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Diverging From What Everybody Else Is Doing (Reading)

 I just finished reading the first novel in the Divergent trilogy—and not because I’m secretly 45 going on 15. My 8th-grade daughter had been asking about the book because of the buzz and banter it was generating at her school. And the movie just made things all the more pressing.

So I read it, and we sat down and talked through it, finally deciding together that she’d hold off on reading it at least until the next movie came out. (Then we’ll talk about it again.) The subjects that stalled us were the violence, of course, and the sensual segments in which protagonist Tris moons over her very hunky instructor who goes by the name of Four.

But there’s also that whole dystopian fantasy thing that sometimes gets in the way. And for many families it’s been getting in the way for quite some time now. (See The Hunger Games … and The Lord of the Flies.) Writes Slate film reviewer Dana Stevens:

It’s not a mystery why so many young-adult best-sellers (and the lucrative movie franchises based on them) would take place in post-apocalyptic societies governed by remote authoritarian entities and rigidly divided into warring factions. The word dystopia comes from a Greek root that roughly translates as “bad place,” and what place could be worse than high school? Adolescence is not for the faint of heart. The to-do list for the decade between ages 10 and 20 includes separating from your parents, finding your place among your peers at school, beginning to make decisions about your own future, and—oh yes—figuring out how to relate to the world, and yourself, as a suddenly and mystifyingly sexual being.

So it makes a whole lot of sense why this genre is so popular among middle schoolers and high schoolers. But that doesn’t always make it the best choice. Sometimes these kinds of stories drag kids into the middle of others’ messy realities rather than serving as a tool with which they can explore their own reality. Sometimes it plants more negative ideas than it creates catharsis for current frustrations. Sometimes it pushes young hearts into a pool of dark water that’s too cold or deep to swim in for long periods of time.

The key to all this isn’t being able to cleanly and easily figure out each circumstance—each book, each movie, each video game, though. It’s not as simple as just saying yes or no. It’s walking through each cultural encounter together. Talking. Wrangling. Pondering.

It’s exactly like Joseph P. Allen of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville says: “Adults often avoid teens like the plague, but then we’re surprised when, left to their own devices, they develop values with which we’re not comfortable. If we don’t engage with teens … then we can’t be too surprised when their values are largely those that appear in the online and popular media.”