The novel Stone Girl by Eleni Hale is an Australian novel about a 12-year-old girl named Sophie who is living in the Australian foster care system. After reading over 10 young adult books this semester for class, I never encountered a ton of topics that made me cringe as much as the novel Stone Girl did. A lot of the novels we were required to read did include topics that were for a more mature audience like the mentioning of sex, violence or drugs. However, Stone Girl went into vivid details about sex as well as people shooting up meth. This made me uncomfortable as a 22-year-old reading it that I can’t imagine what a 13-year-old would think when reading it. This made me wonder if Australian literature had different restrictions on what is considered young adult literature vs. American literature. After doing some research about American young adult literature, I found that there really aren’t any restrictions when writing young adult literature. There are just suggested guidelines for example the characters being the same age as the young adult age range (13-18) as well as making sure it isn’t all “fluff” that it actually has substance (“Teens”). TCK Publishing mentions how if the plot calls for the mentioning of drugs or alcohol abuse, then to also mention the consequences because there will be some “somewhere down the line, and part of creating a realistic book involves admitting that” (“Is Explicit”).I agree with this point and Hale did mention Sophie’s consequences in the end given how she hit rock bottom, but this shocked me because with how graphic the last section of the novel was when Sophie was helping people shoot up meth as well as doing it herself, I would not be okay with my 12-16 year-old reading that. For example, Hale uses explicit detail like:
“Needle in position. Almost there. I gently pull the plunger for a squirt of blood, then shoot the thick yellow liquid into the waiting body. Job done. Suddenly they suck in breath and throw back their heads” (Hale 266).
This was only one small example of the amount of vivid descriptions with drugs and even descriptions about sex and the act of having sex were just as vivid. When I was looking into restrictions for the Australian young adult literature, I couldn’t find anything that said anything about what was allowed and what wasn’t allowed. This showed me how possibly American literature has more “rules” on what is considered young adult literature and what is not.
Works Cited:
Hale, Eleni. Stone Girl. Penguin Books Australia, 2018.
“Is Explicit or Edgy Content Okay in Young Adult Books?” TCK Publishing, Kate Sullivan, 24 Aug. 2018, www.tckpublishing.com/is-explicit-content-okay-in-ya-books/.
“Teens’ Top Ten Criteria.” Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), 15 Nov. 2011, www.ala.org/yalsa/teenreading/teenstopten/tttcriteria.