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The reading and study of the classics used to be an important part of our educational system. There s plenty of material. English-language writers have written many famous books, and many works of literature from other languages have been translated into English.
Nowadays though, much of the market share of the classics has been taken over by the Young Adult Fiction genre, targeted to adolescents.
As Wikipedia describes it, The subject matter and genres of YA correlate with the age and experience of the protagonist. The genres available in YA are expansive and include most of those found in adult fiction. Common themes related to YA include friendship, first love, relationships, and identity. Stories that focus on the specific challenges of youth are sometimes referred to as problem novels or coming-of-age novels.
Homer Canceled
In the Wall Street Journal, Meghan Gurdon documents the latest stage of our culture’s devolution toward utter stupidity: the cancellation of Homer.
A sustained effort is under way to deny children access to literature. Under the slogan #DisruptTexts, critical-theory ideologues, schoolteachers and Twitter agitators are purging and propagandizing against classic texts everything from Homer to F. Scott Fitzgerald to Dr. Seuss.
Their ethos holds that children shouldn’t have to read stories written in anything other than the present-day vernacular especially those “in which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm,” as young-adult novelist Padma Venkatraman writes in School Library Journal. No author is valuable enough to spare, Ms. Venkatraman instructs: “Absolving Shakespeare of responsibility by mentioning that he lived at a time when hate-ridden sentiments prevailed, risks sending a subliminal message that academic excell