Tag Archives: Family
The Truth About Mary Rose By Marilyn Sachs
Was Aunt Mary Rose really a hero? Or has Mary Rose been living up to a lie? Background: Marilyn Sachs is best known for a number of interconnected middle-reader books set in a pre-Robert Moses South Bronx in the early … Continue reading
The Son Of Someone Famous By M.E. Kerr
“MY MOTHER SUSPECTS I AM SLIGHTLY UNNATURAL.” We noted the death of YA giant Marijane Meaker, best known as M.E. Kerr, at the end of last year: as one of the writers at Harper & Row under legendary editor Ursula … Continue reading
Fat Jack By Barbara Cohen
“A person never gets over high school, Judy.” I’ve written before about my general impression of YA fiction moving from topical issues based on shock value in the 1970s (Drugs! Cults! Satan!) and into more internal crises of the characters … Continue reading
Checking In With The Imaginary Summer Book Club: Endless Love By Scott Spencer
(Click here for information on the 2021 edition of Molly’s Imaginary Summer Book Club Featuring Classics of Women’s Literature. This week, the second selection, Endless Love By Scott Spencer) Starting with a peak behind the blog-curtain: one of the more popular … Continue reading
Leave It To Beaver By Beverly Cleary
You’ve had fun watching Beaver on T.V. Now have fun reading about him… When I have reviewed Beverly Cleary’s work here in the past, I have opened by invoking “Leave It To Beaver,” and it’s not just because both works … Continue reading
Kessa By Steven Levenkron
Kessa… Now she is out of the hospital, but the most difficult part of her journey has just begun. A few weeks ago we revisited The Best Little Girl in the World, Steven Levenkron’s 1978 classic about a rich white … Continue reading
The Best Little Girl In The World By Steven Levenkron
The idea came to her with a flash of excitement. Francesca was fat. Francesca was dead. I feel like this is one of those titles that for a couple of decades was as widely-known and widely-read as Are You There … Continue reading
Flips-ville/Squares-ville By Stan and Jan Berenstain
A Hilarious New Concept in Humor Last week (actually 3 weeks ago because WHAT IS TIME???) we looked at one of the oddball teen-oriented projects of the legendary Charles Schulz, who, despite his success in writing from a child’s point … Continue reading
Cute Is A Four-Letter Word By Stella Pevsner
You are about to witness… The Year of the Clara! I wasn’t very impressed by Stella Pevsner’s Call Me Heller, That’s My Name, a pretty generic coming of age story about a tomboy becoming a young lady in the roaring … Continue reading
Wrapping Up The Imaginary Summer Book Club: Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? By Henry Farrell
(Click here for information on the 2019 edition of Molly’s Imaginary Summer Book Club Featuring Classics of Women’s Literature. For the titles that have filmed adaptations, we will also be looking at the movies as we go along. This week, … Continue reading
Lost Classics of Teen Lit: 1939-1989 