Please help me remember this YA fiction book
October 31, 2015 8:50 PM Subscribe
I wish I could remember this young adult fiction book, which must date back to the 1970s. I can only remember a few faint details, and I'm not sure I have them right.
1. The book is (as I say) from the 1970s. Interspersed with the book chapters are newspaper headlines (in a headliney typeface) -- those headlines (less than subtly) convey a theme of gradual social breakdown.
2. The book has two narratives. One is about the radicalization of a teenage girl's classroom. The other is about the changing nature of the girl's relationship with her more conservative mother.
3. Something happens to the girl's mother near the end. A stroke? The girl becomes the primary caregiver for the mom, thus upending/reversing the mother-daughter relationship.
4. A significant portion of the book consists on general meditations on what is important in life, or at least what a teenage girl would think is important, and the discussions of these things in class. For instance, there is some space given to the importance of having a working "bullshit detector."
5. I am not sure whether this book was by Kin Platt or not. But overall it's consistent with the kind of (socially conscious) writing he published.
1. The book is (as I say) from the 1970s. Interspersed with the book chapters are newspaper headlines (in a headliney typeface) -- those headlines (less than subtly) convey a theme of gradual social breakdown.
2. The book has two narratives. One is about the radicalization of a teenage girl's classroom. The other is about the changing nature of the girl's relationship with her more conservative mother.
3. Something happens to the girl's mother near the end. A stroke? The girl becomes the primary caregiver for the mom, thus upending/reversing the mother-daughter relationship.
4. A significant portion of the book consists on general meditations on what is important in life, or at least what a teenage girl would think is important, and the discussions of these things in class. For instance, there is some space given to the importance of having a working "bullshit detector."
5. I am not sure whether this book was by Kin Platt or not. But overall it's consistent with the kind of (socially conscious) writing he published.
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