Right here.
How well I remember Megan reading Lois Duncan books in her pine-paneled bedroom beneath a huge window looking out on the leafy backyard. I think I even have a few of those books boxed away.
If there were any YA books around when I was 12 in 1960, I missed them and that's a pity. I don't remember reading books for or about girls my age at all. A few of the Maude Hart Lovelace books concerned older girls but I had read them by then.
For me, at 12, I was obsessed with books about the Holocaust and its survivors. Novels by Elie Wiesel, Leon Uris, Boris Pasternak, Herman Wouk, Salinger, Katherine Porter, Issac Singer, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud and of course, THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK. The event and its aftermath was still every much with us in my largely Jewish neighborhood of 1960. Although I was not Jewish, most of my friends and teachers were. It felt like my story after a while, even if it wasn't.
What books spoke most to you at twelve-thirteen?
9 comments:
The Catcher in the Rye
Jeff M.
Hm. I went directly from children´s books to adult fiction (mainly crime) so I probably read Enid Blyton´s Famous Five series then. A few years later it was Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, P.D. James, Ruth Rendell, Colin Dexter.
Not quite true now that I think about it. I had a short romantic stage: Mazo de la Roche, the Jalna series.
That was right about when I was reading my way through all of Agatha Christie's books. Such fun, I should do that again sometime.
There were no YA books when I was a teen, so it was straight to books for adults for me as well.
I don't recall. My parents subscribed to many magazines (often for my brother and my benefit) like SMITHSONIAN and NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC.
There used to be a book store within bicycling distance and I recall scouring the paperbacks for CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE.
I finally have a science fan in my grandson. My kids ignored science mags for movie or sports mags.
Right now my two almost-13-year-olds are working their way through the entire Agatha Christie, Lois Duncan, and Joan Lowery Nixon catalogs--so there is hope for the future!
Although there was no actual YA designation when I was young (as Dorte notes, you basically went from children's books to adult books), there have always been writers and books whose works can be appreciated by teens and adults. I'm thinking of books like Scott O'Dell's ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS, Elizabeth Borten de Trevino's I, JUAN DE PARAJA, and all the ANNE OF GREEN GABLES and LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE books.
The book I read constantly as a teenager was GONE WITH THE WIND--I was focused on the "romance" of Scarlett & Rhett, noticing neither the racism (both implied and overt) nor the fact that Scarlett is cold and manipulative.
I remember Megan finishing GWTW at age seven or eight and immediately starting it again. All the evil stuff goes right over our heads.
Apart from all the children's "literature" I was forced to read in school (some of which I actually liked I vaguely recall) I remember being a big fan of movie tie-in paperbacks for great flicks like Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Tales from the Crypt and other non Oscar winning masterpieces of cinema. Nothing but trash for this pre-teen in 1970s Connecticut.
I attempted to read The Poseidon Adventure by Paul Gallico, but when I discovered it wasn't anything like the movie I quickly grew bored of it and gave up. It was the first book I read with an adult sex scene in it. Left me slightly puzzled.
I have some of those tie-ins packed away. Especially the Star Wars ones.
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