Lately I have been working on my first chapter book extending from my novel Pirate Tales. As with all good pirates stories this one deals with death and adventure. I was starting to feel that the story was becoming too ‘dark’ for the age group that this is directed toward. In a very abridged version of the story the main character, Captain Yellow Jacket, finds himself in prison a few miles from his house and unfortunately neither his family or crew can help him because they do not realize he is in the prison. While he is in prison he comes across Captain Hook that explains the fate of Captain Yellow Jacket is hanging in the gallows. There is much more to the story, but the undertone that is lingering is the fact that the main character is going to be hung.
I started to reflect on the movie, The Empire Strikes Back. I don’t think many of us that saw that as kids realized how dark and disturbing the movie is. We were so excited about cheering on the rebels and the incredible lightsaber fights to the amazing tie fighter/x-wing battles that we did not really focus on the fact that the main character not only finds out that the most evil person in the galaxy is his own father, but that he ultimately will have to kill his own father (if only Sigmund Freud was alive when that came out).
The idea of The Empire Strikes Back helped ease my concerns a little, but what really helped is my 11 year old daughter. She is in the upper end of the age range in which these books are written for. I focused on some of the books that her school has had her read for her Battle Of the Books competition and some of the books that she has checked out from her school library. It was then that I realized that it is okay to be a little ‘dark’ in the story. Death is a real thing, and kids will process the story however they can. The real goal is to write a great story that they will remember and want to read over again.