Four Novels That Deal With Difficult Issues

Novels for Teens About Death, Cancer, Pregnancy and Alzheimers

Jul 24, 2009 Catherine Owen

Adolescents have many issues to cope with. Novels can help them deal with unexpected events and problematic circumstances, giving them the strength to carry on.

A lot of novels for teenagers, whether from the seventies and eighties or written in a contemporary context are about dating, school life, conflict with parents and other less weighty topics. Adolescents need literature that bravely deals with important and difficult issues too. At a time in their lives when they are enduring so many changes on multiple levels, teens need to know that books are available that address topics often hard to speak about.

Through well-conceived characters, effective dialogue and direct speech stories can seem to empathize with the teenager's problems, thus preventing them from feeling so alone as they struggle to cope with life altering circumstances.

The Pigman by Paul Zindel (Bantam Starfire, 1968)

This classic novel by the author of other significant young adult books, among them Pardon Me, You're Stepping on my Eyeball!, won the NY Times Outstanding Book of the Year in 1968. Written in a style similar to JD Salingers, The Pigman deals with the problem of lying, intergenerational relationships, and death. John and Lorraine, two high schoolers, meet Mr Pignatti by posing as charity workers, a game the two enjoy playing.

However, this ruse leads the older man to open up to the teens and share many emotional secrets. They even go on outings like the zoo together. When he finds out the truth, their relationship becomes much more complex. The Pigman's house gets broken into and he later dies of a heart attack. The book, narrated alternately by each of the characters, exposes the need for honesty in relationships and presents an essential view of death's effect on the living.

Sun Signs and Dancing Naked by Shelley Hrdlitschka (Orca Book Publishers, 2001/2005)

Hrdlitschka is a powerful writer for teens who deals with many current and ongoing issues in the lives of adolescents. In Sun Signs, the main character, fifteen year old Kaleigh Wyse has cancer. She's trying to continue her school work through correspondence and enlists her fellow students to help her out in a project on astrology. Unfortunately, again due to the problem of lying, Wyse receives faulty information for her project, leading to an increase in her sense of vulnerability. At the same time, she is enduring chemotherapy treatments.

The book is completely composed in the form of emails and msn messages, making its form extremely contemporary. Emotional and revelatory, Sun Signs offers a unique approach to dealing with having a disease as an adolescent.

Dancing Naked is also told through emails, as well as narration and journal entries. The story surrounds the plight of a sixteen year old girl called Kia who has just found out she's pregnant. Deciding to keep the child, she undergoes familial dissent, fickle friends, fraught love and finds out, during the nine months, that she's not yet ready to be a parent. Deciding to give her child up for adoption however is a difficult choice.

This novel also deals with Kia's relationship with a man who turns out to be homosexual and her interactions with an old lady in a nursing home where she plays the piano. Heartfelt and unflinching, Dancing Naked should be read by all sexually active teenagers, as well as those coping with this issue in their lives.

Daughter by Ishbel Moore (Kids Can Press, 1999)

Few novels deal with Alzheimers, especially through the perceptions of an adolescent. While one often thinks of the disease as being one of old age, younger people can suffer from it. The protagonist of Daughter, fourteen year old Sylvie Marchione, is dealing with her mother's descent into Alzheimers.

Every day, her mother becomes more like a child as Sylvie must cope with her suicide attempts, her temper tantrums, her forgetfulness and her conflictual relationship with Sylvie's father.

Sylvie must take her mother to the doctor's, deal with friends' incomprehension and somehow maintain her school work, piano lessons and social life at the same time. Daughter provides a sensitive portrayal of a complex and often misunderstood disease through one girl's courageous path towards acceptance.

The copyright of the article Four Novels That Deal With Difficult Issues in Children’s Books is owned by Catherine Owen. Permission to republish Four Novels That Deal With Difficult Issues in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Teenagers Deal with Many Difficult Issues