Teenagers have been moping through books since the beginning of time. Now with school out for the summer, teenagers will be hanging around the house for a few months bringing literary angst right to your living room. Of course, one way to turn that frown upside down is to turn a detached teen onto reading, and introduce them to a book they can identify with in some way. And as an added bonus, these same books can serve as an escape for mom and dad. Here are a few of our favorite books about the condition of teenagers.
1. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce: Follow Stephen Dedalus, a sensitive and creative youth who rebels against his family, his education, and his country by committing himself to the artist’s life. “I will not serve,” vows Dedalus, “that in which I no longer believe.…and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can.” This semi-autobiographical novel speaks to the artistic sensibilities of youth.
2. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume: A twelve-year-old talks to God about her ardent desire to be grown up. After moving from New York City to the suburbs, Margaret is anxious to fit in with her new friends, but when the girls start talking about boys, bras, and getting their first periods, Margaret starts to wonder if she’s normal. Lucky for Margaret, she’s got someone else to confide in.
3. Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld: During the late 1980s, fourteen-year-old Lee Fiora leaves behind her close-knit, middle-class Indiana family to enroll in an elite co-ed boarding school in Massachusetts, becoming a shrewd observer of, and eventually a participant in, their rituals and customs.
4. The Catcherin the Rye by J.D. Salinger: The hero-narrator Holden Caulfield is perhaps the most beloved — and moody — teenager in modern literature. After leaving his prep school Holden roams New York City and offers his observations on the shortcomings of adulthood and all the phonies you meet along the way.
5. Indecision by Benjamin Kunkel: Though he’s not technically an adolescent, Dwight B. Wilmerding’s early midlife crisis after being fired at the age of twenty eight sure feels like teenage depressions. Unable to decide on a new career or on a girlfriend, an indecisiveness that he attempts to alleviate with a trial pharmaceutical, he heads to Ecuador to search for Natasha, an exotic former classmate.
6. All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy: Cut off from the life of ranching he has come to love by his grandfather’s death, sixteen-year-old John Grady Cole flees to Mexico, where he and his two companions embark on a rugged and cruelly idyllic journey to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.
7. White Oleander by Janet Fitch: The struggle to build an authentic identity lies at the heart of Astrid’s life as a foster child in Los Angeles after her poet mother, who has kept Astrid isolated from the world, is imprisoned for murder.
Do you think books about teenage angst are good for kids, or do they just feed the flame? What books do you recommend for the tortured teenage soul?
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