A couple months ago, we brought you essay prompt/discussion ideas about the lack of present and/or competent parents in YA literature. The prompts included the following:
* Is this just a coincidence, or is the physical absence of a strong parental figure key to these supernatural stories?
* In each case, the parent’s absense gives the characters a certain sense of freedom to explore the supernatural world they discover. If a stronger parental figure were present throughout the story more, would that keep away the supernatural element?
* What other books feature an absent parental figure, and how does that figure into the story and plot?
Today, Shiver and Linger author Maggie Stiefvater took up the topic in a post on her LiveJournal blog called Maggie’s Inflammatory Blog Post About Parents in Books. After a list of points explaining why there are bad parents in her books, she sums up the debate with this:
In short, my name is Maggie Stiefvater, and I write about bad parents. And bad kids. And bad animals. And bad decisions.
And I’m not sorry.
Take a look at the rest of her post (and wade through the giant volume of comments if you dare — there are 90-some of them) and then tell us where you stand on the issue. Why is it such an “inflammatory” subject?
Novel Novice 
I just posted about that on Thursday after reading Maggie’s blog. I thought it was interesting to see an author’s perspective. I have been hearing a lot about the lack of parents in YA novels–parents, mostly good parents, don’t like the portrayal of parents in the teen lit. What I always say is that there would be no story if the parents in the books were as strict and diligent as my parents were. I just thought it was an interesting topic.
Here is my post. http://bookgirl-mel.blogspot.com/2010/05/more-thursday-thoughts-parents-in-ya.html