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Remember that book you read at that time in your life when everything seemed to be going crazy—the one book that brought the world into focus and helped soothe your raging teenage angst?
Launched from her regular feature column "Fines Lines" for Jezebel.com, this spastically composed, frequently hilarious omnibus of meditations on favorite YA novels dwells mostly among the old-school titles from the late '60s to the early '80s much beloved by now grown-up ladies. This was the era, notes the bibliomaniacal Skurnick in her brief introduction, when books for young girls moved from being "wholesome and entertaining" (e.g., The Secret Garden and the Nancy Drew series) to dealing with real-life, painful issues affecting adolescence as depicted by Beverly Cleary, Lois Duncan, Judy Blume, Madeleine L'Engle and Norma Klein. Skurnick groups her eruptive essays around themes, for example, books that feature a particularly memorable, fun or challenging narrator (e.g., Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy); girls "on the verge," such as Blume's Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret or "danger girls" such as Duncan's Daughters of Eve; novels that deal with dying protagonists and other tragedies like child abuse (Willo Davis Roberts's Don't Hurt Laurie!); and, unavoidably, heroines gifted with a paranormal penchant, among other categories. Skurnick is particularly effective at spotlighting an undervalued classic (e.g., Joan Aiken's The Wolves of Willoughby Chase) and offers titles featuring troubled boys as well. Her suggestions will prove superhelpful (not to mention wildly entertaining) for educators, librarians and parents. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Adapted from the popular "Fine Lines" column of the female-centric blog
Lizzie Skurnick has written on books and culture extensively for the New York Times Book Review, Times Sunday Styles, the LA Times, NPR.org, The Washington Post and many other publications. Her blog, Old Hag, was a Forbes Best of the Web pick. Look for Shelf Discovery on Facebook.
Lizzie Skurnick's new book muses over all those teen/young adult books we all just read to tatters. Spanning over one hundred years of YA - Laura Ingalls Wilder, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Louisa May Alcott, Lois Duncan, Judy Blume, Madeleine L'Engle, Beverly Cleary, Katherine Paterson, Joan Aiken, Paul Zindel, Robert Cormier - Skurnick's essays, and those by contributors such as Meg Cabot, Laura Lippman, and Jennifer Weiner, cover approximately one hundred beloved books, and, just like our favorites, this book is very, very hard to put down. There's a little something for every type of reader, too. If you haven't read the majority of books covered in Skurnick's pieces, get yourself to the nearest library or bookstore and start reading with Shelf Discovery to point the way! Shelf Discovery is a winding trek back through the library trips and under-the-cover-with-flashlight reading sessions of my childhood and adolescence; I enjoyed every minute of it and I now have a towering list of books to re-read (I have to dig them out of my parents' basement first).
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Posted February 7, 2010
Reading this book is like attending an elementary/ jr. high school reunion. You'll revisit old friends and find new ones. I am now deep in the "Flowers in the Attic" series after reading this book.
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Overview
Remember that book you read at that time in your life when everything seemed to be going crazy—the one book that brought the world into focus and helped soothe your raging teenage angst?