Entering the Bookstore

Remember when you were 8, 9, 10 years old, being dragged to the mall by Mom (who was inevitably shopping for bras or something equally boring/embarrassing)? If you were lucky you didn't have to get new shoes and have your toes pinched by the guy with thinning hair then parade up and down the industrial carpet at Tom McCann's, but then again, you knew you'd be tormented by having to walk right past the syrupy-sweet smell of Karamel Korn that you weren't allowed to eat because it would rot your teeth.

But there was a carrot on a stick that kept you going...an oasis in this vast desert of consumerism that probably had "park" or "parke" or "center" or "centre" as part of its name: Waldenbooks. Or maybe for you it was B. Dalton. Or Brentano's. Whatever the name, the important thing was that you could nearly always count on escaping to the bookstore for a sweet reward to the vicissitudes of shopping with Mom.

And where did you head? Well, since you, like me, were a "pre-teen" (that's what we were called in the days before the word "tween" was invented), you probably made a beeline for the YA section. "I'm a young adult?" you reflected with satisfaction. "All right! Now we're talkin'!"

Once in that sacred corner of the store, you gloried in the book covers: candy-colored teen models with apple cheeks on the "Sweet Dreams" romance series by Bantam; depressingly realistic oil-painted teens (usually amidst a bleak urban landscape) on the Laurel Leafs by Dell; those distinctive water-colored Garth Williams renderings of Ma, Pa, Laura, and Mary on the Little House books by Harper-Collins.

Ahhh. Bliss.

Well, with this blog I aim to recapture at least some of that feeling. You're once again a pre-teen in the YA section of the store, and Mom's going to allow you to pick out one of these books to take home. You'll pore over the cover illustration, read the back blurb, and finally crack open the book to read that all-important first sentence.

OK, not quite. What will happen is this: I'll be focusing on one '70s/'80s-era YA novel each week. You'll get to see the cover and then read a summary and my reflections on the book. If it's one I read as a pre-teen, I'll do my darnedest to give you a then-and-now perspective. I invite your participation in the form of comments. 's okay? 's alright!