Remember Me: After Birth, After Life

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wizened look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick reads 'Remember Me', the 1989 story of a murdered girl who will not take ghost for an answer.

Most people would probably call me a ghost. I am, after all, dead.

Okay guys — don't get mad at me — but I have to admit: I may not quite share your passion for Remember Me. Wait! Don't yell! I will blame it partly on the fact that I was recently rereading Richard Peck's Ghosts I Have Been, and find that Pike's work suffers in comparison, as his narrator's wry commentary is not delivered in a southern accent.

A Ring Of Endless Light: Eros, Thanatos; Now, Where The Hell Is That Dolphin?

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wizened look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick reads 'A Ring of Endless Light', the 1980 Madeleine L'Engle novel about Vicky Austin, who needs a good (dolphin) slap on the ass.

Dolphins. Do I even need to write another word? Oh, I know I do, but...dolphins, I had to write it again! That's the whole reason I started this column—to write about dolphins! You dog/horse/wolf/rabbit/mouse/Cave Lion/alley cat girls, keep your creatures. I am sticking with the one that can race to the horizon and back in an instant, symbolizes the great timeless mystery and wisdom of the universe, and is psychic. Try that with a rabbit sometime.

Sister of the Bride: Veiled Messages

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wizened look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick reads Beverly Cleary's 1963 novel 'Sister of the Bride', in which Barbara McClane discovers she's more than just a member of the wedding.

Is it possible to write a feminist novel featuring a cunning lace jacket and the baking of many batches of Snickerdoodles? Giving it the old college try is Beverly Cleary, best known for the unsinkable Ramona Quimby, not her many novels of young love — though many of them put as profound a spin on adolescent girldom as Ramona does on a girl's childhood.

Bridge To Terabithia: Troubling The Waters

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wizened look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick reads Katherine Paterson's 1977 book 'Bridge to Terabithia', the story of Jess Aarons, the second-fastest runner in the fifth grade.

The life-changing friend is a standard trope of teen fiction, but rereading Bridge to Terabithia, it occurs to me that one does tire of the all-too-common morally bracing appearance of a Pollyanna (as in my beloved "An Old-Fashioned Girl," or, you know, "Pollyanna.") An outsider who is revolutionary purely because of her strangeness ("The Secret Garden," "Iggie's House") is a great variation, but I'm not sure I've ever seen before a character who manages to be both moral and strange outside Bridge to Terabithia's Leslie Burke — both wholly herself and wholly strange, and wholly a revelation to protaganist Jess Aaron.

Flowers In The Attic: He Ain't Sexy, He's My Brother

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wizened look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick reads 'Flowers In The Attic', the 1979 story of a brother and sister who keep it all in the family.

Truly, when I was very young, way back in the 'fifties, I believed all of life would be like one long and perfect summer day. After all, it did start out that way.

About a decade ago, bouncing around a seaside bookstore with my best friend, I ascertained with increasing horror that she had somehow managed to plow through the field of YA literature from the 19th through the 20th century without seeding any V.C. Andrews. "You have to read this!" I said, shaking Flowers in the Attic at her frantically, disturbing the other Eileen Fisher-clad patrons. "Uh-huh," she said, turning over some Alan Shapiro to read the back. "No, really!" I pressed. It is a testament to her forbearance that, after she passed on buying the book and I insisted on buying it FOR her, she suffered me enough to open it and read the first page. At which point she immediately ceased to respond to all communications until she had reached the last one.

A Little Princess: Reversal Of Four Buns

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wizened look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick reads 'A Little Princess', Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1905 story of Sara Crewe, who's both a princess and a pauper.

Once on a dark winter's day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-looking girl sat in a cab with her father and was driven rather slowly through the big thoroughfare.

Tiger Eyes: Cuando Los Lagartijos Corren

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wizened look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick reads Judy Blume's 'Tiger Eyes', the story of 15-year-old Davey, who has a new hole in her shoes....and in her life.

It is the morning of the funeral and I am tearing my room apart, trying to find the right kind of shoes to wear. But all I come up with are my Adidas, which have holes in the toes, and a pair of my flip-flops.

Long ago, in a writing workshop far, far away, I seem to remember a certain teacher informing his charges that one should make sure to tell the entire story in the first sentence. I can't imagine he was speaking of this book in particular, but Tiger Eyes is a shining example of packing a major punch in under 30 words.

Breaking Dawn: What To Expect When You're Expecting... A Vampire

Homecoming: A Dicey Prospect

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wizened look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick reads Cynthia Voight's 'Homecoming', the 1981 story of a girl on a quest for fire.

The woman put her sad moon-face in at the window of the car. "You be good," she said. "You hear me? You little ones, mind what Dicey tells you. You hear?"

Is there anything better than having to count out your every meal? I don't mean in real life — that's horrible of course — but stretching foodstuffs to match your difficult situation is, you might say — I do apologize — a staple of a certain brand of teen fiction. Take Julie (of the Wolves) and her dried seal meat rations. Take Claudia (of Mixed-Up Files) stretching the coins hard-earned by scraping the bottom of the Met's fountain to get her and Jamie a hearty breakfast at the Automat. Take A Little Princess's Sarah Crewe managing to pull together enough pence for four large, fragrant buns—then realizing she is not going to be able to enjoy them if that really poor street urchin keeps looking at her that way.

Go Ask Alice: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the Friday feature in which we give a sentimental, sometimes-critical, far more wizened look at the children's and YA books we loved in our youth. This week, writer / reviewer / blogger Lizzie Skurnick reads 'Go Ask Alice', the "anonymous"ly-written, 1971 story of a girl who keeps the worst kind of diary.

Yesterday I remember thinking I was the happiest person in the whole earth, in the whole galaxy, in all of God's creation.

I'm going to cop to a handicap right away and tell you I'm going to have a hard time writing about this book because it is false. I'm not an absurd stickler for the truth — although, had I been one of those people who read James Frey (I am not one of those people [she said snottily] who read James Frey), I would have been firmly with the my-money-back-please contingent, not the what-is-truth-anyway? claque. Looking at the first line above, I am inclined to blame myself somewhat, as disquisitions about God's creation are not high on the list of crucial topics for the teen female. However, I was eight, and it says "A REAL DIARY" right on the cover.