To try and find some good teens books that don't push the LGBTQ agenda?

[Lifeofthepartay]

Trying to get some books for my daughter who is in S1, books are either too young or they all have a blurb that alludes to the main character's sexual preferences. Would love it if anyone could recommend something your pre-teens, or young teens are reading that don't include those topics? They already get enough information about it in school and the internet.

You're twisting things and you know you are. I don't see the point engaging with someone who is so desperate to prove a point and yet the point is so...lacking.

How about if it was Mrs Rochester?

You can keep swinging around the houses. It's still homophobic. Perhaps even if he was James Eyre, is there an issue with reading that alongside other literature with female main characters?

You do realise that gay rights and feminism have broadly interwoven? Have you read a lot about social history?

I appreciate that sentiment. Sometimes it's alright to get stuff a bit wrong and question ourselves, I'm a stuck up cow but I do it all the time. 😆 Always better an open mind than a closed heart.

No bad feelings. ❤️

It was already pretty messed up that the OP asked this question, but the fact that multiple posters then lined up to offer lists of books which don't make reference to LGBT+ characters is really disturbing. I feel like we are back in Section 28 territory.

No, I wouldn't.

Because I don't expect every book with straight white characters to feature black people, or every book featuring straight black people in Harlem, NY, to include put-upon redheads, or every book set among the Irish in 1950s London to include lesbians, or every book featuring Chinese immigrants in California during the Gold Rush to have characters who are black people or Irish people or redheads or lesbians or people with one leg or people with six toes...

Books don't have to "represent" marginalised communities.

Yes, there is racism. There is misogyny. There is transphobia. There is homophobia. There is bias against Catholics. There is bias against people who voted for Donald J. Trump. There is bias against Russians/ Jews/ Palestinians/ Poles/ Albanians/ Romanians/ Bulgarians/ Irish Travelers/ Roma/ Pakistanis/ British/ Glaswegians/ people from Essex. There is bias against immigrants. There is discrimination against people using wheelchairs and people with autism, intolerance for people who sleep rough. And much, much more.

Not all of this has to be included in every single book. None of this has to be included in any book.

"Representation" isn't the purpose of a book unless an author wants it to be, and the reading public are entitled to give such books a swerve if they wish.

I still can't hear the name Ralph without internally sniggering 😁

My advise would be: look for classics from old, dead authors. It works for adult literature too 😅

Thanks for being patient with me. No hard feelings here either. 😊

👏👏👏

Are you saying that people should have to read books that don't speak to them?

Just as gay or bi children had to up to very recently?

I'm not twisting anything. You just haven't thought your argument through to its conclusion.

Nobody has to read a book that doesn't interest them, and nobody is obliged to be interested in or fake interest in LGBTQ issues for a leisure experience.

But the child in question hasn't asked to swerve those things. You, and OP, have both decided she's heterosexual.

I don't expect to read about marginalised people in every book. I work in publishing, and I also don't want to publish that in every book! But fiction is broad. We learn from books, and there's a lot to discover about the world through stories.

Whether that's Fagin and anti-semitism, Nancy and sexism, Bill Sykes and male brutality...or a random gay main character. This is the world we live in, and reading is how we learn.

I see we may not be book burning anymore, but it's a damn sad world where we restrict our children from literature based on our own bias.

Why is it LGBT issues? Who said that? Why is it not just a story that happens to contain two same sex characters?

It's odd to me how you think every story about gay people is somehow preaching. Have you read many?

You do realise that gay rights and feminism have broadly interwoven? Have you read a lot about social history?

Social history is very much my professional wheelhouse.

Yes, gay rights and feminism have broadly interwoven.
Or perhaps, put another way, one has muscled in on the other.

A lot depends on pov, doesn't it?

Ah, says it all then. 😁

I don't believe TQ+ is a thing

That's nice for you.

Oh damn I guess that because no one has seen me have sex with both guys and girls then no one can possible know I'm Bi then!

What a ridiculous comment

I read a lot. And frankly, I have found a good deal of the young adult literature with a same sex relationship at its core very preachy, very didactic, and lacking the kind of art I look for in leisure reading.

Frankly too, I don't think relationships of any stripe have any place in literature for tweens. There are more important general 'coming of age' themes to be explored if personal development and individual identity can be accepted as purposes of literature aimed at readers of 10 to 14ish.

Is there any section of the bookshop that you never really dip a toe into? Maybe you give the philosophy/religion section a miss? If that sort of book isn't to your taste, surely you can understand that some people find spirituality very important in their lives, maybe even moreso than their sexuality or gender identity, and you can understand they might give the latest James Grisham or James Eyre a miss and opt for a book on zen or meditation or a discourse on original sin?

People look for different things in books. Relevance to their own lives, validation of their own experiences, escape from their own experiences, a dip into fantasy. We are all individuals. We are all entitled to read books that interest or engage us and we are all entitled to the reasons for our interest or our engagement. Being interested in one topic for our reading material - let's say we enjoy novels set in Finland in the late nineteenth century - doesn't mean we hate or disparage or don't care about the experiences of people who are different from us.

Well that's open mindedness...

I get what you're saying OP, it's a delicate balance and if your daughter hasn't brought up the subject of relationships yet and has a basic understanding from school, then reading books where sex and relationships aren't the focus isn't necessarily a bad thing for her right now. So long as you're not stopping her reading LBGTQ+ literature if that's something she chooses/asks to then I don't see the issue. I think there's a lot of uneccessary pressure on young people to vocally define their gender and sexuality from a young age. When I was a tween in the 90s, romance/sex hetereo or LGBTQ+ wasn't a genre available in the school library.

I might be wrong, but I don't think OP is bothered if some of the characters in a book happen to be gay but the plot is about something else.

I think she just wants to avoid books where the main plot focuses on the characters' sexuality or gender identity.

Who on earth said the OP's daughter was reading YA? I certainly didn't read YA, I read classics. That's not a brag, that's just what was available and I enjoyed. And it was taught in school. Hence my pointing you towards Jane Eyre.

So you don't believe a tween should read Wuthering Heights? Of Mice and Men? Macbeth? Harry Potter? Lord of the Rings? They all involve relationships.

You're speaking about this as though we're discussing adult readers. We aren't. As a child, I was encouraged to read anything I could get my hands on (as long as it wasn't sexually explicit!). This child hasn't even had a chance to make up her own mind what she wants to read.

Like I said earlier. If she can watch a Disney film with Belle and Prince Adam, or Harry kissing Cho, why can't she read a book with the same thing but between two same sex characters? She isn't deciding that. Her mother is. This is normal life. Pretending it doesn't exist does nothing to help her - whether she is gay/bi or straight.

And, has been stated many times, lack of access to books and media showing same sex relationships can be very oppressive. We're lucky to live in a world where homophobia is a hate crime.

@oatmy I am one of the posters that gave the OP some suggestions of books/authors.
I didn't suggest ones that specifically don't have LGBT etc characters because I am homophobic or anything (I am most definitely NOT) but because the way I interpreted what the OP was asking for was some books that the story is nothing to do with relationships - just a story.
I do think her phrasing was not the greatest but I think (I hope) I interpreted what she was asking for correctly.
Children's/Teen books go in trends.
15 or so years ago it was all about vampires thanks to Twilight. The teen section was full of similar novels. Classics such as Pride and Prejudice etc were reprinted with black goth looking covers to appeal to the vampire crowd.
Then it was all about the dystopian societies thanks to books like The Hunger Games, Maze Runner and Divergent etc.
Currently the trend is books about teens and the "coming of age" genre. So many books about discovering sexualities etc. There is absolutely nothing wrong with books like this. I've read several. I love Heartstopper and the connected novels.
But seriously if you go to Waterstones and look at the current piles of books on the tables and you just want to read a story that's a story that has nothing to do with relationships/sexualities it's very overwhelming to find a book that isn't that genre.
The OPs daughter is age 11 or 12. It's a difficult age to find a book if you haven't yet made that jump from "children's" books to the YA/grown up books.
At 12 I was still reading Enid Blyton. I didn't want all those teen romances at 12.

This whole thread is calling the nastiest, most twisted and vicious pps.

I don't even see the point in posting tbh, it's all just goady bollocks. Doubt anyone would say any of these things face to face with any LGBTQ person. With the exception of one person who I do think has the emotional range to go and reconsider, so that's a reason to try on occasion if the fucks are high enough.

But, it's a reminder they're still out there. And a good remembrance of why we need to keep talking. Maybe write and publish a few more of those dangerous, scary books.

lack of access to books and media showing same sex relationships can be very oppressive. We're lucky to live in a world where homophobia is a hate crime.

And it's not a crime to avoid books we don't want to read, or genres that don't interest us.

Or should I say not yet anyway.

That's also how I read it.