Tag Archives: Young Adult

Forever. . . by Judy Blume (1975)

This is the Judy Blume book where they fuck, and where the characters use the word “fuck” kind of a lot for 1975, which made this book a pretty big deal when it came out. It’s a story about love and sex—those youthful ideals we all have before we discover what relationships are, get adjusted, then move on—a lot for 200 pages. As a guilty pleasure, most of it holds up pretty well aside from some clichéd issues, with Blume perfectly capturing the magnitude of 18 year-old Katherine and Michael’s first love and sexual fumbling.

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The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis (1950)

Do children’s classics still hold up when read by adults?  I never read the Narnia books when I was younger, but I did read The Screwtape Letters a few years ago and liked its sinister plot and epistolary storytelling.  Similarly, this book’s heavy Christian undertones fall just short of eye-rolling at times, though the themes of temptation, redemption, and righteousness enhance the plot so effectively that without them the book would have been forgotten as just another kid’s adventure.  A final plus is that the fantasy world feels real enough to immerse readers but not enough to overwhelm them.

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