Today SERIOUS SUBJECTS opens for public viewing.
I've been working on this site for a few months with such high expectations. I had hoped that Serious Subjects would go live with a database of hundreds of books & that Serious Subjects will become a place where people talk about not only the children's literature but the subjects themselves.

What I present today is not as grand as I imagined months ago, but a modest offering....less than 70 subjects and not yet 100 books. But I also offer a determination to keep working, adding subjects, adding books and adding to the conversation.

If this site helps readers find books they need when they need them, I am rewarded. I know firsthand how books can shape lives.

For me GO ASK ALICE by Anonymous was such a book.

While I wasn't on the verge of using drugs when I read it (I was only 12) GO ASK ALICE freaked me out --in a good way!

The detailed accounts of hallucinations. The way the main character, Alice, so quickly changed from someone who took drugs by accident to someone who craved and depended on drugs. What did it for me was when one of her drug trips gave her the sensation that bugs were crawling on her skin.

While reading, I could feel ants crawling all over me.... Even now MANY YEARS LATER, I can handle spiders and snakes, but the idea of a wave of ants coming my way is frightening!

The idea that GO ASK ALICE could be an actual true diary of a girl who used drugs (and paid the highest price for it) also struck home. I desperately wanted the book to be fiction. I not only wanted Alice to survive; but I wanted to believe that drugs really weren't that bad -that dangerous. But every adult I asked about the book gave me a variation of the same answer "I don't know if it's true or not; it could be."

GO ASK ALICE had just that ring of truth to it...it was strong enough to say "This is happening to girls out there. If you're not careful, it could happen to you!"