Andye Reads

Censorship ~ To examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable. Merriam Webster Dictionary I have gone over this in my head trying to figure out what is wrong and what is right, when it comes to censorship? I feel torn because this is America and the freedom I stand for - The Constitutional Rights - comes into play here. On one hand, I disagree with the fact that an author who writes for the YA audience, can write anything he or she pleases. Just as my header says, "Speak the truth to your audience to the best of your ability" ~ sort of an author code of conduct. But at my teens' expense? On the other hand, the freedom we have leaves this open for any person to write anything he/she chooses. I would not want to lose that freedom, that right. So, where does that leave me? I was scanning through the Internet and came upon an article by Allena Tapia with WOW! an ezine promoting the communication between woman writers, authors, editors, agen...

While looking up some of the books I was reading, I came across a blog from a writer whose book I really liked. In the blog, she had a guest writer one day. She was another author, of other teen books. The title of the post was "movies and sex". I actually had my hopes up, because the book I read that led me to this blog was unusually clean for a teen/ya book. What I read there just crushed me.  The gist of it was that as a society we see guys that have sex with multiple girls as normal or even cool, but we see girls who have sex with multiple guys as sluts.  Her solution to this problem?  We need more movies and books where girls have unapologetic sex with whomever they want and are praised for it, and don’t suffer any upsetting consequences. What???  What is this?  What kind of sense does this make?  Have you ever heard the phrase "Two wrongs don't make a right?"   I know, many of you will say that teens are having sex, that's just the way it is....

The purpose of this blog is to provide a place where teens, parents of teens, and people who just love YA books can find reviews on books, find suggestions on what to read (and maybe what not to read), and discuss what they thought about the books.  We will talk some about book content, but for the most part, we'll leave the detailed content on the website .  Our goal is to help teens find fantastic books that haven't gone off the deep end (content-wise), and help steer them away from books that might be inappropriate for their age.  Also, we hope to inform parents about the books that teens are reading, and get feedback from them about the reasons behind the choices they are making for their family.  Sometimes we might even pose questions about book ratings, authors' intentions and other things that are on our minds.  We hope you find this blog helpful, informational, and most of all enjoyable! If you have read a book that's not on the website  we would L...