“Books\u00a0give you a way to talk about challenging topics that aren’t easy to bring up or talk about. If you’re talking about characters going through those situations, dilemmas, moral questions, it creates a safer distance. It gives you a chance to express your values around those issues, and to see where your tween or teen kids stands on them. Like if a character gets into trouble from lying, you an ask, ‘Is lying ever OK?'” McMahon says.<\/p>\n

She strongly recommends reading books at the same time as your teen or tween.<\/p>\n

“Reading\u00a0books\u00a0together levels the playing field, making you more like equals rather than the parent always being the one with all the answers,” she explains. “In discussions about what happened to characters, each reader’s reactions are valid. That alone can open kids up to talk, because their viewpoint is respected.”<\/p>\n

Parents might be surprised at the topics tackled in YA literature, and it may make it easier to share information with mom and dad.<\/p>\n

“If kids have trouble talking about their own feelings, talking about what a character is going through may reveal fears or anxieties on your kid’s mind. So many\u00a0books\u00a0for kids and teens deal with loss, grief, bullies, friendships gone bad, disastrous mistakes, death, divorce, you name it. Talking about characters going through these things can help kids process what’s happening in their own lives, and may give you a clue about what’s troubling them,” she said.<\/p>\n

One tip McMahon has is to select books where there main characters are around the age of your kid. She says kids “use characters as a way of thinking through what they themselves are capable of, what they might become, what choices they should make in their own lives.” \u00a0Books also build empathy because they let readers walk around in the characters’ shoes.<\/p>\n

When your kid finishes a book and you ask her, “What did you think?”, you’ll probably hear, “It was good” or “It was OK” or “I liked it,” and that’s the end of it. Having specific questions to ask opens up a discussion. Common Sense Media offers reviews as well as conversation starters and questions to ask your kids in their reviews.<\/p>\n

McMahon says, “We gear our questions to be not about plot but about the bigger issues the book deals with.\u00a0We also gear our questions to make the reader more media-savvy. We’re all about building media literacy, so we might ask a question about a book that’s been adapted as a movie and ask which the kids liked better — the book or the film? Or in the case of a graphic novel, “What can a story in this format do that a book with only text can’t?” We also ask questions like, “Is it fantasy violence easier to take than violence in a realistic setting?”<\/p>\n

She adds that their questions often focus on character strengths because “understanding characters and their motivations can help build empathy in real life.”<\/p>\n