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.")