As someone who reviews YA titles for two publications (Bookslut and Eclectica Magazine), I get quite a few books sent by publishers that have to do with suffering through high school. Many of these are books I never requested - sometimes it is a shock to actually receive a book I requested - but one thing I have noticed is just how many books out there have similar messages about high school and the teenage years. I don't think they misrepresent the problem either - there doesn't seem to be a lot of beating a dead horse in my opinion. I think instead that a lot of writers are remembering how tough it was for them to navigate their way to adulthood and they are hoping to reach out a hand to help another kid get through. Of course a bunch of these books are dreck, or at least seem like dreck to me, but I've received enough of them to be planning a "Surviving High School" themed column down the line at Bookslut. For those of you keeping track, the next few months look like this:

February - Girls who kick butt (literally and metaphorically)
March - Fantasy
April - Historical Fiction
May - Mysteries
June - Surviving high school

Over at Eclectica I have the usual mix of a little bit of everything in the Spring issue along with a review of about ten picture books - something I like to do a couple of times a year.

The one thing I am struggling with is finding books from a boy's perspective - as someone with a son I am just now realizing how tough good boy books are to come by (aside from the old standards that have been around forever.) The Wall and the Wing is very much a buddy book and told equally from the perspectives of Gurl and Bug, so that book certainly works for boys and girls and I read a very interesting sports book a month of so ago, Open Ice that will certainly be in my June column (about a hockey player who is injured and can no longer play - and has no identity outside of his sport). But a new historical about a boy? A good new mystery? I'm just not seeing them so much. I lucked into Black Duck about two boys caught up rumrunning along the RI coast during Prohibition and I'm thrilled to have it for May, but I wish it was easier to find these books - or I wish the ones that were out there were more compelling. It's all very frustrating from a reviewer's point of view and also, and even more so, from a mother's.

On the girl front, I just finished Dairy Queen and Chicks With Sticks and both of them might sound cutsey or silly but they rang very true to me. I was writing last night with the tv on (I always have something in the background when I write that I've seen at least a million times before) and the pilot episode for My So-Called Life was playing. One of the things that both DQ and Chicks drive home is how effective teenagers are at role playing - at being who they think they need to be and not at all who they are (usually because none of us know who we are). That was the message loud and clear coming from the tv and at one point Angela said it kind of had to be that way - because if we all told the story when we were there of how high school really was, of how it was for all of us, then it would be so sad - even horrible. Both of the authors got that in these books - they nailed that idea and sold it in a package that did not have everyone living happily every after but did have them at least figuring a thing or two out about themselves. These are exactly the sort of books I would have loved as a teen and along with Open Ice (and hopefully more titles I receive in the coming months) the sort of books that I will be telling young adults about.

You know, it's strange to admit this, but my 20th year high school reunion is this summer. I did not attend my 10th - I was living in Alaska and my high school is in Florida; it was just too hard to get back at that point work-wise - but I have been both looking forward to this one and alternately, wondering if I should go. I haven't radically changed physically, so there are none of those worries, but I wonder if I want to see these people again. I have a couple of friends from that time (one I'm still in touch with), but most of the kids I went to school with I do not think knew me at all, just because I did not know myself back then either. And while there is a fascination to see how everyone turned out, I can't help but think it would be so uncomfortable to have to be that girl I was again, even for just a night or two. She was so good at doing what she was told and what everyone expected; I don't miss her much and I don't think I want to spend any time with her ever again.

Elementary school I remember fondly; the rest of it, the rest of it just didn't help me much at all.