We Now Return You to Your Regularly Scheduled Blogging
Posted by: Kim Justesen on: July 10, 2009
And now for something completely different . . .
I’ve spent a great deal of time these past few days thinking about writing. I don’t know that I ever don’t think about writing, but I’ve been meditating on it’s role in my life, the position is plays in my priorities (try saying that three times fast), and how to balance it along with all the other priorities in my life.
Apparently even my subconscious is working on this. My dreams have been vivid lately, but last night’s was particularly interesting. I don’t write about my dreams often – mostly because I find that dreams are very person things, but also because the local writer who hates my guts (lwwhmg) tends to blather on about hers as if she has some amazing connection to the universe.
But when my grandfather shows up in my dreams, I sit up and pay attention – sometimes quite literally.
Last night, in my dream, I was pulling weeds in my back yard. It was tedious, but it needed to be done. As I was digging bind weed out of my raspberries, I began finding hammers – all kinds of different hammers. The first one I found was a claw hammer. Then I found a ball peen hammer. Then I found a tiny craft hammer. I sat back, wiped the sweat from my forehead, and looked at the discoveries wondering why they were in my raspberries.
Then my grandfather’s voice came from behind me. “They’re tools,” he said in his deadpan fashion. I turned to see him, dressed in his familiar beige madras shorts and his white undershirt; the lenses his black framed glasses glinted in the sun.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Why are they in my raspberries?”
Grandpa just shrugged. “Why do you think they’re in your raspberries?”
Let me mention here that the whole reason I have raspberry bushes in my yard is because of my grandfather. Some of my favorite memories come from the summer I lived with him in North Carolina. We would get up early in the morning and cross the damp lawn of his back yard to the fence where wild raspberry bushes had found a good place to climb. The berries hung like clusters of rubies just waiting to be claimed. We’d take my grandmother’s avocado green Tupperware bowl that she used to make potato salad in before she died, and we’d stop picking when the bowl was full. I would eat bowls full of these sweet gems, doused in whole milk that turned pink and sweet from the fruit.
“Why hammers?” I asked my grandfather.
“What are you working on?” he asked me.
“Writing,” I said. “I still don’t get the hammers.”
“What are they,” he asked me sitting in his familiar aluminum lawn chair which had somehow appeared without my noticing.
“They’re tools,” I said. “Used for building, pounding nails, or hitting people who annoy,” I said and I could feel the smile even in my sleep.
Grandpa smiled. “Now you’re getting it.”
“But, why so many of them?” I asked. I held up the ball peen hammer next to the little craft hammer. “Why the different sizes?”
My grandfather sipped his coffee, which had also appeared without me noticing. “Why do you think?” he asked.
I was getting a little impatient at this point. “Grandpa, I assume that if I knew these answers you wouldn’t be here pestering me.”
He smiled. “Oh, you never know. Maybe I’m pestering you more than you even know.”
I wouldn’t doubt it.
“You didn’t by chance take my blender, did you?”
My blender actually disappeared sometime in the past few weeks. Kids refuse to take any responsibility. I know it wasn’t me. And hubby claims he didn’t know we had a blender.
Grandpa smiled. “That wasn’t me.”
It seemed I wasn’t going to get a straight answer. Then I noticed the door to my shed was open. I took the hammers I could carry and went to put them away. Inside, next to my lawn mower and the bike with the flat tire and broken chain, there was a peg board with a myriad of tools.
“What is all this?”
“Your tools,” Grandpa said from the lawn chair.
“These aren’t all mine,” I said, and I was worried about where they had come from.
“They’re yours, whether or not you know it.”
“I don’t know what half these things are,” I said.
“But you know how to use them anyway,” Grandpa said as he stood next to me.
And that’s when I woke up.
Yeah – it makes sense now. I have what I need. I know how to use it. I’ll figure out the rest as I go. I felt a lot better after I woke up.
Thanks, Grandpa.
At a Loss
Posted by: Kim Justesen on: July 2, 2009
- In: Blogroll| Personally| family
- 3 Comments
There are times when being a writer completely sucks.
The father of a good friend of mine passed away this week. It is the first family member my friend has lost to whom he was close. His wife called to ask if I might help write the obituary because they were all at a loss for words. I said I’d be happy to help. Of course, I’m not. Not really. I wrote my own father’s obituary.
It has been a painful week. My daughter and I raced to the hospital on Monday because she had received a call that one of her best friends was dying. He had been put on life support the week before, but we were all very optimistic that he’d pull through. He’d fought a valiant battle against leukemia before. Leukemia won this time. We sat in a room with more than 70 other people who had come to say their good-byes and to support this young man’s family. His name is Danny. He and my daughter had known each other since elementary school. He was a good kid. He would have been a good man, but he didn’t get that chance. I marvel that, for all of our amazing advances in science and technology, a young man like Danny can still die because his body turned against him and we have nothing more than poison and radiation to treat him.
I had the privilege of saying good-bye along with many others. It was an amazingly generous thing for his family to offer to Danny’s friends at time when their pain had to have been unbearable. It was clear, standing by his bedside, watching the machines that were keeping him alive as they whirred and clicked, that Danny had already gone home. And my heart ached to see his father holding his hand, fully aware that miracles were beyond calling anymore.
In the small conference room where we were all gathered, young girls stood in small bunches, their arms wrapped around each other as tears streamed down their cheeks. Danny’s girlfriend looked pale and lost and seemed much more a little girl than the young woman I know. She leaned against her mother as great sighs caused her chest to rise and fall.
My own daughter talked with friends, wrapped her arms around Danny’s brother and cried on his shoulder. Her pain was palpable and it filled me with such anguish that I could not help but cry for her. We all sat in hushed vigil, awaiting the inevitable.
When the family came into the room with the news of Danny’s passing, it felt as if the vacuum of space had forced the life out of all of us. We didn’t care that he hadn’t suffered. We were not comforted in knowing that he survived less than a minute once the machines stopped living for him. The loss of a good boy, a truly genuine young man, overpowered us and left us empty.
Last night I awoke at 4 in the morning to find my daughter still awake. We talked for more than an hour about the injustice of life, about the difference in grieving for a grandparent as compared to grieving for a friend. The only words I could offer her were platitudes at best. “This part sucks,” I said. “And even though it will be better, I can’t tell you when that will be because it will take time before it stops hurting so much that your ache all the time.”
The funeral is on Friday. I don’t know that I will have found anything better or more comforting to say by then. Danny was a wonderful young man and he was loved very deeply by so very many people that there just are not words to represent what’s been taken. I hope this week holds no more surprises. I can’t take too much more.
Sick (and Tired)
Posted by: Kim Justesen on: June 29, 2009
When I was in college I worked as a DJ at a radio station with the call sign KLAF. Yes, K-laugh. We played comedy bits during the day from some of the funniest people in history, and at night (during my shift) we aired classic radio shows like Gun Smoke, or The Shadow, or The George Burns/Gracy Allen Show. It was a fun job, though I didn’t make a lot of money at it. However, I did get to listen to a lot of very funny bits of radio and some of the classics from radio’s golden era.
There were a lot of requests back then for Bill Cosby. One of his funniest bits had to do with his mother always saying she was sick and tired of the things Bill and his brother Russell did. At one point he tells how she is scolding him again and she starts with “I’m sick . . .” and then before she can finish, Bill chimes in with ” . . . and tired,” as if he’s heard it all before.
It’s funny.
I’m trying to use humor to stay focused and positive, but I’m struggling.
My body feels as if it’s turning against me. I ache all over, my head hurts, and I sleep in fits and starts. I’m exhausted all the time. My joints hurt, my throat is sore, and my appetite is inconsistent at best. The last few weeks have felt like a test of endurance. I’m fortunate to have the next three weeks off of teaching, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have to work. Instead of teaching seven classes next term, I’ll only be teaching six. However, our regional director has asked me to help out with some additional tasks as we currently don’t have a dean of faculty at the college. I’ve been interviewing and recommending new faculty, helping to coordinate the fall schedule, and sorting through files in an effort to keep the General Education courses organized for the coming quarters.
My writing time has evaporated.
My plans to attend a writing conference in the fall are looking a bit insecure.
The local author who hates my guts is bragging about a possible sale on her blog and raving that she knew she was good all along - to which all I can say is that if the agent and editor liked it so much, she’d have a contract, not a homework assignment. But that’s my negativity creeping in again.
There are so many things I want to be doing – need to be doing – and I lack the energy and time to get them done. I have a doctor’s appointment next week to find out if there is something more than just run-of-the-mill over doing it. I’m hoping he recommends that I pack my bags for the Bahamas. Not bloody likely.
I need sleep. I need time. I need to write. Possibly in that order, but not necessarily. I need the world to stop spinning so quickly that I lose track of time and place in it.
I have plans, and the coming weeks will reveal if they are sound. I’ve got a personal trainer to help me get healthy; I’ve got agreements with my new writing group that I will not slack on my submission to them; I’ve got the doctor getting ready to check for anything out of the ordinary; I’ve got a pretty new day planner to help me stay grounded in time and space. As Black Adder would say, “A cunning plan that cannot fail.”
I just need to sleep. Of course, getting to bed before 2:30 in the morning might help.
Good night.
The Passing of Time and the Passing of Friends
Posted by: Kim Justesen on: June 24, 2009
I have mortality on the brain.
I don’t mean my own mortality, though that certainly figures into the mix. I have been thinking about how quickly time is flying by, and that I am at times grateful for its expedience, and at times terrified and saddened by it. For example, when I started back to work at the college where I teach, each class and each day seemed agonizingly slow. I walked on eggshells around a boss who was both passive-aggressive and threatened by his staff. I prayed for the weeks to fly by – and they did.
I arrived at finals week unprepared and breathing hard as if I’d run a foot race to get here. In realizing how quickly the quarter had passed, I also realized that summer had arrived, and in fact is nearly 1/3 passed, and I’ve yet to enjoy the sun, or my yard, or plan a vacation.
At times it feels as if I’m racing through my life without pausing to actually live it. And that frightens me.
Then last night I received word that a childhood friend (and oddly enough a gal who dated my husband), had passed away. She was six months older than I am. She died of liver failure as a result of alcoholism. It was a shock. We hadn’t seen her in a few years as our orbits had drifted further and further apart. These things happen over time. We didn’t know she was struggling. We didn’t know she had divorced her third husband. We didn’t know anything about her because we were too busy racing through each day trying to make it to bed before 2 a.m. and worrying over the minutia that always seems so pressing.
You expect your parents to pass on before you. You anticipate the deaths of aunts and uncles. The loss of our friend has stunned us and neither my husband nor I slept well last night. This is the second friend in our age group to pass away. Sadly, she is the second to die of alcohol-related complications. But that isn’t my soapbox for today. I’m just sad. I’m tired. I don’t want to race through my life anymore and miss out on friends, on family, on better things I could be doing. I don’t want to miss my daughter’s band concert, my son’s basketball games, a chance to spend time with my cousins simply because I can’t break free from work. But I’m uncertain right now as to how to wean myself from this belief that my job is more important. I mean, I know it isn’t, and I can say it isn’t, right up to the point where I have to make the choice between a cut in my paycheck and being present with those who are important to me.
It’s time for a change. It’s time to focus on that which is truly meaningful to me. I am unsure of how, or when, or to what extent this change needs to be made, but it needs to be made.
There will be long conversations over the next several days about this subject, and I am optimistic that suitable agreements can be reached. I just don’t know what they are.
I’ll keep you posted.
Let’s Talk Progress
Posted by: Kim Justesen on: June 12, 2009
My husband is worried about me.
“You’re not getting enough sleep,” he said the other day.
“I’m writing,” I said.
“At two in the morning?” He didn’t sound as if he doubted me, but more like he was scolding me.
“It’s the only time I’ve got,” I said. And that’s pretty much the truth. “I teach 24 hours a week, I spend another 24 grading or getting ready for classes, I spend another 15-20 hours a week on my ICL students. That’s 63 hours a week at a minimum working. The only time I can write is late at night.”
It’s not like we haven’t had this same conversation four or five times already in the past month. To prove to him that I was really working, and not just trying to induce sleep-deprived hallucinations, I printed out a copy of the novel I’ve been working on.
“Here,” I said, handing him the inch-thick stack of papers. “See! Working. Writing.”
He flipped through the first few pages, then wandered off somewhere with the whole stack. I had to leave for work right about then, so I didn’t follow him to see where he went.
When I got home from my Wednesday night Composition class, my hubby was sitting on the sofa, the draft of the novel thus far at his feet.
“It’s really good,” he said. He reads a lot of my stuff, and he’s not one of those “I love you so I’ll tell you it’s good even if I don’t think it’s worth using in my birdcage” types. He makes good comments. He was wonderfully helpful on “The Deepest Blue” with comments like “A teen-aged boy wouldn’t do this, or wouldn’t say this.” He used to be one, so I take his opinion quite seriously on things like that.
“Thanks,” I said, dropping my keys on the table.
“I didn’t know you were working on something like this,” he said. He handed me the stack of papers then hugged me. “But you still need more sleep.”
“I know, but when am I supposed to write?”
We negotiated, and we came up with some alternatives. He said he was willing to give up some time on the weekends to let me have time to write. IE – he’d do a few loads of laundry and clean the bathroom so that I could have daylight writing time. I nearly cried. I promised to try to come to bed earlier two nights a week. It’s a compromise for now. We start this weekend. We’ll see how it goes.
Stop Being a Victim
Posted by: Kim Justesen on: June 8, 2009
- In: Blogroll| Personally| creativity| family| writing
- 2 Comments
Like everyone else, I’ve had some pretty bad experiences in my life; no more than my fair share and no worse than anyone else, but at the time, these events seemed overwhelming. And yes, a few were down-right horrible. But here I am today, alive and well, and my biggest complaint at the moment is that I don’t have enough time to write.
A quick side note, but bear with me; it all ties together, I promise.
We have a rule in our family: No complaining unless you’ve taken steps to alleviate your discomfort. Let me explain: if you have a headache and you have not taken advantage of one of the dozen or so bottles of pain reliever to be found throughout our home, then quit whining. If you’re not going to do anything to solve a problem on your own to the best of your own ability, don’t expect sympathy from anyone else. If you’ve taken the necessary steps to resolve the problem, but those steps have fallen short, you may ask for assistance.
I know – it sounds harsh. Believe me, this rule has worked wonders in our family.
Now back to our regularly scheduled blog.
We took the whole family to see the new movie Up in 3D tonight, and after we dropped the kids at home, my husband I drove to a local park so that we could hang out and talk. This is a luxury for us these days: time alone to hold a conversation. Rain speckled the windshield and we cracked the windows a bit so we could enjoy the freshness of the cool air. It was almost like being on a date, except the topic of conversation shifted from our son having to go to summer school, my husband’s sister’s chronic money issues, and a sudden business trip my husband needs to take to the southern part of the state. I’m hoping to sneak a day off work and go with him, but that may not be feasible.
As we talked, my darling hubby asked me how my writing was going. I let out a very loud and very sarcastic laugh.
“What writing,” was my reply. “I grade Composition essays, I evaluate ICL student assignments, I teach classes, and I chase kids around.”
“And what are you doing for that?” came his flat response.
I’m sure my face contorted.
“Um,” I said. I knew where he was going, and I didn’t like having the tables turned on me. I’m typically the one who invokes the no whining rule.
“That’s what I thought.”
“No, wait,” I said, hoping to defend myself. “Remember last year when I switched jobs so that I would have more time to write?”
He nodded.
“Well, remember March when I had to switch again?”
“And,” he said, obviously unimpressed.
“I’m teaching more hours again, and having to do more prep work, and I’ve got more ICL students than I had a year ago. All the changes I made fell through and I’ve got less time now than when I initially decided to change jobs.”
He still didn’t look impressed.
“I already stay up late and work weekends,” I said, and even I could hear the whine in my own voice. “I don’t have enough time. I don’t have anything I can give up to make time. I wind up writing at 2:00 in the morning.”
At this point, I could feel the knot in my throat swelling and there were actually tears stinging my eyes.
“So what can you change to make time available?”
No, he’s not an insensitive pig. He is incredibly supportive of me, and he was clearly trying to get me to focus in a positive direction.
I know I was doing the “fish out of water” face, opening and closing my mouth as the thoughts came and were rejected before I could articulate them.
“Stop being a victim,” he said. There was no malice in his voice, no sarcasm, no cruelty. He was simply pointing out that I was allowing my circumstances to dictate my priorities rather than taking control for myself.
He was right.
There, I said it. Publicly even.
Students come to me all the time, asking to turn in assignments late, offering excuses about why they are behind, and I am constantly frustrated that they can’t see that they’ve become victims of their own creation. I had somehow managed to buy into their unhealthy ways of thinking, coming up with excuses, and ending up in servitude to their own poor choices.
I surrendered.
“I’ll think it through, put a schedule together, and see where I can carve out a few extra hours a week.”
So this evening, instead of grading papers or evaluating lessons, I took a good look at my schedule and realized that there are quite a few hours in the day that I haven’t taken advantage of. I found time to write without sacrificing sleep, food, or quality moments with my family.
My schedule at work will change again in three weeks, and I’ll have to repeat this exercise, but for now, I have a plan of action. I have taken the necessary steps to avoid being a victim of my own choices. And now, I can whine if I want to. Of course, with the problem resolved for now, there’s no longer a need.
It’s a good rule.
It Never Fails
Posted by: Kim Justesen on: June 1, 2009
Time is a precious commodity for me these days. I teach seven classes a week (26 hours in the classroom), and I spend easily another 10-15 hours a week more on preparation, grading, and management issues. I spend another 15-20 hours a week on my ICL work. For those of you keep score at home, that’s 61 hours a week of work, and that doesn’t include my writing time.
So why is it, then, that the times I have the least availability for writing are the times when I generate the most ideas? I already have three books in various stages of disrepair, and suddenly my creativity is in overdrive. I woke up from a nap this afternoon (a brief, 45 minute power nap because I only got three hours of sleep last night), and characters were writing dialog in my head. On Saturday, in the middle of trying to relax and go golfing with my hubby, a whole different story emerged and tried to wrestle control of my concentration away from my swing tempo. In all, I’ve managed to generate about six new story ideas at a time when I can’t sufficiently spend time on the ones I already have started.
Why?
Does this happen to anyone else? What do you do about it? In the past, I”ve simply written down the ideas in a journal of potential story ideas to come back to later, but that doesn’t seem to be quelling the flow. For each idea I write down, two more immediately take its place in my consciousness. If I just stopped generating ideas today, I’d have enough material to keep me busy for the next ten years at least.
I know, I know: it’s a good problem to have, so why am I complaining? Because it is a constant reminder that I don’t have enough time to do what I love most. It feels somehow like a failing on my part. I am already stretched to my limits, and there is no option for me to add one more item to my agenda.
But some of these ideas are really, really cool. And that makes me really, really want to work on them. And I can’t.
Argh.
Remembering My Heart
Posted by: Kim Justesen on: May 27, 2009
I stayed up much too late last night. I find that I get a lot done in the wee hours of the morning, but there is hell to pay when I need to be up and ready to teach composition by 8:00 a.m. I have to confess that last night it was worth it. I wrote. I wrote a lot. I wrote my bloody guts out and the evidence is still laying on my desk. My brain needed to do that. So did my heart, and my soul – they needed it most.
I’m not a big believer in a “muse” or in sticking around, waiting for inspiration to find me. When there is work to be done, you get it done. Last night, however, inspiration struck and I went wild with it. We had fun, inspiration and I, and it felt soooo good to release a lot of pent up energy and creativity. I am paying the price today, though. I’m trying to function on three hours sleep; I have a massive stack of papers to grade for class and lessons to be evaluated for ICL; and I will probably wind up being up late tonight in order to take care of these “job-related” items. But honestly, I felt like a starving woman at a banquet last night, and I do not regret a tiny moment of it. It was an important reminder that I am still – and will always be – a writer.
It was a timely reminder, too, as I am signing at the Parkview Elementary first-ever authors’ fair tomorrow. Truthfully, in the chaos that has become my life, I had nearly forgotten the event was scheduled. It coincides with my golf league night – tough choice for me. Okay – not that tough, especially considering how I’m golfing these days. But writing won out. I am eager – nay, I am hungry! – to play that role again; to sign books to children with smiling faces who tell me they want to read my stories. I don’t know that I fully understand the thrill of it – it is certainly something beyond ego and not nearly that trivial. But for a brief time tomorrow night, I get to step into those shoes again and enjoy the fulfillment of having written and had published a book that young readers write to me about and tell me how much they liked the people I created.
I need to fill this well more often, apparantly. So I’m making plans to do so. I have a conference I’m planning to attend in September, and another one in October if I can afford it. I’m hoping my work life will settle down enough to allow me these opportunities. I may just say “Bag it,” and go to them both anyway. I’ve taken too many steps away from my heart and it’s time to return to what I love. I’ve allowed people and circumstances who are relatively insignificant to get in my way, but that stops now – stopped – last night. I remembered my heart, 
I remembered what I do and what I love and why I love it. It flooded back into my awareness with a vengeance, and I will not forget again.
Now, it’s back to work.
Conflicts of Interest
Posted by: Kim Justesen on: May 22, 2009
I think I’m beginning to dread summers. For the past three years they have been chaotic times for me, and they are coming to represent chaos on a larger scale than ever now.
There is the family chaos of kids and spouse that is ongoing, but seems to somehow intensify from May to September, that drains much of my creative energy away. Then there is the chaos of extended family which contributes the stress affecting my family and my ability to focus on the needs and priorities of my home. Much of this I simply have to resign myself to because – simply put – I can’t get rid of the members of family just because they annoy me at times.
There is the personal chaos of having too many things on my plate at once. am aware that I need to be more selective in the activities I take and the commitments I make. I love being active and involved in things, but the ability to say no to some requests is a skill which continually needs developing. There are times I’m better at this than others. Now isn’t one of the better ones, and I find that I am committed to the gills for weeks and weeks.
Now there is the employment chaos – again. I believe God laughs when we make plans because they represent an opportunity to have a little fun with human lives. God, the universe, (insert the deity of your choice here) must look at our well-crafted planning as a means for personal entertainment. Not that I honestly think God personally sets out to have fun at the expense of humans, but it does on occasion feel that way.
The most frustrating part of the whole work thing is that, with the collapse of each well-crafted plan, each new step I seem to be facing is a step away from my heart. Every time I have to shift my employment to a new set of circumstances (for very practical and important reasons, I assure you), I watch my writing time diminish, and my writing goals slip further and further from my hands. I go weeks without making serious progress on a manuscript, and the stress of not being able to spend the time I want and need on my writing is beginning to take a tole on my mental health. It’s like the old “I Love Lucy” episode, where Lucy and Ethel go to work at a candy factory and everything starts to go wrong:
Everything is backed up, spilling off the conveyor, and Lucy and Ethel have to struggle to make things look as if they are normal. Of course, that only results in a bigger set of problems.
That’s where I am now.
Bigger problems.
There seems to be an enormous difference between what I want to do and what I have to do. That difference creates a conflict that is elevating my stress level to dangerous heights. Trying to resolve this is overwhelming me, so the result is that very little is being accomplished to any reasonable degree. It feels as if my brain is in a blender set to “frappe” right now.
It’s a truly frustrating place to be, and I’m hoping the answer makes itself known to me soon.
Dystopia and Alternative Realities
Posted by: Kim Justesen on: May 15, 2009
I met a writer not long ago who said that she did not like books which were dystopic – in other words, books whose endings were not uplifting or at least reasonably resolved. Her reasoning was that our world is already a chaotic, negative place so why should books for kids reflect the worst in our world. She believed that this created a sense of hopelessness in readers, and she went so far as to say that she wouldn’t let her own kids read books like this.
But why?
If you saw the movie The Watchmen, or better yet if you read the amazing graphic novel, you’ll find that “happily ever after” is something that many in the U.S. and the civilized world are no longer interested in. Dystopic and AR-themed books have been growing in popularity for the past 20+ years. This is true in children’s literature as well as adult material. Granted, we are still suckers for the Cinderella ending, and movies like Pretty Woman or books like The Princess Diarieswill continue to find favor with a certain segment of the population. These kinds of stories are so far from reality that they still have a magical appeal. But many American consumers find these happily-ever-after stories to be unfulfilling because they are so far from reality. When was the last time a credible news source reported that a 16-year-old girl with a single mother suddenly discovered she is the daughter of royalty?
The world truly is a dark and scary place, and one of the things that dystopic and alt. reality books allow kids to do is to see that it could be much worse. Granted, there are those who will argue that this isn’t the most mentally healthy approach to dealing with a difficult world, but there is some research that indicates kids who feel lost and alone in the universe find comfort in reading about characters who face similar emotions, even if their circumstances are completely different.
Providing the “happily ever after” ending to some kids will do nothing but make them feel more like an outsider. These kids have already discovered that life often gives you lemons, then follows that up with a pile of sewage. Many of these kids turn to books to find characters with whom they can share the feeling of “yeah, the world truly sucks, but we find a way to survive it.” They take comfort in the dark circumstances of these alternative realities because they seem somehow familiar.
This is not to say there isn’t a place for the light-hearted, happy ending story. Even a kid with the darkest reality wants to cheer for the underdog sometimes. But to say that dystopic books or books that propose an alternative view of society are too dark or too difficult for kids is to deny many kids an opportunity to get lost in a good story. Books can provide an escape for young readers, and even if adults feel that such books are not healthy or positive, dystopic books give some kids a chance to find a hiding place from a real world that isn’t all that pretty to begin with.
A few excellent books that have been labeled as dark or dystopic which I’ve enjoyed:
M.T. Anderson’s Feed.jpg)
Gregory Maguire’s What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy
Lois Lowry’s The Giver, The Messenger, and Gathering Blue trilogy
Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale
Robert O’Brien’s Z for Zachariah 
There are dozens of others, and this list could go on and on. It’s good to know that any kid can find a safe haven in a book, even if that book may seem to be a frightening or undesirable place. I think Mick Jagger summed it up the best: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need.” This is the heart of dystopia, and it’s not a bad place to be.
