Not so long ago, it had a golden age. The author should strive to render the world in all its imperfections, its complex layers of commitments, its spaces for freedom.
But soon came the nouveau roman and the postmodern novel, and new critical perspectives. In the latter half of the 20th century, authorial intentions became unknowable, language ever-slipperier, and political ideology an alluringly deconstructible entity.
In an earlier research project, I studied politically committed picture books for very young readers see list below. Some were comic tales of group activism β rebelling potatoes, cows keen on electric blankets β that familiarise toddlers with political protests.
Others were much darker. After years painting flags for various fictional nations, a little flag painter is killed. Political participation may be fun, but it is always dangerous. The polyphonic, complex young adult fresques I explore take place at times of heightened political tension, where teenage characters must make choices that commit them and others. Those novels present political action, like their Beauvoirian, Camusian or Sartrian ancestors, as always situated, contextual, imperfect, unpredictable and sometimes life-shattering.
Do teenagers care? Here I slip into anecdote. Those books get read because they take seriously those interests, those questions and that desire to commit. And they get written, because the need for politically committed novels and their aesthetic attraction has not disappeared.
