- Everything I Need to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume edited by Jennifer O'Connell--This fun anthology is filled with essays by grown women writers about the Judy Blume books that shaped them growing up. Contributors include Meg Cabot and Stephanie Lessing. Most of the essays are that mix of comic and tragic that pretty much adolescent experience seems to embody. Even though I've read relatively few Judy Blume novels, this book still had me rapt, and I felt like I had read Judy Blume's full body of work by the end. This anthology is an excellent illustration of the power of books to reach out across divides and give lonely, confused, or curious readers something to run with.
- Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stop Reading by Lizzie Skurnick--This got its start as a column on Jezebel.com. The book is filled with book reports on a range young adult novels--some I'd heard of (Judy Blume, of course, is included) and some I hadn't. I haven't read much of it, but I have skimmed the whole thing, and it looks great. I love thinking about why the books we love matter so much.
Both of these books steer far away from a dry, academic tone. I know that literary analysis, even that with a light, conversational tone, isn't for everyone. To me, though, nothing makes YA novels better than a little analysis. And this is just the way to do it--to make it fun.
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