I AM ALREADY OBSESSED WITH THE NEW BOOK PAPERBACK CRUSH AND I HAVEN’T EVEN READ THE WHOLE THING YET
Hello, I am a thirty-six year old woman and to this day I make it a point to tell people that I have two earring holes in one ear and one in the other just like noted YA lit fashion icon Claudia Kishi. So you might wonder, am I excited for Bustle features editor Gabrielle Moss’s forthcoming book Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of 80s and 90s Teen Fiction? Since I just admitted that I still take style cues from the Baby-Sitters Club, the answer should be clear: I. AM. SHOOKETH. Published by Quirk Books, Paperback Crush is an exploration of the teen series of yesteryear such as the legendary BSC, Sweet Valley High, The Saddle Club, The Gymnasts, and many others that lined our adolescent bookcases in all their hand-painted, pastel cover glory.
Moss, already iconic for her first book, Glop, a parody of Gwyneth’s Paltrow’s infamous lifestyle site, turned from cracking jokes about vaginal steaming (she tried it) to analyzing the golden years of teen lit thanks to the joys of online shopping. She writes in the book’s opening that she became obsessed with revisiting those halcyon reading days after ordering a crate of Sweet Valley High books on eBay for $50, a price she calls “semi-reasonable” and one that I call A STEAL. Moss reveals, “After that first box, I picked up more and more tween series until I had so many that I could no longer play off my behavior as a joke. I had contracted a compulsive need to buy books from the pre-Twilight era of teen literature, the days when no adult would be caught dead reading YA on the subway. I realized that I needed to share what I’d learned from rereading them and, more important, that I needed to justify spending so much money on Fear Street books instead of saving for a house.” Gabrielle girl, you know the Fear Street peeps would definitely tell you that buying a house is overrated. You keep doing what you’re doing.
And what Moss IS doing is even radder than Claudia’s wardrobe. First noting some titles that could be identified as teen hits even as far back as the 18th century, she traces the history of popular teen fiction back to its modern genesis in the 1930s with the Nancy Drew mystery series, up through the “serious issue” novels that were standard YA lit fare in the 1960s and 70s thanks to authors such as S.E. Hinton (Stay gold, Ponyboy!), Paul Zindel, and of course my ride-or-die, Judy Blume. (Are you there, Judy? It’s me, Margaret. Literally!) But as Paperback Crush’s INSANELY PERFECT COVER demonstrates, Moss mainly focuses on the YA fiction craze ignited in the 1980s by Sweet Valley High, which inspired the demand for more soap-y or lighthearted series that highlighted the joys of falling in young love or being a horse girl rather than the throes of first periods or divorced parents. Moss devoured these books as a girl, and in rediscovering them as an adult she realized the powerful effect the books still had on her even as a self-proclaimed “elderly tween”.
What Moss discovered is that diving head first into literary nostalgia became an important form of self-care at a difficult period in her life. She also realized that these stories focusing on girl friendships, girl identity, and girl dreams “helped turn us readers into the women we are today,” though she does acknowledge that most of these series are wanting in representation and intersectionality. Despite a lack of sufficient diversity, for Moss and many others (including yours truly) these books still validated and empowered the tween/teen girl experience by the simple yet (totally!) radical act of putting girls’ lives, loves, and fears in mass-marketed print. Moss tells us that in rereading, “I found a record of my adolescent expectations — of the ideas about romance and womanhood and rebellion that had shaped me. I found the attitudes I’d end up embracing, and resisting, my entire life.”
Like Moss, revisiting old favorites is a necessary escape for me too as we all suffer through what she called the Darkest Timeline in her tweet announcing the book’s release. The warm buzz of nostalgia has been a panacea to the horrors of the daily news cycle grabbing us in the crotch since November 2016. (Recommendation: the sweet, wholesome beauty of the Anne of Green Gables series by Lucy Maud Montgomery could probably save you a lot in therapy bills.) Lately my favorite form of self-care is reading beloved childhood favorites while spending too much on wine and fancy dinners eaten blissfully alone, public scrutiny be damned! Recently I explained the plot of The Fairy Rebel by Lynne Reid Banks to a quizzical waiter. Just lean in to whatever relaxes you, y’all.
Paperback Crush comes out on October 30 (available for pre-order on Amazon!) and until we can hunker down with Halloween* candy and our new favorite book, I present to you a shortlist of some of my favorite tween/teen books of yore to tide you over.
- Sweet Valley Twins Super Edition #1, The Class Trip by Jamie Suzanne, created by Francine Pascal
This book has everything: A princess hidden in a wine cask. A talking mouse in a pink dress. A witch who orders pizza but does not share it. When everyone’s favorite twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield go on a class trip to the Enchanted Forest, a regular day at the amusement park turns into a trip down the rabbit hole after Jessica mysteriously disappears. Magical adventures and hilarity ensue as Elizabeth fights to save her sister from a myriad of fairy tale villains. Worth it alone for the scene in which Jessica’s favorite pop star Johnny Buck shows up in a flying car and uses the power of song to break a wicked spell. Also Tom Sawyer makes a cameo. Hands up shrugging emoji.
2. Anything from the goddess of teen tears, Lurlene McDaniel
I am LIVING (or dying??) for the fact that Moss includes a chapter covering teenage tragedy books in Paperback Crush. Fingers crossed that she discusses Ms. Lurlene’s Dawn Rochelle series about a teen girl’s struggle with cancer. Starting with Six Months To Live, Dawn’s story continues throughout I Want to Live, So Much to Live For, No Time to Cry, and To Live Again. (Spoiler alert: Dawn lives!) Check out LM’s One Last Wish series and take a shot for every time you encounter any form of the words “live” or “die” in the titles. Goodbye, now you are the one dying but of alcohol poisoning, not a deadly disease.
Special shout out to my other tragedy favorites Is My Sister Dying? by Alida E. Young (this one’s about kidney failure) and Jessica’s Dying Light by Jan Kenneth (Jessica is an artist but she’s going blind from retinitis pigmentosa!)
3. The Remember Me trilogy by Christopher Pike
Moss mentions that she covers the Fear Street series by R.L. Stine (also the author of Goosebumps! Yay!) but I wonder if she gets down with any C.Pike. I first encountered his horror novels when at 12 years old I accidentally received a copy of Chain Letter 2: The Ancient Evil as a Christmas gift meant for my older cousin. That banger was full of my first literary experiences with titillating sex and violence, and I was hooked. Though Pike’s work is lodged firmly in the teen terror firmament, some of his stories go remarkably deep for YA lit, such as the Remember Me trilogy starring Shari Cooper. Shari is an 18-year old girl who is thrown off a balcony during a party early in the book. She then spends the rest of the first installment solving her own murder from beyond the grave, culminating in her writing a book called…Remember Me. Shari is an actual ghostwriter, my friends. The rest of the trilogy thrills and chills, but also explores surprisingly heavy questions around the nature of good and evil, reincarnation, and other elements of Hinduism, topics that also surface in Pike’s The Last Vampire series about badass bloodsucker Sita.
4. The Ramona Quimby books by Beverly Cleary
The Ramona books are technically children’s literature rather than YA, but it’s always worth a visit to Klickitat Street because Ramona is a straight-up riot grrrl. To start with, she’s from Portland and a total rebel girl even at five years old. In Ramona the Pest, she has a doll named Chevrolet with dyed green hair. She dresses up for Halloween as “the baddest witch in the world.” She has no use for boring neighbor Howie and prefers his messy sister, Willa Jean. SHE WEARS A LIVE WORM AS A RING. In Ramona the Brave, she revels in the power she feels while playing Brick Factory, which is just pounding bricks into dust with a rock. Ramona isn’t afraid to stand up for herself and she’s stubborn as hell. Never underestimate the power of a girl who makes a “great big noisy fuss” when she doesn’t like the way she’s being treated. In the words of punk rock legends Bikini Kill, “That girl thinks she’s the queen of the neighborhood! I’ve got news for you — she is!” Ramona girl, you are the queen of my world.
*P.S. Speaking of Halloween, I also recently discovered that Gabrielle Moss co-writes a newsletter called Spooky Bitches “about ghosts, cults, doomed starlets, ax murderers, black cats, Winona Ryder, scary stories your best friend’s sister’s roommate told you, things that smell like Hot Topic & also shopping.” I was already planning my Lydia Deetz costume for Halloween this year so Gaby is officially MY paperback crush. I think I wanna be her best friend.
