Should potty-mouthed children's books come with a PG rating?

A new novel called When Mr Dog Bites, which contains lots of profanity, raises the question of whether we need proper warning labels on young adult and children's books.


by: Martin Chilton

WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS FREQUENT USE OF STRONG LANGUAGE

Swearing in Young Adult (YA) fiction is a controversial and complex issue. A new novel – When Mr Dog Bites, written by a Dublin-based teacher called Brian Conaghan – set me thinking. What are the rules governing profanity in books for children? Should there be classifications, as there are with films?

When Mr Dog Bites is not a sensationalist novel. It is an interesting, thought-provoking and sometimes funny story about a 16 year-old named Dylan Mint. He has Tourette's syndrome and lives in near poverty in a single-parent family. The role of his (now absent) father, who was a drunken and abusive husband, is deftly handled. 

But the profanity in the book is overwhelming at times and troubling.

In a single chapter (called 'Argument'), during a scene in which two young louts are bullying Dylan in a park, you are hit, within the space of 16 pages, with the words “fucking” (used 10 times); “arse” (8), “c---” (6), “shite” (5), “fuck” (4), “piss” (3), “crap” (3), “twat” (3), “fuckers” (3), “shit” (1). There are also references to “balls”, “cock” and “dildo”(mentioned separately – together they sound like a firm of solicitors from a Carry On film…).

It is not as though publishers, Bloomsbury, are unaware of the novel’s content, which they have issued simultaneously on their YA and adult list (with different covers for the adult and teen market, above), because they are using the swearing to publicise the book. Charlie Higson's verdict (that the book is "funny and foul-mouthed") is included on the press release along with two ostensibly humorous promotional slogans:


"Welcome to the world of Dylan Mint. He's going to take you on one *#@! of a journey"

and

"When Mr Dog Bites is controversial, hilarious and #@!Δing brilliant!"


Using the swearing as a marketing gimmick makes me uncomfortable. Taken in isolation, the bad language is shocking. The author is dealing with characters in a special school in a deprived area of Glasgow ("Paki c---" is the sort of racist abuse hurled at a character called Amir) and aggressive and abusive language resounds.

The main girl in the book, a disabled teenager on dialysis called Michelle Malloy, is said to have a "megaphone potty mouth", but it's a description that seems coy given that her response to being asked out on a date is to say: "Mint, I'd rather wank a sheep."

Bah humbug, some might say. Swearing is part of teenage life, and this is just an author being realistic, portraying young adult characters in the most honest way possible and we should avoid being prudish. I would agree that it's better not to have a situation where focusing on the profanity in a book entitles 'gate-keepers' to deny publishing space to books with difficult subjects.

On the back of the YA dust jacket for When Mr Dog Bites there is a logo about 'Explicit Content' and a line that says: "WARNING: CONTAINS VERY STRONG LANGUAGE. NOT FOR YOUNGER READERS."

This is all very well, but what does a "younger reader" mean? A well-read 14 year-old may have the maturity to cope with a challenging YA book in a better way than an immature 17 year-old. Many teenagers are capable of making adult choices about their reading material. But many are not. And many books are read and digested in solitude. Parents may not even know their children are reading such disturbing content. The ideal of a teenager reading a book and then discussing the contents with his teachers or parents may be just that: an ideal.

Many school librarians are wary about supplying books they believe are unsuitable, but they are also against anything that puts a barrier between a child and reading for pleasure. And that includes enjoying books where swear words are integral to the book, such as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. And you have to accept, too, that we now live in an age where children have unmediated access to all kinds of information through the internet.


Swearing is not the only contentious issue in modern YA books, many of which are at the cutting edge of modern British writing. In the past decade, there has been a host of fine books dealing with terrible issues that blight the lives of some teenagers, such as eating disorders, sexual abuse, incest, mental illness, drug addiction, ritual abuse, self-harm, and so on. Sanitised fiction is not the answer. We obviously need to avoid censorship. Take away the right to say "fuck" and you take away the right to say "fuck the government", said comedian Lenny Bruce; but this should not mean that a YA book has to be full of obscenities in order to be bold and challenging. Anne Cassidy's new YA novel Finding Jennifer Jones deals with contentious and powerful subjects but (unlike When Mr Dog Bites) it is a book I would recommend.

I'm not sure there is an easy answer, and authors, publishers and librarians have not been able to agree on the notion of recommended reader ages on the back of books. Opponents argue that this is prescriptive for pre-teen readers who are capable of exploring more adult concepts and making good choices about their books.

Perhaps there is a need to follow the example of the British Board of Film Classification, which weighs up the difference between a U, PG,12, 12A, 15, 18 and R18 movie. It can't be beyond the world of children's publishing – full of so many people who care so fundamentally about what the young minds of UK children are taking in – to come up with a wise panel or council of people to make these fine distinctions. But what is not satisfactory is having a book with obscene language and then a vague small-print warning for "younger readers".

Context, clearly, is an important part of the debate, and Conaghan told Bloomsbury that he has Tourette's Syndrome himself. Dylan suffers from the rarest form of Tourette’s syndrome, where the sufferer's swearing can be completely involuntary (even though this isn't a particularly common trait among those suffering from Tourette’s) and his story offers an interesting way to examine life for young teenagers in a tough environment.

But you would want the book to succeed or fail on its own merits, not because youngsters are enticed to read it in the expectation that there will be a lot of foul language. Does swearing have an impact on sales of a book, I wonder?

In July this year, the UK hosts its first YA Literature Convention, which will be overseen by the brilliant new children's Laureate Malorie Blackman. This is an issue that should be discussed at that event.

from: Telegraph