Tag Archives: Topical Issues
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
Movie Madness And/Or Mania: Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones (1971)
Back in 2014 I wrote about the 1967 teens-in-trouble classic Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones, in which author Ann Head (the penname for non-YA writer Anne Wales Christensen), tells the story of how two high school seniors cope with … 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
Movie Madness And/Or Mania: The Late Great Me! Story Of A Teenage Alcoholic (1979)
A number of ABC’s Afterschool Specials (and CBS’s School Break Specials and NBC’s Special Treat) have been made available on YouTube; while usually associated with heavy-handed renderings of TEEN ISSUES (DRUGS! DRINKING! SHOPLIFTING! CULTS! ALL THE GREATEST HITS!) a number of these specials adapted contemporary … Continue reading
I Never Asked You To Understand Me By Barthe DeClements
Stacy didn’t look like a reject, and I didn’t think I did either. We were just having too hard a time… I have reviewed a number of Barthe DeClements’s books over the past few years, starting with the not-quite-Lost Classic … Continue reading
Checking In With The Imaginary Summer Book Club: The Burning Bed By Faith McNulty
(Click here for information on the 2021 edition of Molly’s Imaginary Summer Book Club Featuring Classics of Women’s Literature. This week, the first selection The Burning Bed By Faith McNulty) Is it a sign of the times that we’re finally … Continue reading
Zanballer By R.R. Knudson
Originally posted on Lost Classics of Teen Lit: 1939-1989:
A girl who would rather call the plays than lead the cheers… At the dawn of the Title IX era, fictional girl quarterbacks were briefly all the rage (even Sweet Valley…
Mary Jane Harper Cried Last Night By Joanna Lee and T.S. Cook
Rowena Harper is a rich, spoiled, and emotionally disturbed young mother who can’t cope with the problems of raising her child. That’s why…. I mentioned this title in passing in the review for Willo Davis Roberts’s Don’t Hurt Laurie, but … Continue reading
Movie Madness and/or Mania: The Boy Who Drank Too Much (1980)
Shep Greene’s 40+ year old social-problem novel The Boy Who Drank Too Much remains one of the most searched-for titles on this site; judging by the search engine results I see on my end (“boy who drank too much main … 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
Lost Classics of Teen Lit: 1939-1989 