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fine lines

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.

(In honor of Passover being two-three? - weeks ago, we are doing a two-part series about Jewish girls during WWII. Today's column is the one with the real Nazi. Please prepare your book reports on Judy Blume's 'Starring Sally J. Freedman, As Herself,' which contains a completely imaginary Hitler, for the comments next week.)


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.

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fine lines

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.

Claudia knew that she could never pull off the old-fashioned kind of running away. That is, running away in the heat of anger with a knapsack on her back.


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.

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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.

Once upon a time in a house by the sea, lay an old woman, a special old woman who had the gift of magic.


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.

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fine lines

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.

When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable child ever seen. It was true, too.

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.

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fine lines

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.

Back when teenagers still bought books that didn't feature a paranormal love interest, a school for wizards, or spoiled Upper East Side prep schoolers, there were books like Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War, which featured an all-male, working-class cast of characters at a Catholic school in Massachusetts (as did most of Cormier's books; he grew up Catholic in Leominster, Mass.). In fact, when I suggested rereading The Chocolate War, I soon realized that I had had another one of Cormier's books in mind, the deeply weird, depressing I Am the Cheese, in which the reader slowly realizes that the narrator is, in fact, in a mental hospital and tried to kill himself.

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fine lines

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.

I've always had a soft spot for Ellen Conford, one of the great unsung authors of the YA genre. (I'm not quite sure how you quantify "sung"ness, but let's start it at screaming when an author's name is mentioned, for one.) And why is she unsung? Because her novels, I think, are so skilled and vibrant, she's prey to the solid-A syndrome: so dependable, readers forget she even exists. By the time our daily reading has switched to matte-finish trade paperbacks, memory has already mistakenly shelved her work in with a favorite, showier author. (My particular mis-shelf is always to put And This is Laura, her teen-psychic foray, into the Lois Duncan section.)

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memory laine

Claudia Kishi Of The Baby-Sitters Club: My First Fashion Muse

Someone named Kim has founded a blog analyzing the outfits of Claudia Kishi of the Baby-Sitters Club. Every single post is stirring these long-dormant emotions. Emotions that formed the basis of my very identity. Seriously, Claudia...where to begin? She was Japanese-American. She was only 12, but her awesome ensembles made her look at least fifteen. Claudia was wacky, unfiltered, studied and deliberate and sophisticated and truly outrageous all at once. Claudia was Harajuku before Harajuku; ahead of her time. Leggings! Feathers! Beads! Boots! I am glad Claudia was in middle school when I was eight, out of the age range of working at American Apparel. Claudia was a free spirit. Once Claudia was shown up by Stacey's friend Laine, who lived in Manhattan and dressed all in black. Laine looked at least nineteen. But Laine was sad, there was something tragic and vulnerable in all her snotty minimalism; Claudia possessed the carefree Whatthefuckery of the suburbs. I was never a Claudia girl; in fact, most of my post adolescent life has been about rejecting Claudia's sort of zany excess. As a kid I fancied myself more of a Dawn, actually. Remember when Claudia helped Dawn get dressed when they went on that Disney Cruise in the first Super Special? You will... More »

fine lines

The Westing Game: Partners In Crime

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 Westing Game', Ellen Raskin's 1978 multi-cultural, multi-generational, multi-p.o.v. mystery about the race for a multi-millionaire's fortune.

The sun sets in the West (just about everybody knows that) but Sunset Towers faced east. Strange!


Okay, it's fine how I just figured out the significance of that line now. But before I get into how I'm still happily flummoxed by a book for the lanyard set, I'd like to say how I've become a little perturbed how technology keeps obviating classic teenage reads. Forget how we no longer need to disembowel our own pigs or avoid being shuttled to the stocks — I mean more recent betrayals, like how the cell phone would have killed Are You in the House Alone, or how Zach could have just kicked Vicky an email after Yellowstone. (I'd still like to think Harriet would have resisted the glories of Facebook.) But worst-worst! — is the most fabulist fabulous The Westing Game, which in present time would have ended abruptly the minute one plugged "FRUITED PURPLE WAVES FOR SEE" into Google.

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fine lines

The Moon By Night: Travels with Vicky

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 Madeleine L'Engle's 1963 novel 'The Moon By Night,' in which Vicky Austin goes camping and gets to know boys from A to Z.

"Vicky!"


It was John's voice and he was calling for me. I supposed somewhere on the inside of my mind I realized it, but with the outside of my mind all I heard was the constant crying of sea gulls and the incoming boom of breakers.

Don't buy into the party of unity: When it's comes to Madeleine L'Engle, you're either a Meg, Polly, or Vicky girl. (NO ONE is Camilla. And whatever, Maggies — you're deliberately being provoking.) For those of you rusty on the trois dames of L'Engle's works, Meg is, OF COURSE, Meg Murray, of A Wrinkle in Time fame, while Polly (Polyhymnia) is her red-headed daughter of the excellent Dragons in the Waters action. Vicky is Vicky Austin, of Meet the Austins, two kinds of awkward, three kinds of innocent, and strangely appealing for a fourteen-year-old given to frequent bouts of vigorous prayer.

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Fine Lines Lady Lois Lowry (Anastasia Krupnik, Taking Care of Terrific, The Giver) was interviewed by Seattle public radio station KUOW on Friday, and the 71-year-old writer talked about her career as an author, the importance of children's/young adult literature, her family, and how writing has helped her deal with life's slings and arrows. Although long, the podcast of her interview is a great listen for a slow workday or leisurely lunch hour. You can listen to it here. [KUOW]

fine lines

My Sweet Audrina: The Book Of Sister And Forgetting

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 'My Sweet Audrina', V.C. Andrews' X-rated, 1982 gothic horror novel in which Audrina Adare, an innocent, is Desperately Seeking Sister.

There was something strange about the house where I grew up.

For a three-month span in my early twenties, when I was under the profound misimpression I was an appropriate candidate for a PhD in English literature, I was obsessed with writing a paper on the narrative conceit of what, in a sort of pertinent Q.E.D., I went around calling "The Man You Seek is Yourself." The most obvious example of my pet trope is Oedipus, who is so busy killing his father and sleeping with his mother he doesn't realize he is killing his father and sleeping with his mother, but you see it in mysteries everywhere, from Mary Higgins Clark's Where Are the Children to No Way Out, a.k.a. Last Decent Costner. While reading most mysteries feels like having a scatter of jigsaw pieces suddenly fuse into a picture with a satisfying click, the TMYSIY™ theme is closer to trying to locate, with increasing irritation, the weird corner piece with some blue cloud stuff in one corner and half the villager's hat along the edge, then realizing you've been holding it in your hands the whole time.

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Alanna: The First Adventure: For The Crossdressing Knight In Every Girl

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. Today, YA author, former Gawker editor and 'Fine Lines' guest-writer Emily Gould rereads 'Alanna: The First Adventure', Tamora Pierce's 1983 novel about about how much tougher puberty is when no one knows you're a girl because you switched places with your twin brother in order to train to be a knight.

The scene where the protagonist gets her period for the first time is to YA novels what climactic car chases are to action movies and makeover montages are to chick flicks: hotly anticipated, reassuringly consistent and familiar, and always entertaining. Alanna: The First Adventure is an exception.
Alanna woke at dawn, ready for another session with Coram's big sword. She got out of bed - and gasped in horror to find her thighs and sheets smeared with blood. She washed herself in a panic and bundled the sheets down the privy. What was going on? She was bleeding, and she had to see a healer; but who? She couldn't trust the palace healers. They were men and the bleeding came from a secret place between her legs.

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gender benders

Harriet The Spy: Iconoclastic, American Lezebel Icon

NPR's "Morning Edition" ran a segment this morning on what a groundbreaking work of young adult fiction Harriet the Spy was when it debuted in 1964. According to NPR correspondent Neva Grant, heroine Harriet M. Welsch was considered controversial because "Harriet saw too much, said too much. She even had to see a psychiatrist." Some schools banned the book, explains Grant, and some critics hated it, but readers, especially those who felt that they were outside the mainstream, appreciated that Harriet loved herself, disheveled hair and all. (You can get some more Harriet love in last Friday's Fine Lines column). Readers like Kathleen Horning, now a librarian in Wisconsin, liked the fact that Harriet was a tomboy who, unlike many 50s and 60s heroines, didn't have to go through a girlified redemption by the end of the book. In fact, as Grant reports, like Harriet, Horning was a "tomboy who didn't want to reform." Later on, Horning realized she was a lesbian. More »

fine lines

The Long Secret: CSI: Puberty

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 Long Secret', Louise Fitzhugh's 1965 sequel to 'Harriet The Spy', in which Honorary (Junior) Jezebel Harriet M. Welsch attempts to figure out the mystery of her best friend, Beth, during a summer on Long Island.

The notes were appearing everywhere.

At the end of the day, is our instinctive dislike of modern teen chick lit — the unholy spawn of Sweet Valley High, Bridget Jones, and Sex and the City, IMHO — fundamentally due to its craven attachment to AmEx and snagging hotties? (For years, the publishing biz has unofficially dubbed the adult wing of the genre "Shopping and Fucking.") As I read back through my YA library, I am starting to wonder if it may just be that all this saddle-stitched vapidity actually misses the point. Traditionally, in women's fiction, from Little Women to The Women's Room, the spotlight has been squarely on what goes down between the, you know, women. (It's in the titles and everything!) But as The Group begat Golden Girls begat Gossip Girls, we've lost the most important font of all drama.

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the week that was

This Week We Binged On Ex-Lax And Tyra

  • We live video-blogged the premiere of America's Next Top Model, menstrual cycle 10! We got really meta and Tracie's dog peed everywhere with glee.
  • We admitted the most destructive things we did to lose weight. Explosive diarrhea resulted.
  • But Elle told us that dudes find 'rexy sexy, and we believe everything we read in Elle.
  • The Sex and the City trailer leaked! Carrie gets jilted! So does Miranda! Charlotte gets knocked up! But does anyone really care?
  • We put orange pits in our teddy bears' heads with Marcy from The Cat Ate My Gymsuit.

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fine lines

The Cat Ate My Gymsuit: A Pocket Full Of Orange Pits

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 Cat Ate My Gymsuit', Paula Danziger's 1974 classic about a sensitive, sardonic teenage girl with a few extra pounds and a whole lotta personality.

I hate my father. I hate school. I hate being fat. I hate the principal because he wanted to fire Ms. Finney, my English teacher.

I feel bad for teens today. Their parents listen to them. Teachers are invested in their intellectual development and well-being. Books are published on their optimal care and feeding; violins brandished for their edification; trips abroad marshaled so they may broaden their horizons and spread this wealth to others, eventually spearheading their own microloan organizations and so forth. What the hell! That's no way to throw down.

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tweenage wasteland

Young Adult Novels Plumb New Depths Of Product Placement

About a year ago, I was desperate to review Dial L For Loser from the New York Times best-selling tween book series The Clique. I thought the title was hilarious and I wanted to see what sort of written culture the kiddies are consuming these days. Within the first ten pages, there were mentions of Ella Moss, Neiman Marcus, Prada, Range Rovers, and Chantico drinking chocolate (even hot beverages must be branded!). In fact, it broke down to 1.8 brand mentions per page, which is staggering when you consider that each page had about 160 words. The characters consuming these lux brands were supposed to be seventh graders. Well listen up kiddies, the brand-infiltration of books aimed at ten-to-twelve year olds is only going to get exponentially worse. A new series of books by HarperCollins and named for a heroine called Mackenzie Blue is offering brand sponsorship for each new novel before the books are even written. More »

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The Witch of Blackbird Pond: Colonies, Slit-Sleeves And Stocks, Oh My!

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 Elizabeth George Speare's 1958 young adult novel 'The Witch Of Blackbird Pond', in which Kit Tyler, a hothouse flower from Barbados, goes to the Colonies and learns the perils of actually knowing how to swim.

ON A MORNING in mid-April, the brigantine Dolphin left the open sea, sailed briskly across the Sound to the wide mouth of the Connecticut River and into Saybrook Harbor. Kit Tyler had been on the forecastle deck since daybreak, standing close to the rail, staring hungrily at the first sight of land in five weeks.

"There's Connecticut colony," a voice spoke in her ear. "You've come a long way to see it."

Ahhh! Don't talk in my ear. For whatever reason, for the first time in my Fine Lines career, the story of Kit Tyler was completely excised from my brain. I couldn't tell you why. I've only read it, like, 34 times, and the yellow spine of the cover I had — a dark, moony head rising up mistily from a swamp—is ineluctably seared in its place on my 8-year-old bookshelf. I mean, I think I read it as recently as a few years ago after stealing it from a doctor's office's waiting room or something.

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