Classic: "Weetzie Bat"

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Block, Francesca Lia. Weetzie Bat. NY: Harper Collins, 1989.

A punk laced fairy tale set in the City of Angels. Weetzie may have the help of the genie of the lamp, but she'll need more than that to live happily ever after.

Tooling around Hollywood with her best friend Dirk in his slinkster-cool car, Weetzie Bat searches for love and dreams about living happily ever after. But ambitions change and ever afters are never guaranteed and just living happily for one moment takes a lot of assembling.

Will it all come together for Weetzie Bat and Dirk and the colorful cast of characters that populate this hipster genie in a bottle type tale? Follow them as they go "duck hunting"; each looking for their one true love. Witness Weetzie Bat as she tries to pull her father back from grey New York to the sunlit boulevards of Hollywood. Try to follow the logic when Dirk and Duck, her two gay friends, convince themselves and Weetzie that if they all sleep together and make a baby, Weetzie's Secret Agent Lover Man (who doesn't want to bring a child into this world) will come around.

This mythological melodrama is like jazz on a page. All syncopated rhythms, ensemble casting, and the spontaneity of Weetzie's improvisations. But for all its' complexity, there is the simple message of love hidden amongst the crazy swings of pitch and timbre.

YALSA 100 Best Books 1950-2000. Parents' Choice Award.

Classic: "Forever"

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Blume, Judy. Forever. NY: Pocket Books, 1975.

This is a story about love and promises and how time passing can change everything.

What events happen in this story? Katherine wonders what it would be like to do it. Katherine thinks about doing it with Michael. Katherine does it. Katherine thinks she will love Michael forever. Things change.

What I liked about this story when I read it in 1975 (at fourteen)? Details! Details! Details!

What I thought the second time around? Although the book is still a page turner, this time I got more of the book's theme. While Katherine's parents try to protect her, and her grandmother tries to inform her, I wanted to shake her and tell her 18 is not forever- it's an instant! A second. A mere moment of life. But try telling that to Romeo & Juliet or Bella & Edward or Katherine & Michael.

YALSA Popular Paperback for Young Adults, Sex is... 2008.

Classic: "M.C. Higgins, The Great"

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Hamilton, Virginia. M.C. Higgins, The Great. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1974.

A young boy comes of age in the mountains of Ohio as strip mining threatens their way of life. When his father refuses to acknowledge the danger, M.C. must decide whether to take a stand or to shepherd them along.

M.C. Higgins watches over his little sister Macie Pearl and his brothers as they swim in the lake and scamper up the hill to their rustic house with its' parlor of hand-me-downs. "They stay safe. They listen to me."

Life on Sarah's mountain is full of majesty and secret dangers and buried pasts. It all comes together as two strangers pay a visit, a friend is acknowledged, and environmental degradation raises its' head in the form an oppressive leftover strip-mining heap.

Like the generations before and after them, the Higgins clan is full of different personalities with hopes and dreams and fun and frustrations all their own. The fabric of family holds them together through good times and bad. As M.C. comes of age and challenges his father's assumptions and prejudices he learns the true price of greatness.

Newberry Medal. National Book Award. Boston Globe-Horn Book Award.