Young Adult Literature 101

 

Tutoring Tuesday went analog today. Because one of my "tutorettes" is grounded from her phone or any social media use until this weekend, we did not use computers, pads, or phones in the session today. Instead, I pulled a few real bound books from my remaining analog library. Today's lesson: young adult (YA) books and their adaptations to film.

I learned there are tons of YA books published every year and frankly I had not heard of many of the current titles. Neither had my girls. But they did know the Twilight series, Harry Potter, and The Hunger Games. We talked all morning about these books, the stories, and what they had learned from them. Then we talked about what they thought of the movie adaptations. It was a lively morning.

After lunch, I brought my laptop out to the patio. We jointly did a search for YA books that are considered "must-reads" for high school students. Google that, the variety of choices and opinions about what teens should read is considerable and contentious. From these lists, we selected three YA "classics" they would read this month, one per week, until Halloween. I know, that is a lot of reading for 15-year-olds, but with the pandemic, what else to they have to do?

I'll post this on Facebook and see what friends think I should have assigned. Feel free to guess in the comments here.

After the girls left to go home, I started thinking about my junior high years as well as my introduction to literature and film adaptations. Yes, I read the Harper Lee classic, but I also read a book from my dad's bookshelf by Vladimir Nabokov. As luck would have it, the remaining video store in our neighborhood had DVD copies of both film adaptations. I read the book and viewed the films even though I had just turned 14 years old, two years older than the girl in the book. I can't say I understood it all. But the prurience of the story stuck with me.

Shortly after my foray into the novel and the films, it happened that my art teacher at school became ill. For two weeks we had a substitute teacher, a handsome young graduate of UCLA who had just graduated but had not landed a full-time job yet. He was a "long term sub." He was cute, painfully cute, 23, so my teen hormones, inflamed by my recent reading/viewing, went completely off the rails.

The poor guy, for those two weeks he couldn't get rid of me. I was already more promiscuous than most girls five years older, so I threw myself at him unabashedly. I turned my sexual advances on him up to an 11 dressing the naughty schoolgirl, teen slut, and Britney Spears or Paris Hilton wannabe. I spent all the school time I had in the "art room." I went there before and after school too.

I flirted, teased, flashed, and even tried talking dirty, ardently trying to seduce him. Over the days, I could tell there were times when he was tempted. He would glance at my body, peek up my skirt, or his breathing would quicken and break a bit of a sweat. Once or twice, he bulged under his Dockers.

But he was Gibraltar. He tolerated it with patience I have yet to see matched in my lifetime. Toward the end of the second week, I came to the art room after school wearing a pair of ultra low-rise jeans I had modified by cutting the waistline down, below the belt loops, to make them even lower.  I hadn't started going "Hollywood" down there yet, so a bit red fur peeked out and my midriff was bare below a tiny cropped top.

He stared at me and said, "Miss Bravin, why are you playing the slut with me?"

I blurted, "I want to be your Lolita!"

He thought about that for a while, then, said, in a matter of fact tone, "You do realize the Humbert Humbert was a very sick man, an abuser, and that Lolita was his victim?"

Gulp. Nope. I had missed that. I totally misunderstood the book. I suddenly felt utterly stupid and ridiculous. I don't think I said anything, but ran home and had a good cry. I did re-read Lolita (confession: and The Cliff Notes). In time, I came to understand.

I never saw the "long term sub" again. In one minute though, he turned my bad behavior into a lesson about reading. And fortunately, in my sophomore year, I qualified for advanced English classes with the best teachers at Hollywood High.