I was walking home from the library, where many estimable books are housed, when I stumbled upon a stoop sale. A giant, block-long mega stoop sale, at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, when everyone was just desperate not to let all the crap they'd finally shoved out of their houses creep in again.
We'd had some phenomenal luck at stoop sales earlier in the day, with Chestnut finding a small-scale British clipper ship, attached to a wooden box where you can hide things, and Diana finding two Dungeons & Dragons guides: one for players, and one for Dungeon Masters. (Yes, things are going in that direction.)
The only thing missing, according to Diana and her dad, was the Monster Manual, which is apparently a very hot ticket indeed, "because no one wants to give theirs up," says the local expert. Who gave his up.
Anyway, it was (I tell myself now) with the hope of finding a Monster Manual that I started looking through the offerings. But I didn't find a Monster Manual. Instead, I found this:
Oh look, I am unable to get rid of the date. That's high-level blogging work for you.
Yes, it's every single Clique book that ever existed. A mother with haunted eyes was selling them. "Take them. Take them please."
My attention was caught, of course, by The Clique, the first and original. Because you know what? I never finished it that last time. "Gee, I don't know…."
"Take them all. The whole box. $5, OK? Just take them."
What was the right thing to do? I will never know. All I know is I probably didn't do it. I gave her the $5 and took the whole box, and brought it right into my house with my sweet vulnerable daughters and our organic food and good intentions. It feels a little like I invited a vampire in.
Will it corrupt us all? Is it worse for me and mine than reading Judith Krantz? Or Jackie Collins? Will I deeply regret this? I sort of feel like my husband is her guide on the righteous path of her true inheritance, and I am lurking in the alley like a pornographer with my creepy plastic tub of tween horror. But it was only $5! And we're all going to want to read them! And it can't really hurt the pure of heart. Right? RIGHT?
marcialerner.com 
Um. I would have left them there, and gone looking for the Monster Manual. I’d rather have my daughter caught up in dreams of attacking bugbears and giant purple worms (my two fave illustrations from the MM, back in the day) than thinking about the rather realistic ways in which tweens torture one another mentally.
OK, so maybe I’m channeling my own middle school years, here. 🙂
If your kids will enjoy them, or you will, and if your kids trust you enough to talk with you about things that bother them in the books they read (and obviously they do), then no harm, no foul. Make them available. When everyone is done, get your $5 back at the next tag sale.
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I have never read them, and have never heard of them. So it is easy for me to say everything will be alright. It will. I read V.C. Andrews when I was in middle school. You can’t get much worse than that. And look at how well adjusted I am…HA!
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It certainly CAN’T be more corruptive than V.C. Andrews. Ugh!
I think you should read them all and then write an academic essay comparing them to both Harry Potter and the Chalet School series.
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Having now officially finished The Clique, I think I can say that whether they or V.C. Andrews are more morally destructive depends on where your fatal weaknesses lie. For instance: are you more prone to incest and kidnapping or to being really obsessed with designer clothes? It’s a personality thing. Maybe we can turn it into a quiz. Then we’ll all be RICH! I’ve heard that’s how it works.
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>For instance: are you more prone to incest and kidnapping or to being really obsessed with designer clothes?
Oh man. Do I have to choose?
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