In junior high school I discovered one of the books that would remain an all-time favorite. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. It wasn't until later that I discovered her other books, Figs and Phantoms, The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon, I Mean Noel, and The Case of the Tatttooed Potato (which I was only able to track down after college). They are all worth reading and heavily imbued with Raskin's deep understanding of why human beings interact in the ways they do.

The Westing Game, by early adoption and timing was immediately my favorite, for its cleverness and its richly drawn characters, and especially for the extra-familial relationships that get forced on its characters by the game of the title. Westing a wonderfully under-rated book that acts as a link between newly met strangers. "You've read The Westing Game?" is an immediate conversation starter.

During this period I also had a strong affinity for Paula Danziger's novels, particularly The Pistachio Prescription, and It's an Ardvark Eat Turtle World. Danziger's work tends to be about young people coping with life in fairly ordinary circumstances such as being a camp counselor, living through a divorce, attending high school or junior high, or going on a family-planned vacation. It would have been standard fare, if it weren't for the wicked sense of humor that shines through. None of her characters are immune from her whimsical touch; from the whiney younger brother who stuffs his teddy bear with orange pits, to the young and sympathetic substitute teacher who refuses to pledge allegiance to the flag. It was the wry sense of self awareness and subtle satire that kept me coming back to these books as my life went through its own ups and downs.

My dear and wonderful (not to mention unofficial) god-parents started buying me Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole books when I was about thirteen, which is really the ideal age. Which were wonderful because they gave you, entry by entry a window into the private life of an English schoolboy; a latch-key kid with big dreams, a Tunisian girlfriend (who brings hilarious and wrenching problems for Adrian) and a feisty old neighbor, who alternately encourages and disgusts him.

At this stage I was also highly addicted to the books of Ellen Conford who, like Paula Danziger, was a very funny, slightly subversive writer whose sense of the absurd appealed to me. She wrote such memorables as A Royal Pain, (about a reluctant princess)...And this is Laura and various other novels and short stories too numerous to mention. She was one of the very first mainstream fiction writers that I encountered both in full-length and short story mode, storing the idea in my hind brain that mainstream writers could write short fiction too.

One of my most formative authors was Gordon Korman, who was at the time a local phenomenon, being a Canadian writer who was practically my contemporary. My all-time favorite Gordon Korman book is Don't Care High, which is a wonderful romp through the eyes of a newcomer to a Manhattan school where no one gives a damn about anything. He teams up with another recent transfer and turns the school around by nominating a non-entity for student body president and creating a sufficient mystique around him that the school is revitalized. It features such memorable characters as Wayne-o, the licorice dealer; the locker baron, who will only grant you a locker if you do him a "favor"; and of course Paul, the hapless neophyte who with co-conspirator Sheldon creates the whole mess to begin with.

Other Korman favorites include most of his catalog up to the the early 1990s. With standouts like Son of Interflux, No Coins, Please, Beware the Fish, Who is Bugs Potter?, I Want to Go Home, Our Man Weston, and Go Jump in the Pool, which was the subject of my first LARP, when I was eight.

There are a tremendous number of good books I haven't mentioned. Barthe DeClements stands out in my memory for realistic portrayals of young people in grade school who are trying hard to be adults and to be more adult than their parents. Carolyn Cooney stands out for the same reason. Of course I read formulaic books like everyone else did. I kept up with Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, and the roommates at Canby Hall, and I read a lot of Christopher Pike. I didn't realize it then, but formula books held the allure of a shared world where you could create your own stories, something which I enjoyed reading later when the worlds were primarily in fantasy and science fiction settings.

And that brings us to the happy golden years of SF.

Back to "Shouldn't you be asleep?"

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