Why Young Readers Want Dark* Stories
All good stories deal with darkness in one form or another. It’s what makes stories. S#%& has to happen. But some books delve much deeper into the dark side than others. “Wallow” comes to mind. And they sell like hotcakes!! Why is this?
Kids love Fairy Tales. I’m talking the real, violent, scary ones where heads and limbs get chopped off and red hot coals and pokers are used in alarming ways. Albert Einstein said, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
Teens love YA novels, where characters hunt one another or starve themselves to death.
We know adults love horror and tragedy. Look at the sales figures for Steven King and the staying power of Edgar Allen Poe.
Are we messed up? Masochists? Sadists?
Perhaps. But not because of the stories we read.
Of course, there are many stories that are not appropriate for children and even younger teens. The nice thing about books is that there are librarians, teachers and parents to help kids choose. This may come as a surprise but if one is too dark for a particular reader, they’ll simply put it down. Everyone has their threshold and their taste. Some of us have really high thresholds and strong appetites.
Kids are capable of choosing what they need. Teens and kids of all ages are seeking out stories that explore darkness in its many incarnations because they make us stronger and kinder and show us the light.
What?
That’s right. Dark stories allow us to exorcize our deepest, sometimes nameless fears. We step into the shoes of someone who is going through something overwhelming and frightening, and experience it vicariously. We try these fears on, rehearse them (in the comfort of our chair), manage them, and release them.
It helps us understand ourselves.
It helps us understand others.
In a study published in the Journal of Science (Sept 2013, Kidd and Castano), as reported in the New York Times, reading and especially literary fiction, increases empathy, social perception, and emotional intelligence.
Dark Stories tell the truth: The world is full of suffering and we all get our share. Some get more.
Children already know this. Teens confront it regularly.
What they want, is to get a handle on it.
Insisting dark must be avoided, and discouraging kids who are ready for it, is what can be harmful, I would argue. We parents are charged with preparing our children for life, and from the safety of our love and protection, part of this includes letting them explore that there ARE big bad wolves out there. Nothing is safer than doing so between the covers of a book.
Plus, forewarned is forearmed.
When we confront the fact that darkness does exist, and for some of us, even get in it up to our elbows and wallow in it, it diminishes darkness’s power over us.
Like yin and yang, the world we live in, and we humans ourselves, have darkness and light coexisting side by side. We must understand one to understand the other.
As Adam Gidwitz, the author of A TALE DARK AND GRIMM says, “It is only in the darkest places that we find the brightest beauty and the most luminous wisdom.”
*Stories with unsettling situations and characters who cause or endure loss, suffering, and death.