I went moose-bowling the other day with my good friend Doofy Fuddbugg. We don’t do this often, as the moose-bowling lanes are rarely open. (There is a distinct shortage of Bullwinkles willing to grab their ankles with their gloved hands, make themselves into a ball, and then be thrown down bowling lanes by human goofballs who’ve exercised their moose-muscles to the point that they can actually throw a moose. And, of course, as antlers often get tangled up in the moose-ball return, the moose-bowling lanes can rarely stay up and running for a whole evening.)
Doofy, as he put on his bowling shoes, was enlightening me with his philosophy of dating.
“You has ta pick an ugly girl, because ugly girls will appreciate ya more since they can’t get nobody better than you,” Doofy says with a smug smirk on his smiley old puss.
“I have seen this philosophy at work,” I confessed. “I have seen your girlfriend, Green Lillian. She is four-foot-two with a bright green complexion and completely bald. But does it not bother you that her house is made of gingerbread and candy canes, and she eats small children for lunch?”
“Gingerbread-fed brats can be quite tasty with lots of catsup. “
“Don’t you mean ketchup?”
“Naw, Green Lillian makes her condy-mint out of the fur of black cats which she clips off them when they is upset and the fur on ’em is all standing uppity up on their backs.”
“Oh.”
Doofy rolled the first Bullwinkle for a strike. Of course, if you can get the moose to roll all the way to the pins, it is almost always a strike because of the antlers sticking out on either side.
Then the discussion turned to politics as my first Bullwinkle rolled right into the left gutter, then just sat there scratching his moose head and chewing on a daisy he pulled off the flower-patterned wallpaper in the restroom.
“Iddennit great we has a wunnerful prexydent in the White House to do rotten stuff to all the peoples we hates?” Doofy said stupidly.
“I really don’t hate anybody, Doofy. But the current president comes close. Why do you love him now? What terrible thing has he done?”
“He done kilt an Iranian towel-head general in the Iraqi airport. Done kilt him with a drone.”
“Yeah, I heard about it. The Great Orange Face may have started another war in the Middle East in order to get us to look away from the Impeachment trial.”
Doofy bowled another Bullwinkle for a strike.
“I dun’t know why ya allus has ta talk down about the prexydunt, Mickey. He’s a good ol’ boy. And why does ya allus wanna im-peach him fer? He’s a purty peachy guy already. Ya dun’t need to put him IN a peach. Ya oughtta be X-peaching him!”
“Yeah, let’s not talk about him anymore,” I moaned as I rolled a Bullwinkle into the right gutter.
“Eeyup, I win der arguey-mint again cause I jes’ keep repeatin’ the facts until yer pointy liberal head is done ready to explode.”
“Whatever you say, Doof. You can’t argue logic like that because it simply doesn’t exist. How can you argue what doesn’t exist?”
Doofy laughed and laughed as he rolled another moose-bowling strike on his way to a 300 game. 300 to 0. God, I hate moose-bowling.
This is not actually a picture of Boogendorf, this is Toonerville where the clocks are wrong and a giant Mickey Mouse lurks in the foothills beyond. 
Catch a Falling Star 
Directions to Be Worried About
The question came up on Twitter. “What things aren’t safe to write about in a Young Adult novel?”
I have personally never questioned myself about that before. The writer asking for input was writing something science-fiction-y about a telepath using telepathy to torture someone. He was apparently worried that a younger audience would be traumatized by that.
Really? Anyone who can ask that has never spent much time talking to young readers.
I base my answer on over thirty years of trying to get kids to read things of literary quality. My very first year of teaching a male student stood up when the literature books were passed out and announced, “I don’t do literature!”
“Really, Ernie? You are going to lay that challenge before me?”
We slogged through The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that year, using and reusing 20 paperback copies of the novel purchased with my own money. Ernie maybe didn’t like it. But he did literature.
And I went on a thirty-four year quest to find out what literature kids really would do and what literature kids really needed to do.
Here’s a tiny bit of wisdom from Mickey’s small brain and comparatively large experience; Kids are not traumatized by literature in any form. Kids are traumatized by life. They need literature to cope with trauma.
Kids want to read about things that they fear. A book like Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card has some graphic violence in it and a war against faceless aliens, but it does an excellent job of teaching how to empathize as well as fight against bullies, and it helps them grapple with the notion that the enemy is never clearly the thing that you thought it was to begin with.
Kids want to read the truth about subjects like love and sex. They are not looking for pornography in YA novels. They get that elsewhere and know a lot more about it than I do. They want to think about what is right and how you deal with things like teen pregnancy, abortion, matters of consent vs. rape and molestation. Judy Blume started being objectively honest with kids about topics like puberty and sex back in the 60’s with books like Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. and Iggie’s House.
If you are writing for young adults, middle grade and high school kids, even kids 5th Grade and below who are high-level readers, it is more important to worry about writing well and writing honestly than it is to worry about whether they can handle the topics and trauma that you wish to present. Write from the heart and write well.
I can honestly say I know these things I have said are true about young readers from having read to them, read with them, and even taught them to read. As an author, my opinion is worth diddly-squoot since I have hardly sold any books, and no kids I know have read them (except for two of my nieces, both of whom are pretty weird and nerdy just like me.)
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