The good folks at NPR had a poll asking readers to pick the best teen-fiction novels ever. I thought it might be fun to take their list and cut out everything published since 1992. I also cut any series of novels still continuing after 1992 even if it began before 1992.
My argument for this is simple: nothing that has been around for less than 20 years has stood the test of time. I think I was being generous making the cut off point just twenty years and I think a good case can be made that anything that hasn't lasted 50 years has not stood the test of time.
You might think, by the way, that the heavy emphasis on recent books is the fault of the teens and their parents who voted for these things but you'd be wrong. NPR receieved 1200 nominations from readers and had them narrowed down by an "expert panel" and they put together a list that is heavily oriented towards recently published books. It's not hard to figure out why NPR listeners were denied the chance to vote on such obvious classics as Mark Twain, just one of several who clearly belong on such a list.
Only 27 books are left after we cut off everything published since 1992. That, all by itself tells you what a joke this is, the notion that63 73 of the best teen fiction novels ever written were published in the last twenty years is ridiculous.
Without further ado, here is what is left:
My argument for this is simple: nothing that has been around for less than 20 years has stood the test of time. I think I was being generous making the cut off point just twenty years and I think a good case can be made that anything that hasn't lasted 50 years has not stood the test of time.
You might think, by the way, that the heavy emphasis on recent books is the fault of the teens and their parents who voted for these things but you'd be wrong. NPR receieved 1200 nominations from readers and had them narrowed down by an "expert panel" and they put together a list that is heavily oriented towards recently published books. It's not hard to figure out why NPR listeners were denied the chance to vote on such obvious classics as Mark Twain, just one of several who clearly belong on such a list.
Only 27 books are left after we cut off everything published since 1992. That, all by itself tells you what a joke this is, the notion that
Without further ado, here is what is left:
- To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee (1960)
- The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien (1937)
- The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger (1951)
- The Lord of the Rings (series), by J.R.R. Tolkien (1954-1955)
- Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury (1953)
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (series), by Douglas Adams (1979-1992)
- The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton (1967)
- Anne of Green Gables (series), by Lucy Maud Montgomery (1908-1921)
- Lord of the Flies, by William Golding (1954)
- Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes (1966)
- The Call of the Wild, by Jack London (1903)
- Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous (1971)
- A Separate Peace, by John Knowles (1959)
- Dune, by Frank Herbert (1965)
- The Dark is Rising (series), by Susan Cooper (1965-1977)
- Forever..., by Judy Blume (1975)
- The Song of the Lioness (series), by Tamora Pierce (1983-1988)
- Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)
- The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros (1984)
- Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury (1962)
- The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier (1974)
- A Ring of Endless Light, by Madeleine L'Engle (1980)
- I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith (1948)
- The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle (1968)
- The Blue Sword, by Robin McKinley (1982)
- The Hero and the Crown, by Robin McKinley (1984)
- Betsy-Tacy Books (series), by Maud Hart Lovelace (1938-1955)
These stories have a lot in common (with one notable exception). I haven't read them all but, of the ones I've read, you get a highly artificial emotional crisis where stark decisions between right and wrong have to be made. You may say that some of them—To Kill a Mockingbird and A Separate Peace, to take two of the better books on the list—describe situations that are credible. And that is true but nothing like that was ever going to happen you you as a teenager was it?
The point is not that that sort of fiction is necessarily bad; it can be very good. The point is that if you are reading for the emotional charge that comes with that stark moral crisis, it doesn't have to be good in the same way that any old rotgut mixed with frozen grape juice will do if you are drinking to get drunk.
Not surprisingly, even on this relatively rarefied list, most of the books are the worse kind of hackery. We get the execrable Judy Blume for example. And Go Ask Alice a book that was actually a fraud—it's a faked diary of a supposed teenage drug addict—now read as fiction.
If one of my nieces and nephews asked me about these, I'd tell them that no great harm (beyond wasting a few hours of your life) could come from reading any book on the list but that only four have any real literary merit and one of those four is particularly good. Three with literary merit are: To Kill a Mockingbird, A Separate Peace and Treasure Island.
The really special one is Anne of Green Gables. It's given as a series here but, as is usually but not always the case with a series of novels, the first one is the one to read. And what makes it really special is that it reverses the usual teen fantasy. In it we have a heroine who craves the sort of emotional crisis with stark moral decisions that make up most teen books but is constantly denied such a thing by life which insists on making her into an adult who must make an adult choice between two goods. Even better, the book doesn't treat this progression from childhood to adulthood as an unalloyed good.
When you're a kid, you read the story of Anne growing up. Read it as an adult and you will see that it is really the story of Marilla Cuthbert and what she sacrificed. And it's a very sad but beautiful story when you read it again. No other book on that list has that depth.
The point is not that that sort of fiction is necessarily bad; it can be very good. The point is that if you are reading for the emotional charge that comes with that stark moral crisis, it doesn't have to be good in the same way that any old rotgut mixed with frozen grape juice will do if you are drinking to get drunk.
Not surprisingly, even on this relatively rarefied list, most of the books are the worse kind of hackery. We get the execrable Judy Blume for example. And Go Ask Alice a book that was actually a fraud—it's a faked diary of a supposed teenage drug addict—now read as fiction.
If one of my nieces and nephews asked me about these, I'd tell them that no great harm (beyond wasting a few hours of your life) could come from reading any book on the list but that only four have any real literary merit and one of those four is particularly good. Three with literary merit are: To Kill a Mockingbird, A Separate Peace and Treasure Island.
The really special one is Anne of Green Gables. It's given as a series here but, as is usually but not always the case with a series of novels, the first one is the one to read. And what makes it really special is that it reverses the usual teen fantasy. In it we have a heroine who craves the sort of emotional crisis with stark moral decisions that make up most teen books but is constantly denied such a thing by life which insists on making her into an adult who must make an adult choice between two goods. Even better, the book doesn't treat this progression from childhood to adulthood as an unalloyed good.
When you're a kid, you read the story of Anne growing up. Read it as an adult and you will see that it is really the story of Marilla Cuthbert and what she sacrificed. And it's a very sad but beautiful story when you read it again. No other book on that list has that depth.
You cut the list a little too much... Diana Wynne Jones's series were mostly published in the 80s. I noticed this because I used to be crazy about her books, although since I read them at a young and "precritical" age, I couldn't really tell you if they were good or not.
ReplyDeleteI was torn about that one. The first Chrestomanci book was published way back in 1977. But the last one was published in 2006 and I'd made a rule so I stuck to it. All rules are necessarily arbitrary to some degree :-(
DeleteI am quite sure by the way that some recent teen fiction is very good and some is even great. I just think it's too soon to judge.
By the way, I kind of want to hear more on your strong views on children's authors. I mean, I'm pretty sure I read Judy Blume books but I have no memory of what would make them "execrable"!!
ReplyDeleteAh yes, Judy, Judy, Judy. The answer to your question is a long one and I may never get to giving it all it deserves. Short version: Blume is an incrementalist. She says, "I only want to move the culture a few inches this way," but her real goals are quite radical.
DeleteShe also is a rationalist. Read a book like Forever, for example, and you get the impression that having or not having sex is like deciding whether you want to take Spanish as a second language instead of that final year math option. Maybe I'm weird but in my senior year, guys wanted to, you know, see girls naked, feel their bodies and ... because we really, really wanted it It wasn't, and isn't, a rational decision making process. Telling kids it is is a massive distortion.
Again, if I felt that Blume was just misguided and meant well, it would be one thing, but I think she was just lying. She was using all this rationality to hid the basic truths about sex.