AS SIGMUND FREUD reminded us, all we have is love and work. Without question, teenagers would much rather focus on the former than the latter; however, teenage romance in literature, just as in real life, may not have a happy ending. Ever since Shakespeare introduced us to those star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet, teenage romance has often taken a turn for the worse.
Before The Catcher in the Rye and The Outsiders introduced a new realism and focus into young adult novels, romance novels ruled the day. Two of the gems of the 1940s, Maureen Daly's Seventeenth Summer and Benedict and Nancy Freedman's Mrs. Mike, have actually stood the test of time and are still picked up today. However, most of the romances of this era by writers such as Phyllis Whitney and Betty Cavanna have long been out of print because teenage manners and fashion change so quickly.
Because stark and harsh realism became the acceptable coinage in young adult fiction, romance novels even seemed a form of the past. But recently those working with adolescents have noticed an increase in the demand for gentle romances. In the twenty-first century, all kinds of love are explored—boys and girls, girls and girls, and boys and boys—but the basic constructs have not changed: love requited, love unrequited, infatuation, people meant for each other, those kept apart by families.
Love may be all we need, but even teenagers know it is not necessarily easy to find the right person to love.
***
The China Garden
14–18 • Farrar, Straus • 1996 • 285 pp.
Against her will, seventeen-year-old Clare Meredith goes with her mother from London to Ravensmere, a historic English estate, to relax before Clare enters university. She finds the place mysterious: everyone seems to have expectations of her, and her mother appears to withhold information. Then a tall, dark, and handsome biker, Mark, enters the equation. For unknown reasons, Clare takes midnight walks in the abandoned China Garden—framed by the magnificent Moon Gates.
Magic, mystery, suspense, an ecological message, and romance combine to make a book that teenagers find hard to put down.
OLIVE ANN BURNS
Cold Sassy Tree
14–18 • Ticknor & Fields • 1984 • 400 pp.
Fourteen-year-old Will Tweedy narrates this contemporary classic set in Cold Sassy, Georgia, in 1906–1907. His grandfather Rucker has decided to get married, because he needs a housekeeper, to a woman much younger than he. Since his wife has been dead for only three weeks, Rucker's daughters worry about what the people of this small southern community will think and say. Although the intended bride comes from Baltimore and is hence practically a Yankee, Will likes her and supports his grandfather's desire to marry. Surviving a near-death experience involving a train, Will becomes a sensation in the town, but when everyone comes to ask him about the incident, Rucker arrives with his new bride. Although originally agreeing to a marriage of convenience, the two actually fall in love; shortly before Rucker dies, they produce a child who will continue to live in Cold Sassy, no matter what the gossips say.
This story of an unorthodox marriage, as seen through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old, took the author over eight years to complete while she battled the side effects of chemotherapy. Basing the story on her father's life in Commerce, Georgia, and grounding it in family history, Olive Ann Burns was at work on another novel about the characters, Leaving Cold Sassy, which her editor had to pull together after her death. Burns's colorful characters, her detailed setting, and her humor have endeared Cold Sassy Tree to adolescents for over two decades.
ANDREW CLEMENTS
Things Not Seen
12–14 • Philomel • 2002 • 251 pp.
In a very innocent and modern rendition of H. G. Wells's The Invisible Man, fifteen-year-old Bobby wakes up one morning in Chicago's Hyde Park to discover that he has become totally invisible. At first his parents refuse to cope with the situation, going off to work and leaving him at home. But he finally convinces them of the seriousness of his plight just before they get into an automobile accident and are seriously injured. Bobby then copes alone with being an invisible teenager and in the process develops a friendship with a beautiful blind girl, Alicia, whom he meets at the library. With their mutual disabilities, they start to help each other; in the process, Alicia provides Bobby with the information he needs to reverse his invisibility. Although they don't quite kiss at the end, they set the stage for the relationship to develop now that Bobby has become visible again.
Andrew Clements works out the details of invisibility quite thoroughly, hence the fantasy and the realism blend together smoothly. Fresh, engaging, written with a likable protagonist with a very real problem, Things Not Seen has become a staple of middle school reading lists because of its universal appeal.
MAUREEN DALY
Seventeenth Summer
12–14 • Dodd, Mead • 1942 • 291 pp.
In a first-person voice, Angie Morrow, one of four daughters, tells about three iridescent summer months in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, when she goes on her first date and experiences her first kiss. Both love and heartache surround her relationship with handsome Jack Duluth, the son of a baker. Quite innocent, Angie has a couple of beers, gets "tight," and never drinks again; she worries about people being fast and the man dating her sister Lorraine. But during this pivotal summer, Angie basically goes to parties, dances, and Fourth of July parades, watches fireworks, sails on Jack's boat, and enjoys the experience of a young man's falling in love with her. The book captures the awkward feelings and missteps of a developing relationship—the wonder and uncertainty, the concern about exposing a boyfriend to family. Angie constantly tells us that we'd like someone or something, and by the end of the book readers find they like Angie, a decent, lovely girl with ambition, who heads off to college.
Maureen Daly captures both the social structure of small-town America before World War II and the innocence of a young girl who matures. As Angie says in the last line, "Never again would there ever be anything quite as wonderful as that seventeenth summer!"
Having won a short story contest in high school, Daly began to write this autobiographical novel while in college. She submitted the manuscript to Dodd, Mead for its college literary fellowship, and the book, published when Daly herself was only twenty-one, was quickly adopted by teenagers even though it had been published for adults. In a detail that she might have written, Daly herself found romance when she met her husband at a book autographing party.
Real romance, a lot of ambience, and a good deal of genuine emotion have kept this book in print all these years, with several million copies sold. One of the few young adult novels that can truly be called a classic, Seventeenth Summer has been, and continues to be, shared by grandmothers and granddaughters.
LOUIS DE BERNIÈRES
Corelli's Mandolin
14–18 • Pantheon • 1994 • 448 pp.
During World War II, the Greek island of Cephallonia was occupied by Italian troops who ultimately turned against fascism and joined the native Greeks. The unconsummated love affair between young Pelagia, the daughter of the patriotic doctor on the island, and the amiable Italian captain, Antonio Corelli, a mandolin player, seems difficult enough, given the shifting allegiances of those on the island. But it is shattered when the Germans invade. Although Corelli escapes from the island to fight the Germans on the mainland, the Nazi troops slaughter thousands of the resident Italian soldiers.
With elements of magical realism and black comedy, the book contains multiple viewpoints and includes chapters of letters, speeches, and political pamphlets. Based on a true episode during the Nazis' occupation of Cephalonia, Corelli's Mandolin is an enchanting literary tour de force and an epic wartime love story. Although published for adults, the love story, history, and magnificent setting have endeared it to teenage readers, who frequently pick it up for independent reading.
SARAH DESSEN
Dreamland
14–18 • Viking • 2000 • 250 pp.
As a younger sister, Caitlin always thought she never measured up to her perfect sibling, Cass. Then Cass abruptly runs off with a boy, and sixteen-year-old Caitlin struggles to fill the void left in the family. One day at a party she meets Rogerson Biscoe, a wild-haired, BMW-driving, drug-dealing bad boy, and she sees in him a chance to reinvent herself. As Caitlin struggles with this developing relationship, she doesn't know how to set boundaries. Then Rogerson begins hitting her, slapping her, abusing her, and she cannot pull away.
Deft at creating character and building events, Sarah Dessen explores teenage romance gone awry—when a relationship really becomes harmful. The reader feels Caitlin's pain and watches, horrified, as the adults ignore the signs of her abuse. Although it deals with an important issue, this powerful, provocative story never seems clinical; it often appeals, however, to girls who have stayed in emotionally or physically abusive relationships. Ultimately positive, Dreamland presents Caitlin's recovery in an institution and her survival and triumph as a human being.
BENEDICT AND NANCY FREEDMAN
Mrs. Mike
12–14 • Coward-McCann • 1947 • 284 pp.
Even teens who admit to being devotees of the horror writer R. L. Stine find themselves swept away by this lush romance. In 1907, Katherine Mary O'Fallon of Boston goes to visit her uncle in Canada. There she meets and quickly falls in love with Sgt. Mike Flannigan of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Married to him at sixteen, Kathy dogsleds with Mike several hundred miles north, to an isolated, dangerous, and brutal land where Mike serves as magistrate, doctor, priest, and counselor to all in the area. Traumatized by some of the horrible events that occur, including the death of their children, Kathy goes back to Boston, not knowing if she will return. But she longs for Mike, goes back to him, and starts another family in the wilderness.
Believing that her life should be recorded for posterity, Katherine Mary Flannigan pulled together a five-page outline, which, through an agent, was given to Benedict and Nancy Freedman, two writers in their midtwenties. They interviewed Mrs. Flannigan for three months and undertook massive newspaper research. Each wrote different scenes but went over the other's work sentence by sentence. Receiving enthusiastic reviews, the novel often appeared on both the fiction and nonfiction bestseller lists at the same time.
With sweeping romance yet tremendous honesty about the fragility of love, Mrs. Mike has enchanted teens for many years. An excellent choice for mother-daughter reading groups, it contains an immensely attractive heroine—not to mention a handsome, sensitive, strong, and chivalrous hero.
GARRET FREYMANN-WEYR
My Heartbeat
12–14 • Houghton Mifflin • 2002 • 160 pp.
PRINTZ HONOR
Love triangles have always dominated romance literature, but My Heartbeat presents an unusual twist on this theme. Fourteen-year-old Ellen idolizes her brother, Link, and loves his best friend, James. For years these two wealthy New York private school chums have watched foreign films together, read complex novels, and attended concerts. But in high school, as the boys struggle with the exact nature of their relationship, Link decides to break it off. Ellen takes up with James, who is bisexual, and moves toward a sexual relationship with him. But as she does, Link starts falling apart mentally.
Exploring issues of self-discovery and the ambiguity of sexual relationships, the novel excels in presenting the emotional life of these three young lovers in a totally believable, compelling fashion.
Annie on My Mind
14–18 • Farrar, Straus • 1982 • 234 pp.
Two seventeen-year-old New Yorkers, Liza and Annie, meet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Devoted museum-goers, both love medieval history, and they find themselves instantly drawn to each other. But they have different backgrounds: Liza attends a privileged prep school; Annie lives in an Italian working-class neighborhood. As their friendship deepens, they slowly realize their sexual attraction to each other, but after their relationship becomes public, they each have to handle the emotional stress with their peers and family. In the end, Liza and Annie resume contact, hoping to revive a relationship that means a great deal to each of them.
Absolutely groundbreaking when it was published, because of Nancy Garden's acceptance of lesbian love, Annie on My Mind got removed from libraries and was even burned in some communities. Garden's The Year They Burned the Books was inspired by her experiences fighting censorship cases. Although clearly written over two decades ago, the book still works with readers as a gentle romance, showing the healing powers of love.
PATRICE KINDL
Owl in Love
12–14 • Houghton Mifflin • 1993 • 214 pp.
Awereowl, a girl by day and owl by night, fourteen-year-old Owl Tycho loves her science teacher; at night she perches on a tree outside his house, pining away for him. Since Owl isn't doing enough hunting, her parents worry about her health. At school, Owl is tormented because she never eats in front of her classmates, but she knows that her normal rodent fare wouldn't impress the cafeteria crowd. In a lovely ending, Owl survives her crush, actually helps a pale and starving young man, and makes a true friend, one she can trust. In the course of the narrative, she moves from being an outsider to someone who interacts with her community.
This delightful fantasy shows the problems of being a misfit in an original and totally delightful way. Patrice Kindl also explores the ability of adolescents to shift from one personality to another, trying to find one that fits them. Consequently, Owl emerges as a character that alienated or confused teenagers can take to heart and appreciate.
GAIL CARSON LEVINE
Ella Enchanted
12–14 • Harper • 1997 • 233 pp.
NEWBERY HONOR
In a modern Cinderella story, Ella, at birth, receives a terrible gift from an addled fairy: henceforth, she cannot disobey a command. Her mother protects Ella, but when her mother dies, the teenage Ella must contend with her father's new fiancé. She is sent to a finishing school, where one of her despicable stepsisters discovers her secret and uses it against her. Determined to reverse the spell, Ella runs away and encounters ogres, giants, and a company of knights, led by Prince Charmont, or Char. After she is placed with her new stepmother, Ella must serve in the kitchen as a scullery maid. But in a happy ending, which requires her to face her greatest weakness, Ella attends three royal balls and ends up with her prince, just as we knew she would.
With a quite avaricious, mean-spirited, and selfish stepmother and stepsisters, and with a spunky, intelligent heroine and a prince to die for, Ella Enchanted appeals to readers who love retold fairy tales, such as Robin McKinley's Beauty and Donna Jo Napoli's Zel.
DAVID LEVITHAN
Boy Meets Boy
12–14 • Knopf • 2003 • 186 pp.
A romance story as sweet as they come, showing only the exchange of kisses, conjures up the innocence of Maureen Daly's Seventeenth Summer. But this love story focuses on two high school boys. Paul, aware since kindergarten that he is gay, possesses self-confidence in abundance and lives in a family, community, and school that have completely accepted him. With a strong gay-straight alliance that boasts more members than the football team, the school elects a homecoming queen who also happens to be the star quarterback, an intriguing character called Infinite Darlene, and the cheerleaders ride Harleys. In this amazing world, Paul's attraction to the artistic new boy in town, Noah, follows the natural progression—falling in love, losing the romance, then reuniting. Paul shows universal feelings and fears as his romance deepens with Noah.
In a novel that seems part fantasy and part reality, David Levithan claims he wrote a book "about where we're going, and where we should be," a world where sexual preferences carry as much stigma as the color of someone's eyes or hair. A funny and insightful book, Boy Meets Boy presents a cast of original and highly entertaining characters. Even taught in college gender studies classes, it can be read by anyone seeking a very happy and tender love story.
MARGARET MAHY
The Catalogue of the Universe
12–14 • Atheneum • 1986 • 185 pp.
Beautiful Angela May lives alone with her mother and has heard stories all her life about the man who fathered her. A high school senior, she becomes determined to meet him, although her best friend, Tycho, tries to dissuade her. Although things don't work out when Angela faces her father, she and Tycho, a New Zealand version of the frog prince, develop a romance; they share a love of ideas and speak of books, astronomy, the Ionians, and math in a very sexy way.
With a distinct New Zealand setting and two unusual protagonists, The Catalogue of the Universe explores the age-old topic of teenage love and romance, treating adolescents with an inherent respect for their intelligence.
MARGARET MAHY
The Changeover: A Supernatural Romance
12–14 • Atheneum • 1984 • 214 pp.
Fourteen-year-old Laura Chant resents her divorced mother's new love interest, Chris Holly. While taking care of her three-year-old brother, Laura takes him to a strange store, and the villainous owner imprints Jacko's hand with a stamp. Since Jacko becomes ill immediately afterward and needs to go to the hospital, Laura believes that he has had a supernatural encounter. She seeks out the advice of Sonny Carlisle, a classmate who dabbles in the occult. Not only does one of his white witchcraft rituals seem to help Jacko improve, but Laura and Sonny develop a love relationship of their own.
Margaret Mahy has an uncanny ability to mix the ordinary with the mysterious, challenging ideas of time, space, and identity. In a part-horror, part-fantasy, and part-romance story, Laura battles to save her brother and in the process transforms herself.
IAN MCEWAN
Atonement
14–18 • Doubleday • 2002 • 353 pp.
On a hot summer's day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis stands by her window on an English country estate and observes her sister, Cecilia, and the cleaning woman's son, Robbie. Arguing by an ancient fountain, the two break a valuable porcelain vase. In a fury, Cecilia strips her clothes off, leaps into the fountain, and retrieves the fragment. But in Briony's innocent and muddled mind, she believes that Robbie, a brilliant scholar whose education at Cambridge has been financed by the family, has done something shameful. Telling a blatant lie, she accuses Robbie of rape, gets him jailed, and brings disaster to her sister as well, for Cecilia loves the young man.
In the second part of the novel, Robbie, now a private in the British Army in World War II, witnesses all the atrocities of the campaign at Dunkirk. Abandoning her family, Cecilia has become a nursing sister in a veterans' hospital in London and struggles with the brutality and horror of war. Later Briony herself becomes a nursing student, comes to terms with what she did as a youth, and tries to make amends to Robbie and Cecilia, now living together as lovers. But no apology seems good enough. With an epilogue written in the first person by Briony in 1999, the outcome of the story remains in doubt.
Atonement explores in detail how an adolescent's moral sense and judgment can be so vastly different from an adult's. Ian McEwan had always been drawn to Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, in which a young woman's reading of gothic novels causes her to misunderstand the events around her. He wanted to explore the idea of a young girl with imagination causing havoc, to see if he could develop her fully as the central character in his novel, and to write a simple love story in the twenty-first century.
Although by no means simple, Atonement captivates readers, as they hope the lovers will reunite and be whole again. A master of the language, McEwan always finds the unexpected word or adjective: a litigious couple defend "their good names with a most expensive ferocity." As well as any work of fiction, this luminous novel explores guilt, remorse, misunderstanding, and forgiveness—for ourselves and for others.
ROBIN MCKINLEY
Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast
12–14 • Harper • 1978 • 247 pp.
Written in the first person with frankness and humor, this retelling of the French story recasts the three daughters as Grace, Hope, and Honour. But the youngest is always called Beauty, even when she becomes a mousy, thin teenager who loves books and hopes to become a scholar. With her family in financial decline, Beauty moves with her horse, Greatheart, to a new home on the edge of a mysterious forest. In the center of the forest lives a monster, who gives rose seeds to Beauty's father—and in return demands a daughter. So Beauty goes to meet her Beast in a castle that conjures up whatever she needs and a library that yields books not yet written. Full of lush detail, magic, invention, and romance, Beauty makes the family members real and human and serves as a fine antidote to the Disney version of this fairy tale. Many fans read this well-written and well-conceived book many times, savoring it again and again.
DONNA JO NAPOLI
Zel
12–14 • Dutton • 1996 • 228 pp.
In a sixteenth-century Swiss village, Zel goes to the market with her mother anticipating only her usual pleasures, of talking to vendors and special treats. But after she helps a nobleman, Konrad, with his horse, he asks what gift she would like in return. She requests a goose egg, to comfort a frustrated goose who has been building a nest with stones. That goose egg changes his and her life forever. Zel turns out to be no ordinary child. She lives alone with her mother, who believes that they have everything they need since they have each other. Actually a witch, however, she acquired Zel by making a pact with the devil and will do anything necessary to keep the girl all to herself. In one horrific scene, Mother convinces the thirteen-year-old to climb a walnut tree into a tower and abandons her there. For the next two years, Zel spends endless time in captivity, descending into madness. Having searched all that time, Konrad finds her, enters the tower on her long hair, makes love to her, and plans for her escape so that they can wed.
The narrative deftly alternates between Mother's first-person voice and the third-person present-tense voices of Zel and Konrad. Donna Jo Napoli has adapted "Rapunzel" and given it new psychological meaning for young readers. In a text that makes the witch of the story quite human, she explores the issues of dysfunctional mother-daughter relationships and the healing power of love and family. For in the end Zel "believes in life, in all its beauty and fragility. She has her daughters. She has her art. She feels rich. Her soul mends." A haunting story with romantic and lyrical prose, Zel stands as an excellent introduction to Napoli's many fine novels, which adapt fairy tales but add history and richness all her own—such as The Magic Circle ("Hansel and Gretel"), Crazy Jack ("Jack and the Beanstalk"), Beast ("Beauty and the Beast"), and Bound ("Cinderella").
ANN PACKER
The Dive from Clausen's Pier
14–18 • Knopf • 2002 • 413 pp.
Twenty-three-year-old Carrie Bell finds her reality completely altered when her fiancée, and boyfriend from age fourteen, Mike Mayer, dives into Clausen's Reservoir and becomes a quadriplegic. Carrie at first tries to escape into sewing, something she loves. But, having lived in Madison, Wisconsin, all her life, she runs away precipitously, to New York City, where she takes fashion courses at Parsons and meets an older Holden Caulfield type, unable to come to terms with his own past. Eventually, Carrie returns to Mike and Madison.
By the end of the book, Carrie remains somewhat confused about her own path as she struggles to gain the confidence of her friends and family. But she serves as an acute observer of others, and hence a wide variety of characters come vividly to life, as does the difference between small-town and big-city mores. With a sure sense of pace, the book explores two young lovers faced with real tragedy as it raises the moral issue of what one person owes another human being.
EDITH PATTOU
East
12–14 • Harcourt • 2003 • 508 pp.
In a beautifully told story, Edith Pattou adapts the Norwegian fairy tale "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" into a lush, romantic story. Set in Norway in the 1500s, East alternates among several voices as it builds tension and plot. Born to a very superstitious mother, Rose frequently sees a white bear as she plays and has had one as an imaginary friend since she was small. One night a white bear appears, promising to give the family prosperity and cure a sick child if he can take Rose. When he returns, Rose chooses to go with him—a journey that takes her over land and sea into a mysterious castle. There her every need gets attended to; in this magical setting lamps light, succulent food appears, and a magnificent loom has been set up for her weaving, for Rose loves the craft. Slowly she and the bear become comfortable with each other. However, one night she sneaks a look at the bear—really a handsome man under a spell—spills candle wax on him, and seals his fate; he now belongs to the beautiful troll queen. Horrified by what she has done, Rose sets out on a long journey, over the ocean and through the icebound land, to be reunited with her bearman.
With magnificent descriptions of the icy and northern terrain, an examination of love, loss, and betrayal, and the universal language of fairy tales, East has already proved popular with both adults and young readers and has been adopted for summer reading lists. An excellent choice for mother-daughter reading groups.
LOUISE PLUMMER
The Unlikely Romance of Kate Bjorkman
12–14 • Delacorte • 1995 • 184 pp.
In a modern romance just as innocent as Seventeenth Summer, Kate Bjorkman writes about her perfect Christmas, when she and her brother's best friend fall in love. The setting, St. Paul, Minnesota, conjures up scenes from It's a Wonderful Life. With two parents devoted to each other and a creative and supportive family, Kate has a normal life that could be considered ideal. An unlikely romance heroine, she considers herself an Amazon at six feet in height; she wears thick glasses and shares her father's passion for linguistics. But when her brother, his new wife, and his best friend, Richard, visit from California at Christmas, Kate begins a romance with Richard that looks like it could last—or at least has lasted for all of six weeks.
Kate fills her saga, written as a romance novel, with tension and a betrayal by her own friend; with humor, she also provides notes for revising her story that add depth to the characters. But in the end, this sensible young woman, who plans to go to Columbia University after high school, writes long and delicious passages about kissing.
This old-fashioned, charming romance contains appealing characters, a very happy ending, and much holiday cheer.
ELIZABETH MARIE POPE
The Sherwood Ring
12–14 • Houghton Mifflin • 1958 • 266 pp.
The guerrilla fighting in upper New York State during the Revolutionary War has seldom been explored in fiction; Elizabeth Marie Pope uses that background for a superb romance and ghost story set in Orange County, New York, where the author lived. Orphaned Peggy Grahame goes to live with her uncle at the old family farm, but soon she makes friends with the ghosts who linger at her ancestral home. They tell fabulous stories about the Revolution, when bands of American Patriots and British Loyalists roamed the countryside. Peggy watches her ancestor Barbara fall in love with a clever British officer—even his name, Peaceable Drummond Sherwood, could cause hearts to flutter.
Pope wrote books "connected in some way with history, magic, love, and intelligence." She created only one other novel, The Perilous Gard; both books are gems; both make readers long for other books by Pope.
Although Peggy pales a bit as a protagonist, her ancestors shine. Lush and rich, a well-paced story with a lot of history, The Sherwood Ring will answer any request for a gentle romance.
Is Kissing a Girl Who Smokes Like Licking an Ashtray?
12–14 • Farrar, Straus • 1992 • 208 pp.
Ashy, geeky high school senior, Biff fantasizes about a romantic involvement with the girl of his dreams, Tommie Isaac. But a fifteen-year-old wisecracking and cigarette-smoking rebel, Heidi, enters his life, and the two develop a platonic relationship. Most of the action takes place over one weekend; at the end of this romantic comedy, it remains unclear if Biff will abandon his fantasy girl for the reality of Heidi.
Superb descriptions of the Seattle area and realistic dialogue round out this rare examination of a male adolescent in the throes of a crush.
DODIE SMITH
I Capture the Castle
14–18 • Atlantic • 1948 • 352 pp.
In a dilapidated, rural English castle, seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain, an aspiring writer, begins a journal, describing her unusual family and her feelings about them. Although the Mortmains purchased the castle when they were rich, they have watched their resources dwindle and now lack food and other necessities. At the beginning of the narrative, Cassandra's sister Rose jokingly invokes a spell to change their fortunes; then the wealthy American Cotton family takes over the nearby estate. With romance, disappointments, and a happy ending, the old-fashioned story easily captures readers' hearts and often is compared to the works of Jane Austen.
Written when the British author Dodie Smith was living in Pennsylvania, homesick for England, the book was out of print in America for many years. But in the 1990s J. K. Rowling called attention to the novel, one of her favorites; reissued, it also served as the basis for a 2003 film. Now it appears on many high school reading lists and has been embraced by a modern audience, enchanted by the protagonist, the genteel poverty, and life in a castle.
Stargirl
12–14 • Knopf • 2000 • 186 pp.
Although Jerry Spinelli once got a letter saying, "So you wrote a book. Big deal," Stargirl has been voted the favorite book of young readers in several states. The book contains two of Spinelli's most memorable characters, Leo and Stargirl, a free spirit. Homeschooled, with a purpose all her own, Stargirl completely alters an Arizona high school where "all wore the same clothes, talked the same way, ate the same food." Wearing long pioneer skirts and carrying a pet rat, Stargirl truly seems to comes from another planet—but "She is who we really are. Or were." This innocent love story explores teenage culture and nonconformity, and with a character inspired by Spinelli's wife, Eileen, it shows the heart and wit of one of our most gifted writers for young readers.
WENDELIN VAN DRAANEN
Flipped
12–14 • Knopf • 2001 • 212 pp.
Ever since Juli looked into Bryce's dreamy blue eyes in second grade, she has been smitten. Finding Juli and her family a bit freakish, Bryce immediately begins to avoid her. Juli is definitely unique. She sits in the ancient sycamore tree on the block; she raises chickens in her backyard and delivers eggs. But by eighth grade, everything changes. Bryce starts thinking about Juli all the time, and she begins to wonder if he isn't handsome but shallow; he starts pursuing her, and she starts running away.
Told in chapters by Juli's and Bryce's alternating first-person voices, the contrasting points of view—he-said, she-said—round out two intriguing and very believable characters. Breezy, funny, yet true to eighth-grade life, Flipped captures young lovers, their insecurities, their emotional roller-coaster rides, and their insanity.
A Certain Slant of Light
14–18 • Houghton Mifflin • 2005 • 282 pp.
Like any other star-crossed teenage lovers, Billy and Jennifer come from families that oppose their developing relationship. With his father in the penitentiary and his mother in the hospital, Billy is ordered around by his older brother, who forbids him to bring Jennifer to the house. Jennifer comes from a devout but completely controlling Christian family, and her parents believe that she should date only people from the church. So the teens grab spare moments, find secret places in the theater to make love, and skip classes to have a chance to be together, for they know they are the only beings on earth who can truly understand and appreciate each other.
Such has been the standard plot of teenage romance since Romeo and Juliet, but Laura Whitcomb adds a peculiar twist. For these two teenagers happen to be old spirits, or Lights, who have yet to find their way to God and heaven. Jennifer's body is appropriated by Helen, who has been around for 130 years; Billy has been taken over by a younger spirit, James. At first, they exchange what they know and have learned about roaming the earth since their deaths. In time they have to find ways to leave their human bodies and be reunited in the spirit. In fact, the book's ending—"We touched now soul to soul, both of us Light. And when we kissed, the garden rocked, floating upstream"—contains a kiss that sends them both literally into heaven.
Raising many questions, the book explores controversial territory: Jennifer is accused of having an affair with a teacher, and the lovers have unbridled and totally fulfilling sex. But because of the fantasy in the book, these details seem less stark than they would in a totally realistic story.
This stunning debut novel keeps readers turning the pages to find out what happens.
CONNIE WILLIS
To Say Nothing of the Dog
14–18 • Bantam • 1998 • 424 pp.
In this sequel to The Doomsday Book, Connie Willis delivers an incredibly funny screwball romance. By 2057, Oxford University has made great advancements in time travel but lacks funding. Hence it takes on the project of Lady Schrapnell, a wealthy American who wants to rebuild Coventry Cathedral—destroyed in 1940 in the Blitz. The historian Ned Henry has been through so many drops, hunting for a hideous item called "the bishop's bird stump," that he finds himself badly time-lagged and senseless. Since a young student, Verity Kindle, miraculously transported a cat into the present, something no one thought possible, Ned is sent back to 1888 to repair the space-time continuum. But because of his mental condition, he fails to understand any of his instructions. As he basks in the Victorian world, meeting an amazing number of eccentric characters (including Charles Darwin, who keeps jumping out of trees), Ned falls in love with Verity. With chaos and confusion, they attempt to put the right couples together, because one produces an RAF grandson who engaged in critical bombings against the Germans. But the time-travel system seems to be breaking down, and at points they are not sure they will ever get back to their own Oxford.
In this fast-moving winner of the Hugo Award, filled with information about chaos theory, the Victorian age, World War II, Dorothy Sayers, and séances, the author provides a lot of excitement and humor and unites three pairs of lovers. In the final pages, Ned and Verity experience their first kiss, which lasts for 169 years. This book is a good choice for those who love tales of time travel, historical fiction, mysteries, or complex but totally rewarding romances.
ELLEN WITTLINGER
Hard Love
14–18 • Simon & Schuster • 1999 • 227 pp.
PRINTZ HONOR
Sixteen-year-old John shuffles between his depressed mother, who won't even touch him, and absent, playboy father, with whom John spends weekends. Because of his interest in zine writing and publishing, he meets Marisol, who writes Escape Velocity, a zine he admires. Although John struggles with his own identity and has always stayed away from the opposite sex, Marisol has always had a strong grasp on her own lesbianism. In this modern saga of unrequited love, John knows from the beginning that the girl he grows to love and care for cannot, and does not, return his feelings. At the end another girl emerges, and readers believe that John will finally heal, recovering from "hard love."
With pages that look like authentic zines, handwritten poems, and letters, the narrative moves at a snappy pace as it provides a compelling portrait of an adolescent writer experiencing a quixotic first love. The format works particularly well for reluctant readers. As one teen has written, "I HATED reading ... But this book has changed that forever."
JACQUELINE WOODSON
If You Come Softly
12–14 • Putnam • 1998 • 181 pp.
In a contemporary interracial romance, two fifteen-year-olds at an elite New York City prep school fall in love at first sight. Ellie, an upper-middle-class Jewish girl, tells the story in the first person, and the experiences of Jeremiah, the African-American son of a movie producer and famous writer, have been related in the third person. The author has rendered their situation with delicacy and subtlety: the intensity of their emotions, their developing trust in each other, and the problems that come from a perfect love in a deeply flawed society. Even though tragedy has been forecast, it still doesn't soften the impact of the heart-wrenching ending when Jeremiah is killed as he runs in a white neighborhood.
Jacqueline Woodson wanted to create a modern Romeo and Juliet, but in her book the enemies of the young lovers are racism and police brutality. She crafted a book that haunts readers, who find themselves turning the events of the novel over and over again in their minds.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFÓN
The Shadow of the Wind
14–18 • Penguin • 2004 • 487 pp.
This blend of thriller, historical fiction, mystery, and love story has been set in Barcelona, Spain, in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1945 ten-year-old Daniel Sempere, the son of a rare book dealer, is taken to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a secret vault containing a labyrinth of passageways and crammed bookshelves. There he adopts one volume, The Shadow of the Wind by Julián Carax, making sure it will stay alive. Even though another bookseller immediately offers to buy it from him at great cost, he holds on to it and cherishes it. But he does so at great risk because a malignant figure, Laín Coubert, has bought up or stolen every available copy and burned them.
In a book where the subplots have subplots, Daniel comes to spend time with the bookseller and falls in love with his blind niece, Clara. He reads to her and worships her from afar. Ultimately he goes on a quest to find Carax; in that process he discovers unpleasant details about Spain during the Civil War and World War II. As Daniel delves into Carax's past, his own story, as he becomes involved with his best friend's sister, starts to strangely mirror the life of Carax himself.
On the bestseller list in Spain, The Shadow of the Wind has been given a masterful translation, full of wit and wisdom: "Destiny is usually around the corner.... But what destiny does not do is home visits. You have to go for it."
The novel, like Cornelia Funke's Inkheart, appeals particularly to those who love books just as much as those who enjoy a complex and magnificent love story. This multifaceted novel—scary, erotic, tragic, thrilling, and emotionally satisfying—shows Daniel's coming of age, his first sexual experience, and his growth into a compassionate and believable young man.