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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

"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.

Are You In The House Alone?: One Out of Four, Maybe More

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 Richard Peck's 1976 novel 'Are You In The House Alone?', the story of a teen named Gail Osbourne and her Very UnSpecial Rape.

Jacob Have I Loved: Oh, Who Am I Kidding, I Reread This Book Once a Week

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 Katherine Paterson's 1980 novel 'Jacob Have I Loved', the story of a young girl, Sara Louise, whom nobody likes as much as her twin sister.

Let's all just start crying now. Seriously, I don't care, don't even read this review — just get up, tell your boss it has to happen and leave work and go home and cry. We are, after all, looking at the works of Katherine Paterson, author of Bridge to Terabithia and The Great Gilly Hopkins, winner of two Newbery Medals and two National Book Awards, daughter of Chinese missionaries (did you know that? I didn't know that). Attention must be paid.

Then Again, Maybe I Won't: Close Your Eyes, And Think Of Jersey City

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 re-reads Judy Blume's 1971 novel 'Then Again, Maybe I Won't', which helped many a young girl learn about hard-ons, wet dreams and the downsides to sudden wealth and suburban Long Island.

Thank god the phrase for "wet dream" is the same in England. I say this not out of any allegiance to Royalist nocturnal emissions, but because I'm using the English edition of this book, and have been thus saved a harsh repeat of my 7-year-old initial read: namely, not knowing what the hell Judy Blume was talking about.

My Darling, My Hamburger: I Will Gladly Pay You Tomorrow For A D&C Today

It's baaack! 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 re-reads 'My Darling, My Hamburger', Paul Zindel's 1969 novel that explores issues of teen romance, pregnancy, and abortion. [FYI: Lizzie is sorry she couldn't get the "real"/vintage cover. If anyone has it and wants to scan it for us, we'll switch it out. This is as hard for us as it is for you. -Ed.]

..."Well" - Maggie lowered her voice - "Mrs. Fanuzzi's advice was that you're supposed to suggest going to get a hamburger."

Harry Potter is bunk. No! Shut up, fans. He's bunk. Bunk, obviously, for many reasons — chief among them that all of you should go read The Phoenix and the Carpet and A Little Princess and get back to me. However, his comprehensive bunkness has a long slime trail extending, Dear Reader, almost precisely to you. And do you know why? Because you have not been content to let him exist solely as a cut-rate hero of a bad-font series on some cheap-ass paper. (Or, as a notable show with, actually, a character named Bunk put it recently, the "weak-ass mayor of a broke-ass city.")

All-Of-A-Kind Family: Where I Would Put Something Yiddish If I Thought You Goyishe Farshtinkiners Would Farshteyn

Welcome back 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 re-reads Sydney Taylor's 1951 classic about a family of five Jewish girls living on NYC's Lower East Side, All-Of-A-Kind Family'.

You know what dress. It is a white linen dress, and it reaches to the tippy-toes of hook-and-eye leather boots. It has a ruffled, lacy front. It was white. White! Now it is a lovely, warm, buttery brown. It has been hanging in the closet as usual. It cannot be yellowed with age. It is very pretty, but...Why is it light brown? How has this happened????

Island Of The Blue Dolphins: I'm A Cormorant And I Don't Care

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the 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 re-reads the Newbury Medal-award winning 1961 Scott O'Dell classic 'Island of the Blue Dolphins'.

All I want for Christmas is a skirt of black cormorant feathers that shimmer green in the sun! There. I've said it. While we're on the subject, I also want a yucca skirt of tightly woven fibers, a sealskin belt, some sealskin sandals, a necklace of glittering black stones, a bull-elephant-tooth wrislet spear to kill devilfish with and-oh, what the hell. Here's the rest of my wishlist:

Three fine needles of whalebone, an awl for making holes, a good stone knife for scraping hides, two cooking pots, and a small box made from a shell with many earrings in it.

Little House In The Big Woods: "I Play With A Pig Bladder Like It's A Balloon"

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes critical look-back at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer/reviewer/blogger Lizzie Skurnick re-reads the first book in the 1932-1943 series of Laura Ingalls Wilder's 'Little House' books, 'Little House In The Big Woods'.

Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs.

Did you know that a black doctor saves the lives of the entire Ingalls family in Little House on the Prairie?

Es verdad. (There is also a not-particularly-sublimated gay sex scene in The Great Gatsby, but no one asked me about that.) I state this not because these are the most salient points at hand-or even points, really-but because I cannot figure out any other way to enter into a discussion of THE MOST IMPORTANT WORK OF OUR TIME.

'The Grounding Of Group 6': Have Fun At School Kids, And Don't Forget To Die

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the feature in which we give a sentimental look-back to the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer/reviewer/blogger Lizzie Skurnick re-reads the 1983 Julian F. Thompson young adult classic 'The Grounding Of Group 6'.

The people in their group, Group 6, were all sixteen, all five of them, and of none of them was fat.

It's been a while since literature gave us a good child slaying. I mean, obvs parents in books kill their children all the time — leave babies in the woods, drown them, let them be stolen by bad people, drown them, let them be drown'd, don't notice they've stopped breathing, let them get strangled and ra— Oh, right, MOTHERS in books kill their children. (Men STEAL them...for their own good!) In any case, you are still hard-pressed to find a group of well-off parents offing their offspring — who have, by the way, managed not to be fat — for no good reason at all.

Are You There, Crazy Psychic Muse? It's Me, Lois Duncan

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', a new feature in which we give a sentimental look-back to the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. We asked Lizzie Skurnick — writer, book reviewer, blogger, teen expert and Nat'l Books Critics Circle board member — to start off the series. Below, Lizzie takes on mystery/suspense master Lois Duncan's fall 1977 classic 'Summer of Fear'.

Over the course of the last decade I have been conducting a longitudinal survey on the works of Lois Duncan as experienced by other women my own age (old), often while trying on eyeliner at Ricky's or attempting to alienate someone's annoying new boyfriend. Amongst many unsurprising results ("I thought I was psychic until I was 32"; "Why are you talking about Lois Duncan to my new boyfriend"), one surprising one is as follows: