YA New York

I am pleased to introduce Susane Colasanti, author of Take Me There and When It Happens. Susane normally blogs over at LiveJournal, and can also generally be found on MySpace. But today, she’s right here with us, writing about S.E. Hinton’s classic, The Outsiders, which was published in 1967 when Hinton was a ripe old nineteen years of age. Without further ado, here is Susane’s guest entry:

*At Teen Author Reading Night this week, an inquiring mind wanted to know: Why do you write for teens instead of adults? This was a really easy question to answer. Because I know what it’s like to be the kid who needs someone to reach out to them. And now I want to give back by being the person who’s reaching out.

Being an author is actually my second career. I was a high school science teacher for almost ten years, most of that time at a school in the South Bronx. My purpose in life has always been to help kids, particularly teens, improve their lives in some way. I want to make their lives better. As a teacher, I only interacted with a hundred or so kids each day. But now I can connect with thousands of readers as an author.

Two life-altering events happened when I was twelve. I suddenly knew I wanted to be a science teacher when I grew up. And I read The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. From the first chapter, that was it. I fell so hard I still haven’t gotten up. The Outsiders changed my life. I cannot describe the full effect The Outsiders had on me (and continues to have on me), but I was completely obsessed. I slept with that book under my pillow every night in a sort of touchstone/osmosis/safety device ritual. I memorized sections of the story that spoke to me the most. I can still recite Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” but I was so bored with all of the other poetry we had to learn for English class (except stuff by E.E. Cummings — that dude rocked). And although I didn’t know it at the time, The Outsiders was the catalyst for my future writing career.

The Outsiders inspired me in a way I wish my books would inspire other kids. I want to write books for people who need to escape into stories, who rely on books to save them. When I was a teen, reading was the one part of my day that I always looked forward to, the only time when I felt completely comfortable and relaxed. It was my way to deal with the pain of growing up and survive the hard times I went through. I felt like my favorite authors were reassuring me that I wasn’t alone, that I could come back to their books anytime and feel better again.

Back in the day (i.e. the 80s), there weren’t that many good young-adult novels out there. The whole genre of teen books was sort of a desolate void. But now there are so many excellent books available for teens. These books encourage people to search for answers in stories that relate to their lives. My life was different from the characters’ lives in The Outsiders, but one thing was fundamentally the same: I was an outsider, too. Every time I read that story, it made me feel alive. And that’s an amazing feeling.*

Buy The Outsiders and/or Susane’s books at Amazon.com.

All content within the asterisks is © Susane Colasanti 2008 and may not be reproduced in any form without her permission.

My dearest readers,

I am delighted to present Jennifer E. Smith, author of The Comeback Season, who wrote a guest entry for us today about one of the books that inspired her when she was growing up. She chose a tearjerker, Where the Red Fern Grows, which is probably the novel that inspired the phrase “a book about a boy and his dog.” But here, I’ll let her tell you all about it:

Where the Red Fern Grows, a review by Jennifer E. Smith

* When my first book, The Comeback Season, went out into the world this spring, the one thing I heard more than anything else was that it made people cry. And inevitably, my first impulse was always to apologize.

Rarely is making someone cry considered a good thing. But even so, I’ve always relished those books and movies that elicit that sort of reaction, the ones that wrench your heart in such a way that it never quite goes back to its original shape.

The first time I read Where the Red Fern Grows was in a sixth grade classroom. We were assigned a certain amount of pages each night, but my teacher decided we’d read the ending together as a class. Sixth grade is not really the ideal time to be seen bawling by your classmates, but I remember being completely gutted by the ending, shocked and sad and just generally crushed. It felt like I’d gone through it all myself, the longing for a couple of red hounds, the bravery and sacrifice in the face of danger, the sharp sting of loss at the end. It stays with me even now; I could cry just thinking about Old Dan and Little Ann. Just as I did back then. (In front of my entire sixth grade class.)

A lot of people can’t bear to read these kinds of stories. Life is too sad as it is, I suppose. But for me, it’s a kind of release, and there’s a certain cathartic joy to it. Those are the sort of books that have stayed with me over the years, that cling to my memory in the face of so many years and so many other stories. To say they are unforgettable isn’t quite enough. Books like Where the Red Fern Grows simply become a part of you.

So now, when people tell me they cried when reading my book, I’m no longer going to apologize. It seems to me the most generous kind of compliment, the idea that my words could affect someone in the same way Wilson Rawls’ words still affect me. From now, I’ll simply thank them instead…and perhaps suggest they don’t read the ending in public!*

All material between the asterisks is © Jennifer E. Smith 2008. This material may not be reproduced in any form without her permission.

You know how sometimes you just need to read something by an old friend? When I say old friend, I mean, an author whose books you’ve adored since you were ten or eleven, someone familiar and kind, someone who could never disappoint you.

For me, Lucy Maud Montgomery is that friend. She wrote about a trillion books when she was alive (from 1874 to 1942). Because she was writing at the turn of the 20th century and later, her style is pretty contemporary and very easy to digest.

The thing is, while she was most famous for the Anne of Green Gables series, and also well-known for her Emily of New Moon trilogy, she wrote a lot of other books that were eventually forgotten. Some of them are out of print, some of them are out of vogue, and some of them are just a bit dusty.

It’s time we changed that. I want to recommend about a million of her books, but for now I’ll stick to her short stories. Lucy Maud was a brilliant short story writer, the kind of gal who could give you all the plot you needed in a few short pages. You know that feeling you get at the end of a novel, like you’re sad to part with the characters, but happy to have experienced something with them? Well, with Lucy Maud’s short story collections you get that about twenty times per book. Think about it!

LM Montgomery came up with some of my favorite quotes: “scope for the imagination,” “depths of despair,” and, best of all, “tomorrow is a new day, fresh with no mistakes in it yet.” This was a woman who had heart, and who was able to craft a turn of phrase we all recognize almost a century later.

Let’s start with Akin to Anne, a book with short stories about orphans and other children who are neglected or unloved. Well, they may start out that way. Here are the stories you’ve got to got to got to read:

• Charlotte’s Quest: A young girl who doesn’t fit in at home goes off in search of a new mother, with the aid of a village woman known as Witch Penny.
• Marcella’s Reward: Two sisters, one ill and the other little better than a slave, are living with their unpleasant aunt in a dreadful big city. Marcella is the workhorse, and her dear sister Patty is gravely ill and hovering near death. See how Lucy Maud tidies up this little mess.
• The Running Away of Chester: An orphan boy who is worked to the bone and mistreated by his “aunt” Harriet decides to run away and seek his own fame and fortune. Morals abound, for children and adults alike.

My other recommendation to you all is Among the Shadows, Lucy Maud’s collection of stories about ghosts and criminals, not all of whom are redeemed. As you may know from reading some of Montgomery’s novels, she was fascinated with all things supernatural, and loved to weave something of that sort in whenever she could.

From this collection, I will recommend only one story. Not because the others aren’t worthy reading, but because this particular work is so perfect. Some Fools and a Saint is sure to send chills up your spine. And it’s nice and long for a short story, too.

Alas, both these collections may be hard to find, as they are, to my knowledge, out of print. However! There are folks on Amazon Marketplace who will sell them to you. And on eBay. And you can even go over to the Strand or another used bookstore, where you just might be so lucky as to dig one up. Yes, dears, you can get your hands on a copy of either of these books if you put your back into it. Or you could check out any of her other zillion books, almost all of which are good as gold.