Alas That I Have No Pearls To Clutch.

It's not that Margo Langan's TENDER MORSELS - a decidely grim retelling of Rose Red and Snow White - is quite my cuppa. Then again, Robin McKinley's DEERSKIN - another story dealing with incestuous rape and teen pregnancy - a retelling of Perrault's Donkeyskin tale, is one of my favourite books ever.

The difference between them? DEERSKIN was originally marketed at the general fantasy audience. TENDER MORSELS is intended as a Young Adult novel.

And that, at least as far as The Daily Mail's Danuta Kean is concerned, is unacceptable.

In an essay, titled "Rape, abortion, incest. Is this what CHILDREN should read?" - a cry intended to send mothers everywhere clutching after pearls and cause fathers to bite down firmly on pipe stems (and ignoring that YA novels are intended for and marketed to teens, not grade schoolers) - Kean writes:

With a title that sounds more like a paedophile website than serious literature... [TENDER MORSELS] is a novel populated by abused girls, abortionists, murderers and violent men who like to use their sexuality as a weapon.

It is the kind of sordid wretchedness usually only on offer in the stacks of misery memoirs found in supermarkets, or in the seedy extremes of violent crime fiction.... This is a novel published by one of the most respected children's publishers in Britain, David Fickling Books, which also publishes Philip Pullman and Mark Haddon.

That's right, children's publisher. For this book is aimed at a teenage market. The story is inspired by Snow White And The Red Rose by the Brothers Grimm. But anyone expecting singing dwarves and a comedy cruel queen, followed by an innocent peck on the cheek by a handsome prince, is in for a horrible shock.

Sex. Abuse. Incest. Pregnancy. Rape. Violence. Sickness. Death. Despair.

In a Young Adult novel. Oh. The. Horror.

Because apparently in Danuta Kean's world teenage girls are never abused. No father would ever rape his daughter (and where was The Daily Mail's sense of dencency while splashing the Fritzl story across their front pages? Would that someone had been so concerned for the impressionable minds of children - and adults - then). A man would never use his sexuality (or his children) to control a woman, and, it almost goes without saying, that in Danuta Kean's world, the UK doesn't have the highest teen pregnancy rate in all of Europe.

Given this pristine otherworld that Kean and those of like minds inhabit, it's understandable that they find the some of the subject matter of today's YA fiction disturbing.

Sex. Abuse. Incest. Pregnancy. Divorce. Rape. Violence. Sickness. Death. Despair.

In a Young Adult novel.

Won't someone hand Danuta Kean a vinaigrette and help her to the fainting couch?

Look, literature - good, bad, indifferent - is descriptive not prescriptive (you want utopias go read More). Fiction for young adults that confronts sexuality, relationships, abuse and divorce in a realistic manner, as opposed to Harry Potter romanticizations, provide teens insight into both their own feelings and the wider world; in the best cases, a sense that you are not alone. Fiction creates a space to confront the different and the disturbing that is as valuable, if not more, as space for imagination and aspiration.

The world is scary, growing up is hard, people you love will fail you and betray your trust. There is divorce, abuse, incest, unwanted pregnancy, rape, violence, sickness, death and despair out there. Kids need help as they confront these truths so they can surmount them.

What they don't need is for cowards and fantasists like Danuta Kean who offer them nothing but Bowdlerized fantasies that try to sweep the messiness of life under the rug.

The title of this post was stolen gleefully and without permission from electricland

Oh... My...

Sigourney Weaver's gonna be at ComicCon.

squeak!