The genre label Young Adult can quite often simply mean that the book has a teenage protagonist. An author friend of mine drove the point home with, “If it had been released today, Catcher In The Rye would be marketed as Young Adult.” So I read them and they don’t always feel entirely age inappropriate. Girls With Sharp Sticks is not one of these books. I’m pretty sure this one was meant for twelve-year-olds. Which isn’t bad! Twelve-year-olds need books too.
Call it My First Dystopia. Our narrator is a young woman (I think we’re meant to assume teenager, probably sixteen? But I don’t think it’s ever explicitly mentioned) attending the Innovations Academy where all the students – all young women like her – are beautiful and well-behaved, and those are the two traits driven home as desirable. They are sheltered from the world and taught to be homemakers, caretakers, humble women who give to society and ask for nothing in return. And beautiful, always beautiful. But there’s something kind of sinister about the whole thing.
It is not subtle. There is just roaring misogyny around every corner for Plot Reasons and no shades of gray whatsoever. It could actually be a little harsh for a middle schooler who hasn’t yet learned that she needs to demand her place in the world, that the world was built to exclude her. These are topics I’d want to ease into with.
The book is, though, toned down for children. These are beautiful, docile girls, surrounded and overseen by adult men who despise them – of course they’re taken advantage of. The plot keeps the abuse to “kissing” and only vaguely hints at anything worse, something a child would likely not pick up on.
For me, not a great book. I sped through it and pretty quickly forgot about it. If you want to introduce your daughter to misogynistic dystopias, you could do worse, but I would read it first before passing it along.