MADreads

Feisty girl heads west disguised as boy

September 15th, 2009 Molly - Central

I didn’t receive a lot of guidance in terms of reading when I was a kid; I was basically allowed to read whatever I liked and if I didn’t understand something, I looked it up.  This wasn’t really a problem until I started reading Holocaust literature, but that’s a story for another day.  My parents were very free and breezy with books.  There were always a lot of books lying around the house, I was allowed to check out whatever I wanted from the library and my mom would buy me a paperback whenever we were at the book store.  By the time I was ten or eleven, I had accumulated a collection of fairly typical “young teen” paperbacks–basically whatever was on the teen shelf at B. Dalton in the 80’s.  This included everything by Judy Blume, Paula Danziger, Norma Klein and Paul Zindel.  It also included a lot of adventure romances, in particular, the awesome historical Sunfire series published by Scholastic which featured young girls traveling incognito across the prairie on wagon trains, fighting for their family land during the Civil War or striking it rich during the Gold Rush.  I’ve always been a little embarrassed about loving this series, but I feel totally vindicated after reading Shelf Discovery: Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading by Lizzie Skurnick.

Skurnick pulls together the books that she remembered reading as a kid (and re-reading as an adult) and while there are some obvious gaps with my own reading (I’d never read any Lois Duncan until I was an adult, working as a Children’s Librarian), we read a lot of the same books.  Mostly very girly.  Including the Sunfire series.

Described as a reading memoir, Shelf Discovery sets up types of books with an opener for each chapter, like tragic girls or paranormal girls or girls on the verge of womanhood.  Following the openers are book reports on books that fit the theme, complete with the original cover of the book.  So fun!  Now, like I said, there are some gaps in my reading history, so I glossed over the reports of the books I haven’t read, or (God forgive me, Madeleine L’Engle) I didn’t enjoy reading, but I am sure any girl who has been through middle school in the last thirty years has read at least some of these books.

The author has written extensively for the top review guides including the New York Times Book Review and literary blogs like Jezebel.com and has written ten books in the Sweet Valley High Series as well as other teen series.  If she hadn’t said she was three years old in 1970 in one of the essays, I would have put the author in her thirties or forties anyway because all of the books have older publication dates and are referred to as “vintage YA literature”.  Nothing was published after the 1990s, and books that I know have been really popular with teens and adults who read teen books, like the Weetzie Bat books, aren’t included.

If you, too, are of the vintage that read these books when they were new(er), love “vintage YA literature” or want to take a trip down “The Cat Ate My Gymsuit” lane, this book is funny and insightful.  And hey, if you loved the Sunfire series, you’re in good company!

Entry Filed under: Nonfiction, Young Adult