Well, Thirteen, edited by James Howe, is no Necessary Noise, I'm afraid. This book describes itself as being "Thirteen stories that capture the agony and ecstasy of being thirteen," but a lot of the agony and ecstasy covered is pretty stereotypical early-teen angst. (Though I do understand that one person's stereotype is another person's classic situation.) And a lot of the writing of that stereotypical material isn't handled in unique or elegant ways. I have to admit, I had to skim at least a couple of these offerings. One of the stories sounded very much like a video you might see in health class.
Some of my favorites, though, were Thirteen and a Half, Rachel Vail's hysterical piece about exposing the young to death (though I wonder if teen readers will appreciate it as much as I did; I also wonder if there's something wrong with me because I laughed); Jeremy Goldblatt Is So Not Moses, a different approach to the teen uniformity story, both in terms of content and structure, by James Howe, and Angel & Aly, by Ron Koertge, in which we get the parents-don't-pay-enough-attention-to-their-children story without feeling we're being lectured on parenting.
Reading Time: 3 and 1/2 hours
Number of Pages: 278
Blogging Time: 15 minutes
Can I knock off another book before I pass out tonight? Let's see!
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