Summer of My German Soldier: Springtime for Hitler (Part I)

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wrinkled look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick rereads 'Summer of My German Soldier', Bette Greene's 1973 book about Patty Bergen, who fears her father more than an escaped Nazi.

What can we say about a Jewish dad who beats the hell out of his daughter? It is not, to say the least, the common literary conception of "Jewish Dad" found in most old-school YA, where, when Tate is in evidence at all, he is generally a hardworking sort stamping down rags and letting his children choose books from his store, or a kindly dentist dubbed "Dodo bird" by his adoring daughter. (Do your reading for next week, ladies!) In fact, excepting stepfathers, genuinely beastly fathers are rare in YA: while they run the gamut from switching their daughters to make a point (oh, Pa!) to calling them fat and useless, I can't think of any other instance where one whips off his belt to beat his daughter by the side of the road...before he even knows she's sheltering a Nazi.

This Week In Tabloids: The Spears Sisters Reunite & Someone Sells The Pix

From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler: City of Angels

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wrinkled look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick rereads 'From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler', E.L. Konigsburg's 1967 novel about extremely unaccompanied minors run amok at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I miss New York. Not the New York somewhere over to my left. A New York before The Squid & The Whale brought divorce to the Museum of Natural History. A New York before nannies got groped; a New York before private-school girls intertwangled lustily on beds in some benighted plan to rule the school. It was a New York that had room for a notepad-toting minor to spy unaccompanied on people through dumbwaiters; a boy to wander Chinatown having adventures with a cricket; teenagers to contend with a genie in a mystery at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Not a world where children playact adult dramas, or unhappily contend with the chaos adults leave in their wake. It's a New York that keeps adults perpetually at shoulder-level, briefcases and purses jostling, while the children, front-and-center in the frame, get up to whatever children get up to.

This Week In Tabloids: "Desperate" Jen Aniston Finally Gets Laid

A Gift of Magic: Totally Psyched

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wrinkled look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick rereads 'A Gift Of Magic, Lois Duncan's 1971 story of 11-year-old Nancy Barrett, whose grandmother bequeaths her a totally ESPecial legacy.

If every author has their red-headed stepchild of a book (John Updike: The Witches of Eastwick: WTF?), every author also has the book that, whether it's a reader favorite or not, seems the purest expression of their very authorial being.

This Week In Tabloids: Tom & Katie's Issues, Angelina's Doctor Drama, Shiloh's Cute Face

When Animals Attract: Your Cuddly Childhood Creatures

The Secret Garden: Still No Idea What a Missel Thrush Is

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wrinkled look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick rereads 'The Secret Garden', Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1909 novel about an orphan who gardens her way to a good character.

Somewhere along the line, along with straw prams and caning rods, having a child character not even the narrator can stand went out of business. (Off the top of my head, I can only think of Ingalls Wilder's condemnation of Nellie, and you know she was just writing the God's honest truth.) But in the case of Mary Lennox, daughter of Colonial India, Frances Hodgson Burnett does not stint:

She had a little thin face and a little thin body, thin light hair and a sour expression. Her hair was yellow, and her face was yellow, because she had been born in India and had always been ill in one way or another.

This Week In Tabloids: TomKat Split; Ashlee Simpson's Engaged & Pregnant; Mariah Carey Is Slim

The Vagina Monologues Anniversary Celebration Was Wet & Wild

Earlier this year, author Nancy Redd was asked to give her 2007 body-positive book 'Body Drama' to 250 teenage Hurricane Katrina survivors at a ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of the 'Vagina Monologues'. "I've harbored a major crush on Eve Ensler for over nine years," Nancy says. "Growing up with normal teenage angst and inadequate health education, I hated my vulva and I never referred to "down there" as anything other than a "hoo-ha". The Monologues were my introduction to feminism; nothing was more empowering to 18-year-old me than having a legit reason to scream "MY SHORT SKIRT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU!" and "IT'S SUPPOSED TO SMELL LIKE PUSSY!" to the world." Below, Nancy fills us in on everything that went down in the (very fertile) Crescent City over the weekend, where 18,000 participants raised awareness of violence towards women by giving love to vaginas and the amazing women who own them.

"We call her sultry and sexy when we crave her, but after when we want to demean her and dismiss her, we call her swampy and soiled."

"We brag about her music, the way she moves, we beg to get inside her, but disown her later when she has needs."

The Chocolate War: Life's Tough, Kid

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wrinkled look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, New York Observer reporter, blogger and Postcards From Yo Momma co-creator Doree Shafrir rereads 'The Chocolate War,' Robert Cormier's 1974 novel about a 14-year-old boy who stands up to the bullies at his high school.

Whenever I Feel Like Starving Myself, I Just Look At "1 Cup Of Oatmeal With Brown Sugar.doc"

The Girl's Guide To Commenting On Jezebel

"Will Squirting Too Much Make Me Incontinent?"

To All My Fans, With Love, From Sylvie: No Telephone To Child Services

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wrinkled look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick rereads 'To All My Fans, With Love, From Sylvie', the 1982 story of Sylvie Krail, who hits the road for Hollywood with a hatbox and a dream.

This Week In Tabloids: Britney Is Thin, Mentally Ill, & Planning A Trip To Maui

The Harper's (Bazaar) Index: The Couture Economy, Demi Moore, & Joan Collins' Issue With Rich Guys

Do people get confused by Harper's Magazine and Harper's Bazaar? After all, the luxury goods industry is not so different from Halliburton — shameless, ubiquitous, and sooo fucking talented at charging more for less. So again, we're taking things to their (ill)logical end with our own "Harper's (Bazaar) Index", inspired by Harper's famous feature, which parses the world of big oil, big money, big politics and Big Pharma and puts it into easily-digested numerical form. After the jump, Anna and I look at the April issues of both magazines and juxtapose America's economic troubles with John Galliano, mock Demi Moore's personal heroine and compare the average income of "attractive" American men with Joan Collins' anecdote about a rich, nasty Arab sheikh.

3 Reasons Why Smart Women Love Baseball

"I believe in the Church of Baseball. I've tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones. I've worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I heard that, I gave Jesus a chance. But it just didn't work out between us. The Lord laid too much guilt on me. I prefer metaphysics to theology. You see, there's no guilt in baseball, and it's never boring... which makes it like sex...I've tried 'em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball."