How do you feel about violent YA novels?

I was reading violent adult novels at that age. (I'd steal my sister's books. She's 14 years my senior and read a lot of horror.)

There's a lot of violence, though, even in the children's books of our day. Not so much with the human on human dystopias, but plenty of bad things happening to good animals.

How do you feel about violent YA novels?

I was reading violent adult novels at that age.

I am Plei, but without the stealing the horror novels from an older sister. I'm pretty sure that's around the time I was reading H.P. Lovecraft, plus non-fiction about the Salem witch trials, and really dodgy SF.

My dad never censored my reading, and made it clear that I could talk to him if I was upset, scared, or confused by something.

My parents didn't censor my reading or TV (in fairness, back then TV was pretty consistently family friendly).

I only remember trying to censor my mother's reading, because she was reading YA along with me, and I eventually read something where the Did It, and I didn't want my mother to know I had read that. I don't think I was ever interested in anything really inappropriate, though -- assuming you think Agatha Christie is appropriate for small children.

Don't know how small you mean, but at 11 or 12, I read a lot of whodunits from the public library. Although I preferred Ellery Queen and Erle Stanley Gardner to Agatha Christie.

I found the Beany Malone series in our library when I was a kid (not mystery, to be clear, just circa early 1950s kids' fiction), and I LOVED them.

I also read a lot of my mom's romantic suspense, like Dorothy Eden and Phyllis Whitney.

I was into the Poirot at probably 9 or 10. So murder, but light!

My parents had rules about TV and movies, but not books. My mom was definitely better about guiding me towards age-appropriate stuff - I think my dad sort of mentally logged anything he read before age 30 under "stuff I read as a kid" so his notion of what I was ready for at age 10 was a little skewed.

My parents never censored me either, though my mom frequently made dire predictions about how "all that stuff" I read was going to end up in my nightmares. It got to be a running joke, as she was still saying it to me until the past couple of years. My mom is a very slow reader; I suspect she may have some mild reading disorder the way her brother and mom do, so she just didn't read much. My dad, otoh, read medical thrillers and mysteries and was pretty much never without a book in hand. I think the one time they ever gently steered me away from a book was when I found Clan of the Cave Bear on the bookshelf and took it to my mom to see if she thought it would be a good book for me. Heh.

I read Anais Nin off my mother's study bookcase. But I was in high school.