No Age Limit
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Just me on Wednesday, November 10, 2010 12:00 AM
I normally want to post about food on a regular basis, but during pregnancy my recipe consumption goes way down. My book consumption, on the other hand, increases significantly. There’s something about dealing with constant nausea that makes me want to disappear into a novel.
The last time I was at the library, I grabbed the first of Regina Doman’s fairy tale novels, Snow White & Rose Red. I’d heard about these in several places, but never tried them because I kept forgetting to look for one when I was in the children’s section of the library.
This time I finally remembered, and I’m so glad I did! The book is lovely - well-written, engaging, age-appropriate for its audience but not condescending. Since I have a daughter, I’m storing up books for her to read when she’s a young adult, and this one will definitely be on the list.
I’m thrilled to see that there are several more of the fairy tale novels, and not just for Camilla’s eventual sake. I love to read young adult fiction for its own sake.
I’m not the only one: an article in the LA Times last spring covered the growing phenomenon of adults reading fiction written for young people. The article says that J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series is credited with starting the trend, which seems about right to me. I was still a kid when the Harry Potter books started coming out, and I don’t remember any kids’ books before then that were popular with adults the way HP was. But now, as the article says, “You go on the subway and see 40-year-old stockbrokers reading Twilight.”
I personally don’t see the appeal of Twilight, but there’s plenty of other YA fiction that I love. I’ve been a fan of Madeleine L’Engle since I first encountered A Wrinkle in Time at age ten, and although over the years I’ve read and liked pretty much all her stuff including her adult novels, I always return to her books for young people. Some have themes that I won’t consider appropriate for my kids until they’re older teens, but as an adult, I love reading the stories.
And some of my favorite stuff is older than L’Engle’s. Rosamund du Jardin, Janet Lambert, and Lenora Mattingly Weber are three I really like. (You can see more about them at this site, to which I’m ever grateful for making what would otherwise be lost treasures of books widely available.) They’re about young girls and their struggles with family, school, boys, and the other details of daily life. The themes vary from frivolous to serious, but the stories were written in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s and they’re good clean fun. I shudder to imagine what the 2020 version of Gossip Girl will be, so I’m glad to have these books on the shelf for my daughter to enjoy when she’s old enough.
The thing is, though, I know I’ll be reading them as well in the meantime. I enjoy adult literature as much as the next person but there are some times when I need the escape of fiction for young people. When infant Blaise was in the hospital with RSV, for instance, I sped through some of my favorite young adult fiction at the rate of more than a book per day - because I needed something to take my mind off where I was and what was going on. More high-brow stuff, as much as I love it, doesn’t do that for me.
Last spring Danielle started a thread asking for recommendations for fiction for her daughter to read. There are some great suggestions in there.
But I’m curious: if you’re an adult who likes to read young-adult fiction, what are your personal favorites? What authors keep you coming back for more? Is there any young adult fiction that you read, but wouldn’t want your kids to read until they were adults?
I can’t discuss food, so let’s talk books!
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