Why The Best Kids Books Are Written In Blood by Sherman Alexie

     Sherman Alexie is the author of the book "The Absolutely True Diary Of a Part Time Indian" which is about a young teenage boy living on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Arnold, the main character, suffers from cerebrospinal fluid in his skull which causes him to have physical disabilities like a large head and a stutter. His family is poor, and he lives among violence. The book follows Arnold, or Junior, going to an all white school outside of his town, and the struggles that he endures. This book has often been on banned book lists.

      In response to Meghan Cox Gurdons's piece "Darkness Too Visible" in the Wall Street Journal, in which she discusses the unsuitable content for young readers in young adult fiction nowadays, Sherman Alexie wrote his own article, "Why The Best Kids Books Are Written in Blood", Alexie states that the reason violence, abuse, depression and other upsetting topics are so important in young adult fiction is because they are real issues that many teenagers are going through. 

      Staying away from reading about troubling subjects does not protect the reader from them  happening in real life, says Alexie. Kids who have been raped, abused, self harmed, suffered illness, loss or depression have already been exposed to terrible things. Reading about them in fiction helps them understand what they are going through, or can even just provide a distraction to the world around them. Writers like Meghan Cox Gurdon ignore the thousands of teenagers who need young adult fiction that deals with real life issues, and instead focus on priveleged teenagers who "need protection". However, Alexie writes that teenagers who haven't had to face the horrors that are written about are sure to experience them later on in life, or see them being experienced by a loved one. Reading helps them build empathy for future issues that others might have. 

      Alexie himself writes that he expresses his feelings about his childhood through his writing, and loved writing his book because it gave him a huge opportunity to connect to readers going through similar problems. At the end of the article, he says "...I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed."