This article is not about teen books, it’s about teen sex.

But what teens are doing has a bearing on what they are reading. And what they are reading has a bearing on what they are doing.

What I found most interesting is this, found at the very bottom of the article:

Tania says she and her friends talk about the right and wrong of what they do. “We learn morals from other people’s experiences,” she says.

According to Mitchell, now many sexual rules have gone, young people can develop personal ethics. “We need to understand that kids will have sex when they are not married,” she says. “Our concern would be to make them safe and enjoy it.

We learn morals from other people’s experience? How messed up is that?

And why on earth would we be concerned with making sure kids enjoy the sex they are having? 

That is so silly. As if they need to enjoy it more. Isn’t the problem that they do enjoy it a lot already, with a whole lot of people they shouldn’t be enjoying it with?

And should we really just give up? I mean, kids are going to commit suicide whether we like it or not. Does that mean we should teach them to enjoy it?

Just because the rules have gone and kids are developing their own personal ethics (code language for following the pack off the cliff) doesn’t mean we need to teach them to enjoy sex. Maybe we need to teach them to enjoy being responsible and obedient and hard-working, and self-sacrificing.

Teen sex is greedy. It’s selfish. It’s not about commitment and love and hard-work. It’s about enjoying yourself and who gives a flip about the other person? I don’t owe you anything–no strings attached. Why would we need to teach them to enjoy that? We are all greedy enough without being encouraged.  We need to teach kids to fight their ugly selfish urges.

Are there books out there that don’t glorify the sex but paint a true picture of it? I think the movie Juno did a great job of being real without glorifying the sex (and without condemning anyone) while showing that there are some consequences.

What else is out there?

I come limping into the third day of the Something Wicked Blog Tour…well that’s not true. I’m not even limping, I’m reclining. My back went out, so I’m staying down today, posting in a Vicodin haze.

But that’s one of the greatest thing about the Internet, you can still interact, even in your pj’s.

So here I sit, drugged and mellow, and ready to thrill you all with my philosophy on what makes for good reading.

I’ve said a lot about the content of this particular Gratz book having more teen sex in it than I like to read, but we all have different thresholds for these things. I certainly don’t think there is anything sinful about reading books written by people with nonChristian worldviews. I read such books all the time. I think there is great value in the practice, actually. We are living in the world and we aren’t called to separate ourselves from it.

We are called not to love the same things that the world loves, but reading well-written books by nonChristians doesn’t constitute loving what the world loves. The question for me is always: Did I get my time’s worth from this book? When I read or go to a movie I’m investing a block of precious time. I want to choose my books and movies carefully.

Sometimes, like when I’m on Vicodin, I like to watch movies that will just entertain me. There is some value in entertainment, I think. But with all the good books and movies out there, why not pick something that enlarges me intellectually, emotionally, or spiritually even while it entertains me?

So did Gratz’s book do any of that? He said in one interview, “I’m not writing Deep, Meaningful Books here.” But I think we can get meaning out of the books all the same. And they have value beyond his meaning, too. To me, these two Horatio Wilkes mysteries had value because I’m a wannabe writer and Alan’s a very good writer, with a cadence and wit to his prose that I’d like to learn. They also had value in that they educated me a little on Shakespeare. They had entertainment value because Horatio is a fun, likable kid. Then they made me think about teen sex, and the world we live in, and it’s always good to think about culture and how we are to interact with it.

In the end any book we read can have value if we think about what we’ve read. It’s only mindless reading that is dangerous and destructive, I think. As my friend Becky Miller likes to point out, we have to read with discernment. We have to look at what we’ve read and not allow things to slip in unnoticed. If we do that, then almost anything can be turned to profit.

But the really great thing for you is that right now you can check out Horatio yourself, free of charge. Spend a few minutes with him and see if you want to spend a few hours with him, listening to his story. You can read the entire first book, Something Rotten, online for free. Go check it out for yourself.

It’s All About Us, a novel by Shelley Adina, brings out mixed emotions in me. So I guess I’ll start with the disclaimer. I’m a long, long way removed from high school crush days. Also, back when I was in high school we drank soda. If someone had offered me a mocha macchiato I would have thought he wanted to give me some kind of machete used for slicing coffee beans from their branches, perhaps.

And I was poor. So were all the other kids. This was back, even, before kids started getting their Nike’s stolen. Or their Air Jordans. (Whatever.) We wore ripped up elephant bell jeans with suede waffle stompers. And no one wanted to steal those puppies.

So here I am thirty-some years later and I’m reading a book about a rich girl at a boarding school full of rich kids. They drive expensive cars and they rub shoulders with stars. And our girl’s problem? The thing that is supposed to make me root for her?

She. . .uh. . .she wants to be popular.

Color me unsympathetic. And know that when I say the writing is compelling and the dialogue is great, I’m not saying that because I want to give the author a break. I don’t love the book, but the truth is that it’s very easy to read and the author is quite talented.

If you are a teen girl and you like reading about teen girls having crushes and longing for riches and beauty and popularity, and I suspect most teen girls do like to read about such things, then you’ll like this book.

Here’s an excerpt that will give you a glimpse of how well the dialogue flows and how fun this book is to read.

“Did it ever occur to you that the only fun those girls get is from making other people miserable?”

“That’s not true.” Not entirely. “The whole committee is working for a good cause. I’ll get community service credits. We need twenty hours every term, you know.”

Gillian sighed. “Missing the point.”

Don’t care. “Are you coming to lunch?”

The book is witty, and it moves fast. The author assumes her readers are not idiots and she doesn’t over explain, but she puts everything into context so that even if we’ve never heard of the designers she refers to, we understand the point she’s making.

Another good thing about the book, I think, is that the author is writing about things girls want to read about and she’s doing it from a Christian worldview. The publisher makes no bones about the fact that these books are the Christian versions of the Gossip Girl books. Well compare covers, for starters:

And then there’s this from the publisher:

Young Adult Fiction is Heating Up!

All About Us is sophisticated, edgy and relevant for today’s high school teens

That kind of language makes me want to rebel. Sophisticated, edgy, and relevant mean different things to different people. After reading the book did I find it sophisticated? Um. I think shallow might be a better word here. Edgy? Not for most teens, probably. Relevant? Well, if you’re super rich, and beautiful and have no real problems, maybe.

But the press release continues:

This fresh new series is sure to be a page turner for any girl who wants a book that is trendy, sophisticated, and relevant. Written in Adina’s realistic and quirky style, the books give readers a peek into the sometimes intimidating but always fascinating life of high school—with the added impact of a spiritual worldview.

Now this is where I’m torn. Yes, girls are reading gossip girl books and they are full of sex. Graphic, hot tub sex scenes and more, I’ve heard. And I do want girls to have an alternative to that. I do want someone to look at teen sex through Christian glasses and write a story about how Christian girls deal with sex. Because, let’s face it, girls, Christian or otherwise, are all thinking about sex these days. Unless you are an isolationist home schooler (in which case you aren’t reading this review) your daughters are thinking about sex and dreaming about the hot guy at school. My own daughter is home schooled and more naive than most and she hasn’t escaped the influence of our sexually preoccupied society. No, she is a regular girl with a crush of her own on a dorky kid at youth group that she thinks is cute and funny.

But here’s my problem with it’s all about us. It sets out to deliver a sex book with “the added impact of a spiritual worldview” and ends up not working as a sex book or as a Christian book or as a compelling story.

But I’ve carried on long enough today so I’ll get to my specific complaints tomorrow.

(go to part two)