Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading

by Matt Zakosek, 2009-09-03

A blog-turned-book skims the history of young-adult literature.

These days, young-adult literature — or “YA,” as librarians and marketers like to call it — has reached a level of respectability earlier generations could only dream of. Yann Martel’s Life of Pi is a staple of both adult and teen reading lists. Sherman Alexie won the National Book Award for The Absolutely True Adventures of a Part-Time Indian — also his first foray into YA. Even a Pulitzer Prize-winner like Joyce Carol Oates isn’t afraid to churn out a Sexy or Freaky Green Eyes every now and then.

To put it bluntly, we’ve come a long way from the days of Sweet Valley High. So why the cultural shift? One reason is that the idea of “young-adult literature” was always an artificial distinction. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, A Separate Peace, and Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl are all middle-school classics that grow richer and more satisfying upon re-reading. And while hysterical parents may whine about teens growing up too fast, the collapse of age-based categories is more likely due to adult readers ignoring the razor-thin line between Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (YA) and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (um, “adult”).

The new golden age of YA deserves an argument for the genre’s relevance and historical significance. Lizzie Skurnick’s Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading does not contain that argument. The designation “classics” — while clearly tongue-in-cheek — suits some of Skurnick’s favorite YA much better than others. A Day No Pigs Would Die? Sure. Hangin’ Out with Cici? Not so much.

As for the “never stopped reading” part — well, Skurnick’s copy of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Farmer Boy may be so worn that “the too-oft-turned front cover […] is long gone,” but it becomes clear that she hasn’t revisited Go Ask Alice since adolescence. And that’s because, as a perfunctory read-through quickly reveals, “IT IS TRULY THE WORST-WRITTEN BOOK IN THE WORLD.”

No argument there, though I could have done without the caps lock (an affectation Skurnick blames on Harriet the Spy). But Skurnick, whose book was inspired by and partially culled from her “Fine Lines” column on the feminist blog Jezebel, has written much more insightfully about the worst-written book in the world. “[W]hat's fascinating to me now is how aggressively Alice was presented as universal, saddled with the most normal problems imaginable—thereby making her subsequent drug use something your average ordinary girl could also slide into as easily as an unflattering skirt,” she writes on the original post on Jezebel. That’s a lot more interesting than anything in the Go Ask Alice entry in Shelf Discovery.

It’s the rare blog that translates well to the page, but “Fine Lines” seemed like a strong candidate for success (as it was, literally, about pages). But the new format has the curious effect of making Skurnick’s essays seem both wispier and more rambling. A musing on V.C. Andrews’ My Sweet Audrina that elicits howls of laughter online (“Jesus Christ, this book was dirty!”) earns only a mild chuckle in print—because it’s a comment meant for a message board, not a chapter-length literary analysis. Compiling the posts in a single volume also serves to highlight Skurnick’s oversights. The Dostoyevskian-titled Happy Endings Are All Alike squeaks in, but Annie on My Mind is ignored? Fans of teen lesbian romance were robbed!

Skurnick organizes her chapters very loosely by theme — a wise call, as you’ll undoubtedly end up skipping ahead to your favorite books anyhow. (Tiger Eyes? OMG—page 77!) Each entry begins by listing the author and original publication date above a vintage-tastic photo of the cover; not always the first edition, I’m guessing, but the most iconic. Unfortunately, the books are also divided into the arbitrary categories of “Book Report,” “Overdue,” and “Extra Credit,” which is helpful only if you want to argue that Robert Cormier is superior to Paul Zindel. Rankings were always for music geeks, not bookworms.

The problem is not only with the analysis of the works, but with their selection. Skurnick writes that “the early 60s to the late 80s was a funny time in YA literature,” then immediately cites Beverly Cleary’s Fifteen (1956) as an example of the shift. Her hazy chronology doesn’t detract too much from the main point, especially when it would be hard to exclude pivotal works like Frances Hodgson Burnett’s century-old A Little Princess. But it does make one wish that Skurnick extended her timeline to seminal 1990s authors like Avi and Jerry Spinelli, and even newer books like John Green’s Looking for Alaska and Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak. Those books are going to comprise someone’s reading memoir someday, right?

Skurnick does throw a bone to the current generation by inviting contemporary YA authors to contribute essays. Surprisingly, these chapters are the worst of the bunch. Meg (Princess Diaries) Cabot reductively argues for the universality of Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret due to its popularity at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls.

Cecily von Zeigesar, perpetrator of the (non-ghostwritten) Gossip Girl books, turns in a truly awful essay on The Clan of the Cave Bear that actually contains the following sentence: “In particular, Ayla figures out shit about not taking shit from guys.” (Even Skurnick seems to realize that von Zeigesar can’t write, tacking on her own Cave Bear essay a mere ten pages later.) The only contributor who adds any insight is the relatively unknown Tayari Jones, who cops to loving Judy Blume’s Forever despite differing from the characters in terms of race and class.

Make no mistake: These books are political works. Anyone who dismisses them as trite, insignificant junk does so at his or her own peril. Skurnick’s best essays recognize this (though she is far too willing to hijack a theme for an easy joke or aside). “Daughters of Eve may indict extreme feminism,” she writes, “but it’s also as grim a tally as I’ve ever seen of a world without it.” Of course, she’s not arguing for YA author Lois Duncan to be shelved between Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan, but she does argue that Duncan is a significant, even important, writer. Because a young woman is unlikely to pick up The Feminine Mystique until high school or even college — but Daughters of Eve, with its freaky, eye-catching cover, is likely to snare a few junior feminists (or at least free thinkers).

Shelf Discovery could have used more of that introspection and less cheap nostalgia. For all the stabs at cultural commentary — Cheaper by the Dozen somehow inspires debate about the hiring policies of a 1990s Baltimore newsroom — it’s those retro, tattered book covers that make the most lasting impression, and that’s not necessarily a good thing. As YA continues to evolve, it’s important to honor the achievements of the past, and there’s got to be a better way than remembering how funny it was when the hippie teacher in The Cat Ate My Gymsuit forgot where she was and tried to smoke her chalk.