In Which I Greatly Admire Rick Riordan
This quote below from wildly crazily best-selling author Rick Riordan is ALL KINDS OF RIGHT. (His newest book, House of Hades, is the latest in the gods of Olympus/Percy Jackson series. If by some odd chance you haven’t heard of him or his books, learn more here. http://www.rickriordan.com/home.aspx)
I’m currently navigating the wild world of Middle Grade fiction, trying to figure out what to leave in, what to take out, and what questions or issues are good ones to let swim around in my stories. I could do worse than to follow in Rick’s footsteps.
“I am committed to writing appropriate books for the middle grades. This means no bad language, no gratuitous or explicit violence, and no sexual content beyond what you might find in a PG-rated movie – expressions of who likes whom, holding hands, and perhaps the occasional kiss. The idea that we should treat sexual orientation itself as an adults-only topic, however, is absurd. Non-heterosexual children exist. To pretend they do not, to fail to recognize that they have needs for support and validation like any child, would be bad teaching, bad writing, and bad citizenship.”
— Rick Riordan
OK, this is old, but I’ve just discovered the Family Fletcher (and have recommended it several places already). This is a great quote – one of the things I’ve appreciated about Riordan is how each new series includes more and more diversity and different PoVs.
I also love how the Fletcher boys have to deal with just the level of political issues (in the “the personal is political” sense that 1970s feminists first realized) kids their age really would encounter – having to explain why they all look different, or that their dads married just a couple years ago, and the sensitive treatment of the racism Jax encounters.