Why, eh?

We spent the return ride from Boston for the 4th of July weekend listening to Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret on cassette. This served the dual purpose of making my husband squirmy at the mention of training bras and periods, and making me completely nostalgic. I've written before about the impact authors I read in my pre-teens had on me. (Lois Duncan, why you gotta make me think I'm psychic?) Now Lizzie Skurnick has written a book on the topic, Shelf Discoveries, based on the Fine Lines column she wrote for Jezebel. (A book which I had hoped to take with me on my upcoming weekend trip, until I realized it's not in stores until August 1st.)

The best part of the site for the book is the library of YA covers Lizzie has managed to assemble, a virtual bookshelf as might have been assembled by Middle School Me. The Sunfire romance series? I had forgotten those existed. Flowers In The Attic? I have a distinct memory of where these books sat on the shelf in a long-closed book store hidden off in the corner of our town square, even the particular smell of the carpet in the shop, associated forever with those covers. The Good Earth? My mother pressed it into my hands and said "read" and as reluctant as I might have been, that's when this all began.

Today I went to the shelf where I keep my own YA canon: Madeleine L'Engle, Paul Zindel, Lois Duncan, Paula Danziger. I pulled out a Paul Zindel title I'd forgotten about, Harry & Hortense at Hormone High, and read the first paragraph:

Hortense and I were so depressed last term, we used to get together every Saturday night to split a can of diet Pepsi Free and talk about how mean most of the kids and teachers were to each other in our school. But that was all before we met Jason Rohr, the most dynamic and exciting teenage schizophrenic we've ever known.

Please tell me someone else is out there right now writing something just like this. Because I want to read it.

I was recently bemoaning a lack of anything directed at teenage girls today of the caliber of the stuff we read at age 12. Sensitive reader type preteen guys are covered with Nick Hornby, Sherman Alexie, and Frank Portman. But what is there for girls? Do young girls still read the old stuff? Or have they all been (blood)sucked in by Twilight? I'd love to know.

What were your favorite books when you were 12?

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