There comes a time in every young girl’s life when she realizes that while Mom may not, in fact, know everything, Judy Blume almost certainly does.
I’m a firm believer that YA fiction, especially YA fiction for girls, fills an important and vital role in the angst-y and melodramatic lives of adolescents. And I’m not the only one. Lizzie Skurnick has given bookworms everywhere a delightful and hilarious trip down memory lane with her new book, Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading.
First conceived as her “Fine Lines” blog on Jezebel.com, Skurnick’s collection of essays focuses on those teen novels written from the ‘60s to the 80s that are now classic and beloved by Gen X women the world around. She’s not talking about your “good girl” novels – i.e., The Secret Garden, Anne of Green Gables or Little Women. She’s talking about the realistic books, the ones that showed adolescence for that it really was – tormented and hormonal.
After outgrowing Sara, Anne and Jo, I raided my older brother’s bookshelf and ventured into a previously unknown section of my local library – the “young adult” section. There, I fell into stories where the girls were like me and the boys were always cute. I devoured books like Judy Blume’s Forever and Just as Long as We’re Together and Paula Danziger’s The Divorce Express and Remember Me to Herald Square. I cried over Lurlene McDaniel’s depressingly sad heartbreakers and commiserated with Harriet the Spy (Louise Fitzhugh) and Vicky Austin (Madeleine L’Engle). I eventually graduated to Harlequin romance novels and Danielle Steele, but Judy, Paula, Madeleine and the others were the ones who got me through those angst-filled early teen years.
Shelf Discovery is definitely going on my bookshelf – right next to my adolescent favorites.
What about you, bookworms? What books from your teen years made a distinct impression?
[Photo Credit: Google Images]
