Books for Young Adults : FICTION

Young Adult novels often have difficulty finding their readership because of the classification system of books for young people: Picture books for the very young; books with ample illustration for younger grade school children; then for older grade school students, fewer illustrations, longer length.

Finally, there are books for the YA reader--”12 and up,” the dust jacket often tells us. Ah, but there’s the rub--the story that is suitable for most 12-year-olds is usually much too young for the 15- to 18-year-old group. Conversely, books written for that more sophisticated level are often not appropriate for younger readers.

The term Young Adult would come nearer the mark if applied to those in 10th grade and up, for many of these readers are truly adult in their literary taste, and the others fast catching up, with a need to stretch.

“YA” should denote a novel worthy of any adult’s attention, but with a particular attraction to the late teen and early 20s reader. Yet many of these titles are lost among the picture books and stories for younger readers, or because the label “12 and up” turns away the truly adult reader. A listing in both the junior and adult publishers’ catalogues, and a reach for that dual readership would find these books their widest and most appreciative audience.

You will note, in the following recent and admirable YA novels, some have that more adult focus, while others carry a special appeal to middle school readers.

The Fantastic Freshman by Bill Brittain (Harper & Row: $11.95; 150 pp.) is a delightful, lighthearted story about Stanley Muffet, freshman at Joseph P. Alewood High School. From the outset, he is determined to quickly become a Very Important Person on campus. Actually Stanley is a short, freckle-faced, big-eared, average kind of a kid, scared at the thought of high school, and it is only through the mysterious influence of a little golden four-armed man in a small glass pyramid that he succeeds in his reach for VIPdom. A terrifying success. This roller-coaster novel will keep sixth- to ninth-graders turning pages.

Those Summer Girls I Never Met by Richard Peck (Delacorte: $14.95; 177 pp.). “This summer Drew Wingate will come into his own. He’ll turn sixteen on the same day as his best friend, Bates Morthland, and together they plan to get their driver’s license, act cool, meet girls, and--”

Instead, Drew learns that not only does he have to accompany a grandmother he has never met on a cruise for old people, but that he has to keep an eye on Steph, his younger sister, also shanghaied in this unseemly fashion.

But the grandmother is something else! She is Connie Carlton, a famous singer of the ‘40s, who knew and worked with all the “greats,” even Sinatra “when he had hair.” Drew Wingate will delight young readers, but Peck’s sensitive portrayal of teen-agers, parents and grandparents and his lovely feel for the ‘40s should snare some older readers, too.

Just Be Gorgeous by Barbara Wersba (Harper & Row: $11.95; 156 pp.) is a sad, funny, wise book that will speak to all readers. Heidi Rosenbloom, 16, trying to come to terms with herself and life, lives on Manhattan’s Upper East Side with her divorced mother, who sees her daughter as a young Marilyn Monroe. Heidi’s father, in Greenwich Village, insists she’s a kind of female Albert Einstein.

Heidi, desperately lonely, is determined to be her unique self. Trying to define that elusive person, she cuts her hair very short, haunts thrift shops for clothes of her own choosing. Her favorite garment is a man’s frayed coat, which “my mother called That Coat . . . on a man it might come down to the knees . . . on me, it came down to the ankles. . . “

Then she meets Jeffrey Collins, who dances for money in the street, believes he’s destined for the stage and is waiting to be “discovered.” His home turns out to be an abandoned building shared with other street people. Jeffrey’s courage stirs Heidi’s uncertain soul. He makes her feel admired, loved for her unique and special self. The touching quality of their unconventional love will linger long in your memory. Wersba, as always, is a master of scene and character.

The Girl in the Box (Joy Street/Little, Brown: $12.95; 165 pp.), a new novel by award-winning Ouida Sebestyen, certainly should speak to us all.

“TO ANYONE WHO FINDS THIS. My name is Jackie McGee. I am close by. In something like a cellar. Find me. Please contact the police immediately. So they can tell my parents I am alive.”

Thus begins a gripping narrative, that spreads as wide as life, though told from below ground, in darkness. High school senior Jackie McGee did not see her kidnaper’s face. He wore a ski mask. In the cellar, she discovers a small supply of food and water, then a hairline streak of light beside the metal door that slants above her head. These help subdue terror.

A portable typewriter and box of paper she had been carrying was dumped in the cellar before the kidnaper slammed and locked the door. Using these, Jackie writes notes to the outside world, slips them through the slit, hoping someone will find them before the water and food are gone. Writing keeps her sane through her long ordeal--a journal, letters, a story. These she keeps with her there in the dark. The writings give the reader a full picture of 18 years of life, and hope for more. An admirable book, the plotting, characters and unique setting, a tour de force of writing skill and understanding of the human heart.