Young adults -you mean 18 and up or are we calling children that so they won't be traumatized or what-ever?

love your post title
I need to get into more reading but I'm hearing enough drugs, sex, etc. right now! Woe is me.
Pagan, you can watch the news and change characters. LOL

Carla

When I was growing up I was allowed to read anything I wanted including anything in the Adult section. But I couldn't watch much tv or see R rated movies. My parents felt that reading something was good for me and that if there was something bad in it that it would go over my head for the most part because it couldn't be more graphic than what I could imagine. For the most part they were right. Anyway, I don't think I would worry about it. Kids today (and even in my day) aren't being exposed to these things for the first time and a good book about these topics can be helpful to a kid especially if the books treat the subject seriously.

If you do think the books are too graphic then talk to a librarian. They'll take your concerns seriously. My mom is a librarian and was always sensitive to parent's concerns even though she was rather liberal (at least about books) with her own children.

I have mixed feelings on it. When we were quite young, the book Forever by Judy Bloom [sp?] was around and I had mixed feelings on the stuff then. I don't think it hurt anything in the end, and we heard worse things from the obnoxious guys anyway.

I think it depends on what the attitudes towards drugs/sex are in the books. I do think young kids believe it as gospel to a certain extent, so that could very well be a problem getting just one small view of how the characters think about and handle it.

Kids do talk about it at such young ages, though! I think some guidance/knowledge is a good thing to combat what they already hear!

thanks all. I think the books are categorized as young adult cus the main characters are teenagers - their content seems pretty adult to me. But for all I know, today's teens deal with adult issues anyway... (Gawd, does THAT sentence make me feel old or what?? Going to drag my dog around the block then put my old wrinkly butt into a bath... )

athenianinw: When I look back now on some of the things I read in 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th grade. I read so much that my Mom and the librarian quite trying to track what I was reading. The sex and so forth went right over my head - I skipped it because it didn't interest me. The bad language I skipped also. I read the graphic parts, but I think I may have done some sort of compartmentalizing about it.

Every once and awhile my mother would discover I was reading something she considered inappropriate and have a fit.

I think I was self-censoring in some way.