Too-Much-Itis

[The beginning of this comment is taken in part from my post on Goodreads group Mock Newbery 2012's July discussion.]

I enjoyed Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt, but I agree with an earlier poster that the plot is at times annoying and frustrating.  It suffers a bit from what I have come to think of as "too-much-itis". Rather than dealing the everyday problems of life in a normal manner, the situations and problems have to be taken to the extreme. This is NOT confined to Gary Schmidt and his books; it seems to be pervasive in YA books now. E.g., rather than simply gaining the trust of the parents again through reading with their kids and taking care of them, there has to be an asthma emergency. Rather than old Mrs. Windermere writing a play for a local theater group, she has to be writing for Broadway. The side effect of "too-much-itis" is that, as in this book, the actual plot resolution then becomes too much, too - a little too good/bad, a little too extreme to be credible.  It makes the book into a parody of life, rather than a believable way of handling what life gives you. 

There are a lot of YA books that fit this bill.  Sure, there has to be a problem or there isn't a story.  But it seems that the problem has to be massive, rather than just the everyday life problem.  I can understand that for fantasy - saving the world from the ultimate evil is usually the basis of the plot for these books, but I am talking about realistic fiction.  Most kid's lives don't suffer from divorce, abuse, drug-addiction, fatal or near fatal accidents, drunkenness, abandonment, violence, rape, unwanted pregnancy, etc., all in the space of a short time.  Especially in middle school/junior high.  There are a lot of kids dealing with a lot milder problems.  Not everything has to be titillating or extreme to attract YAs.  At least, I don't think it does.  But I am not an author, just a reader, who wishes there were more books that weren't so extreme, but instead, were a bit more real - like the realistic part in "realistic fiction".