From: Michele Missner <mmissner>
Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2001 07:40:53 -0600

I have not yet read _Kit's Wilderness_, but I liked _Skellig_ very much. This book also had a darkness about it that was indeed lifted at the end for the most part.. I have, however, read a great deal of so called "Young Adult", literature and must disagree with Jeffrey Canton is his assertion that YA books are comfortable or easy to read. In fact, I have found many uncomfortable and less than easy reads. I have often felt that YA literature is sold short because it is marketed to such a small segment of the population. We need to look at the books of Chris Crutcher, Robert Cormier, Bruce Brooks, Katerine Paterson
(although not really ya, teens still love her books), Burgess, Angela Johnson, Richard Peck, Yukiko Mori for a brief list to see all of the wonderfully written, thought provoking books that are written with the teen reader in mind.

Michele Missner



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Thanks for starting off the discussion, Monica -- I have been waiting for someone to make the first move!

I found your comments extremely interesting both in terms of the intended audience and in the darkness of the novel. It seems to me that Kit's Wilderness would beautifully challenge the teen readers for whom it was created. Unlike too much of what we call Young Adult fiction, this is a novel with some real meat to it -why should a YA book be comfortable or an easy read. I think this book is directed are hungry for books that challenge them -- that's why so many of them have already moved on to reading adult fanatsy and SF.

And although this is no by no means an original idea, given the darkness of what contemporary kids see in films and on television, I think that there is a lyricism -- almost poetry -- in Kit's Wilderness that lifts it up and out of the otherwise bleak turf that Almond explores with such delicacy. It packs a very powerful punch -- it isn't an easy to swallow but it is a novel that has real resonance and that is a rare achievement. I think part of my own love for the novel comes from an appreciation of the exquisite use of folktale motifs and mythologic nuances that Almond blends into the story juxtaposed with the ancestral theme that is also played out in the cave sequences.

Jeffrey Canton Toronto


--- "Monica R. Edinger" wrote:


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Received on Sat 17 Feb 2001 07:40:53 AM CST