All right, so recently the Wall Street Journal posted this article on YA literature, and why they feel smothered by the dark themes being shoved down the throats of today's youth.

To which I say: tough shit.

I'm not exactly sure what my feelings are on this matter. I'm kind of indignant. Annoyed. But it's more than that, I think. I'm pretty sure that I'm a little bit more disgusted at the fact that this mother has taken the decision out of her child's hands and ruled that YA literature is not for her.

(This could very easily lead into a rant on censorship, but I don't have the time to devote to that right now, so I'll try to steer it away from that direction.)

What I'm trying to get at is that yes, young adult literature is full of "dark themes." Yeah, books swear. Characters have sex. Shit happens.

But you know what, concerned mothers?

Your 13 year old hears worse in the lunchroom. Your teenager sits across from the kid with an eating disorder. They have a class with a kid who cuts. They know someone who was sexually abused. Something is happening to someone, and your child is in the middle of it.

You can't shelter them.

Stopping your child from reading about "dark themes" is not going to stop it from affecting them. It's going to limit your communication. It's going to place you as someone who prefers to ignore things rather than acknowledge that they happen. And that sucks.