Let me list the reasons I love them so much:
- Normally the language and questionable scenes are way less (notice I bold-ed normally, some can be much worse than adult books).
- They don't try to impress you- Sometimes I honestly feel as I'm reading an adult book that the author is trying to show me how smart he is, or how many big words he knows. I don't mind big words but I do mind when they're so obvious that they draw my attention.
- They're funny- Seriously even the real downers are usually pretty funny since even if they don't mean to be you can still laugh and rejoice you're not a teenager anymore.
- Their authors are way cool!- For real. I never cared about authors until I became serious about young adult books. I honestly don't care about the life of Ernest Hemingway. It doesn't affect my reading of his stories one bit. But young adult authors are way fun and use this new fangled internet things to keep in touch with their fans. I can talk to some of my favorite YA authors easily- I just shoot them an email.
- They are brave in facing real issues- Just like the young adults these books are about, the books themselves actually touch real issues mostly, in my opinion, not exaggerating them.
Louise Rennison is from England. Half of the fun of her books is that I honestly don't know most of what the characters are saying. It's like when I was in Australia and my boss wanted me to take with me the... I wasn't sure. Eventually through him walking over to it, I realized he meant the trash can, which he was apparently calling the 'wheely bin'. Seriously.
Her books are written in journal style from the perspective of Georgia Nicholson who we meet as a 14(?) year old. She is dumb. Not in a stupid way but in a way of everything revolving around her and seemingly simple things blown way out of proportion. So pretty much a teenage girl (hey I can say it, it hasn't been that many years). Boys, of course, are a topic thoroughly explored and honestly it's just hilarious.
In one scene in the first book, Angus, Thongs and Full-frontal Snogging, (PS Angus is her cat) Georgia goes to a snogging instructor (read sneaky teenage boy). While this seems ridiculous to us a girl in my YA Lit class swore this was not unusual in Britain. She grew up in Ireland and had her first kiss from a snogging instructor. I know!!!
Anyway, the boys in my YA Lit class hated it. They all thought it was worthless and dumb but I have rarely laughed so hard. I read it aloud to Nate when we were engaged and honestly couldn't get through a part, I was laughing so hard.
The 8th book just came out and I read it and loved it. Nothing can be as good as the first but they're still funny. Here's the snogging scale:
The New and Improved Snogging Scale
| .5 | sticky eyes (Be careful using this. I’ve still got some complete twit following me around like a seeing-eye dog.) |
| 1 | holding hands |
| 2 | arm around |
| 3 | goodnight kiss |
| 4 | kiss lasting over three minutes without a breath (What you need for this is a sad mate who’s got a watch but no boyfriend.) |
| 4.5 | hand snogging (I really don’t want to go into this. Ask Jas.) |
| 5 | open mouth kissing |
| 6 | tongues |
| 6.5 | ear snogging |
| 6.75 | neck nuzzling |
| 7 | upper body fondling – outdoors |
| 8 | upper body fondling – indoors (in bed) |
| Virtual number 8 | (When your upper body is not actually being fondled in reality, but you know that it is in your snoggees head.) |
| 9 | below waist activity (or bwa) (Apparently this can include flashing your pants. Don’t blame me. Ask Jules.) |
| 10 | the full monty (Jas and I were in the room when Dad was watching the news and the newscaster said, “Tonight the Prime Minister has reached Number 10.” And Jas and I had a laughing spaz to end all laughing spazzes.) |
I would recommend these but caution against some questionable content- adults are much more likely to take offense than teens.
Bibliography:
Angus, Thongs and Full-frontal Snogging
On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God
Knocked Out by My Nunga-Nungas
Dancing In My Nuddy Pants
Away Laughing on a Fast Camel
Then He Ate My Boy Entrancers
Startled by His Furry Shorts
Love is a Many Trousered Thing
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