The true Neverending Story

 

I was a teen from 1961 to 1967. Back then to paraphrase Maine humorist Tim Sample’s description of Our Boy Hubert, we not only didn’t know nuthin’, we barely suspected anything. My high school had less than 100 students and looking back, the closest we had to a minority was Nancy Simmons, the sole catholic. Everyone else was pretty much Methodist or Nazarene, coupled with a sprinkling of closet agnostics and atheists. In sum, we were insulated from almost everything teens today must face.

I spent 27 years as a mental health professional at the larger of Maine’s two state psychiatric hospitals and saw lots of changes during that time. One was the creation of an adolescent unit. One of the more satisfying parts of my stint as director of patient education was teaching the kids how to cook breakfast three mornings a week. In addition to practical skills, we worked on social skills and I freely share my experiences growing up and as a recovering alcoholic. Many kids related and were particularly grateful to have an adult who listened without judgment.

In hindsight, that was probably where my interest in young adult fiction started. It continued when I got my MLIS and became a public librarian. While I wasn’t the children’s librarian at my first library, I continued talking to teen patrons and listened carefully as they told me about books they loved.

When I started writing The Wizard of Simonton Pond while director at the Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library, I was clueless, but over time got feedback from my nieces who were teens, as well as adding a copy of the manuscript to the collection, so patrons could read and offer criticism.

The more I read and wrote, the more I realized the following. First, sometime in the late 1990s, YA fiction exploded and began to include topics and themes kids all over the world were struggling with. Gay teens when I was in high school had zilch for support or reading material that spoke to them. Starting twenty five or so years ago, that same gay teen living in the most rural redneck town in America could find a book that described him/her to a T. That wave of literary inclusiveness has continued to grow and expand to address almost any reality teens today experience.

In Becoming Nicole: the transformation of an American family by Amy Ellis Nutt, Nicole Mains credits such books, including fellow YAOTL blogger Brian Katcher’s Almost Perfect for helping her sanity while she transitioned.

I just finished reading three books that dealt directly, or indirectly with issues teens face in the world. Mirror Girls and You Truly Assumed address racism and Islamophobia in ways teens affected by both issues can strongly relate to, and Blood Scion, while dark fantasy made me realize how horrific an experience child soldiers in Africa and eastern Europe must undergo.

 

As this growth in YA fiction addressing issues and realities teens experience has come about, my own writing has gone in new directions. Granted I only have The Wizard of Simonton Pond published as an e-book, but there are a dozen more finished, or in process, with Hardscrabble Kids an anthology of stories about Maine teens headed to a Maine press today for their consideration.

Three days ago, I took one of the story starts I blogged about in a January post at Maine Crime Writers https://mainecrimewriters.com/2022/01/13/in-the-beginning-2/ and started what I thought would be a short story. Wrong! It let me know in no uncertain terms it’s going to be a book that starts in a Maine blizzard and will end in an alternate universe.

Here is one final thought about the attraction of reading and writing YA fiction. It has gotten me to meditate and take a fresh look at how I treated other kids when I was growing up. I would have been a lot kinder and more understanding to many I knew in my teen years. I have no time machine, but I certainly can pass those lessons on to my grandchildren, as well as the eleven year old boy I mentor weekly at our local youth center.