A Rating System for YA Books: Yea or Nay?

A few days ago there was an article from the U.S. News and World Report about the issue of rating young adult books for mature content. According to a new report from researcher Sarah Coyne at Bingham Young University, the top 40 best-selling children's books on the New York Times list between June 22 and July 6, 2008 had over 1,500 profane words. Because of this, she suggests that a rating system be put into place to warn parents about the books they're letting their children read.

The article quotes Beth Yoke, from ALA, saying, “Books can be a safe way for young people to explore edgier, sensitive, or complicated topics, and they provide parents the opportunity to help their teens grow and understand these kinds of sensitive issues.” She argues that if a large, outside organization were allowed to rate books based on mature content, it would end up forcing authors to edit their books so as not to be placed in an R-rated category. It’s also pointed out that some books, just because of their subject, would automatically be placed in an adult category. Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines is an important book on drug use that by no means encourages teen readers to use, but is still full of profanity. Any effort to censor books like this for content would be to portray the situations inaccurately, and thereby lessen their impact.