Difficult subject matter has long been a staple of young adult fiction. Kids gobble up books about other kids dealing with everything from terminal illnesses to the death of a parent, suicide to the Holocaust. And now, with the enormous popularity of The Hunger Games, there's an explosion of dystopian young adult fiction. We'll talk about the role dark, depressing books play in teenagers' lives with Janet Kleinberg, the youth services librarian at the Mark Skinner Library in Manchester, Grace Greene, the youth services consultant at the Vermont Department of Libraries, and Uma Krishnaswami, a professor at Vermont College of Fine Arts in the MFA program in writing for children and young adults.

Also on the program, we talk to Valley News political editor John Gregg about how towns are working with FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to get reimbursed for recovery work after Tropical Storm Irene.