An unspeakable crime was committed today at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newton, CT
resulting in the deaths of 20 innocent children and six of their teachers. My deepest condolences go out to the families
of the victims.
Five years ago, another horrific act took the lives of 32
students and teachers at Virginia Tech.
I come from a family of teachers. Three of my four bridesmaids teach. Violence in the classroom strikes a particularly
deep chord for me. Today, a different chord
was struck: My husband is a graduate of Virginia
Tech. Once upon a time, he was also a
student at Sandy Hook Elementary.
In both Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech, the crimes were
committed by young men. In a September
2012 survey of mass shootings by Mother Jones, of the 61 incidents
since 1982, 11 took place in schools and almost all of them were committed by
men under the age of 30. Time and again
today I heard "experts" say that most of these killings are planned
well in advance, that the killers often share their plans with others. But no one listens. No one takes them seriously until it is too
late.
As a young adult writer I was struck by this fact. It's the eternal condition of the kid to be
ignored, sidelined, not listened to.
It's one of the reasons that I, as a kid, turned to books and
storytelling. It was a way to hear and
be heard. Now, I was lucky. I had parents who cared, who taught me, who
showed me right from wrong. But they
could not always take the time. And when
they couldn't, there was always a book.
Reading gave me a way to learn about the world without having to suffer
every pain directly. In that way, books
taught me empathy.
Listening to the news today, I tried to think what I would
say to the children who survived today's attack. What books are out there to help them deal
with grief, with loss, with the inexplicable.
And then I wondered, what I could do to help?
As a writer, I ask you, what can we do to help. How do we reach the child before he grows up
to become a killer? How do we reach the
children who might end up beneath their desks or in a closet hoping they live
to see Christmas?
It is evident to me that, somehow, we are failing our young
men. Somewhere along the way, they are
getting lost, angry, sick and they act out in horrific ways.
I am not a doctor. I
am not a counselor. I am not even a
parent with children of my own. But I am
a writer. I write for teens to show them
a path out of darkness.
It doesn’t get darker than this.
So, students, teachers, fellow authors let's put our heads
together and come up with a new path.
How can we help stop this from ever happening again?
