Once Upon a Pen

NOTE: This was originally posted to my old blog, The Nosy Parent Blog, in February 2015. It marks the beginning of the end of my book review website, What’s In It? : The Concerned Parent’s Guide to Young Adult Literature. Because of the spiritual darkness that infuses so much of contemporary YA literature, I stopped…

NOTE: This was originally posted to my old blog, The Nosy Parent Blog, in May 2014. It has been revised to be shorter and clearer. When I began my YA book review website, What’s In It? (soon to be a PDF version here at Once Upon a Pen), it was partly to provide a service…

NOTE: This was originally posted to my old blog, The Nosy Parent Blog, in April 2014. It is slightly updated. If I were to write it again today, it would reflect some altered thinking derived from 10 additional years of life, but this is the way I thought back then. Perhaps I will write a…

NOTE: This was originally posted to my old blog, The Nosy Parent Blog, in November 2013.  I am naturally a trusting sort of person and always have been.  As a result, I had to develop a healthy wariness of people the hard way–through painful experience. But even though I am more cautious today, I still…

NOTE: This was originally posted to my old blog, The Nosy Parent Blog, in December 2013. Although we may know that YA authors do not feel compelled to produce the kind of clean and/or edifying literature that we are used to seeing in middle-grade fiction, it is important to consider why.  It’s tempting to view…