-up-fast era, writers of good books for young adults are an endangered species.
``We write for junior-highs and up,'' said American Library Association award-winner Mary Downing Hahn. ``Nowadays they start very early reading the likes of Stephen King, Michael Crichton and Tom Clancy. It's as if young readers skip right over young adult literature.
``I worry it will put me out of business.''
Not soon. Hahn's popular titles range from realistic fiction to contemporary fantasy, including ghost stories, Wait Till Helen Comes and The Doll in the Garden. Her Stepping on the Cracks won the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction and was an ALA Notable Book. More recently, The Wind Blows Backward was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults.
``You have to write the stories that are in you,'' she said in a telephone interview from her Columbia, Md. home. ``If they happen to be teen novels, you write them. You may not get rich, but you will give something to a kid - tell something about what's happening in his or her life and offer some insights.''
Hahn will be featured speaker at the all-day (8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.) Hampton Roads celebration of children's literature, ``Not for Children Only,'' Saturday at Maury High School, 320 Shirley Ave., Norfolk. This 12th annual day of books and discussion is sponsored by the Tidewater Area Youth Services Consortium, Norfolk Public Schools and Norfolk Reading Council. To register, call librarian Lorraine Bartlett at 1-804-850-5114.
Librarians, teachers, parents and other adults interested in children's and young adults' literature will examine a wide variety of material, from AIDS fiction, insights into the Holocaust, African-American titles, and the impact of Cinderella tales, among other topics.
We have come a long way from the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew.
``The best-selling children's genre is picture books,'' said Hahn, 58. ``Then comes juvenile fiction. Sales fall off with teen novels, although the horrible schlock of R.L. Stine has succeeded.''
Hahn, a former librarian of 17 years, has reservations about the popular Fear Street and Goosebumps stories that come out monthly - Go Eat Worms, Piano Lessons Can Be Murder, Say Cheese and Die.
``If kids are reading these mindless books, which promote no thought, no vocabulary skills and no analysis, what are they getting out of them?'' the author asked. ``We're teaching these kids to become lazy readers. They certainly don't prepare them for reading classics.
``They might as well be watching TV.''
Hahn, long married to librarian Norm, has two grown children. Kate, 30, publicizes an environmental group in Los Angeles. Bess, 28, is an artist in Philadelphia.
Both read.
``Nancy Drew got in libraries back in '75,'' Hahn recalled, ``with the racist and sexist elements taken out. The argument was that it didn't matter what children read, as long as they read. And after that, just about anybody got in - Sweet Valley books, Babysitters books, Goosebumps.''
These circulate. The classics don't. And because libraries are circulation-driven, books not checked out frequently tend to disappear from the shelves.
Like popular literature, Hahn believes, libraries are dumbing down.
``It's really kind of sad,'' she said.
Hahn's latest book, Look for Me by Moonlight (Clarion Books, 198 pp., $13.95), is just out. It's about 16-year-old Cynda, who tries to adjust to her father's second family at a Maine bed-and-breakfast, only to find herself running afoul of a vampire named Vincent.
``Cynda, with her insecurities and fear of not being loved, is a ready victim for someone like Vincent,'' Hahn said. ``He represents a certain type of person who preys on young girls. There are plenty of men who do this.''
Goosebumps of another kind; art imitates life.
Bram Stoker's Dracula had nothing on Ted Bundy. MEMO: Bill Ruehlmann is a mass communication professor at Virginia Wesleyan
College. by CNB