In an unobtrusive yet fascinating article, Jenny Jackson of the Ottawa Citizen’s Weekly Reading section comments on the lamentable lack of quality writing for today’s youth. In particular, she mourns the popularity of “grudge lit” among authors:
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Grudge lit slams its hapless protagonists up against ever-more drama by challenging them to transcend not just abysmal home lives, but the injustices and missteps of their entire generation.
This sort of endless calamity is usually a sign of a second-rate writer who is trying to jolt his one-dimensional characters to life by raining down disaster.
Ms. Jackson continues by describing several books guilty of “grudging”, and the unfortunate tendency for awards to be bestowed upon such books. She then describes the plight of one mother and her pre-teen son:
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This bleak literary climate caught the attention of author and writing teacher Barbara Feinberg, whose 12-year-old son hated all the books he had to read for school, even though he loved great galloping reads like Harry Potter.
Worse, he was told by his teachers that if he didn’t like them, he wasn’t reading them closely enough.
(I have to interrupt here and say that my own brother was recently faced with a similar dilemma, his English teacher firmly placing the blame for his confusion on his shoulders, rather than the heavy philosophies present in Pilote de guerre, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.)
His mother is quoted making a very astute observation, which few parents have the guts to make (unlike many a die-hard HP fan):
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“Adults have nothing against fun for themselves,” she said from her New York home where she shooed away the dog and tried to figure out the phone as we spoke.
But they almost resent a child having easy, open-ended fun, especially that time in a child’s life when his imagination is free simply to play.
Jackson ends on a lighter note, rightly, if somewhat subtly, observing that Ms. Rowling is an author of quality:
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The good news is that there are all sorts of wonderful books of the imagination out there, some from decades past, like Mary Norton’s The Borrowers, and others more recent, like, well, Harry Potter.
Of course, we all know that someone died in the last book. But then, even Harry has to grow up.
A final comment:
I applaud the mother’s astuteness in realizing the problem lies with some schools’ choice of books rather than with children’s tastes. Obviously, both the writer and the mother are more concerned with the children's happiness and well-being than with themselves.
Source: Ottawa Citizen
Potter not 'grudge lit' 
