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Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading Paperback – Illustrated, July 21 2009
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Remember that book you read at that time in your life when everything seemed to be going crazy—the one book that brought the world into focus and helped soothe your raging teenage angst?
- Print length448 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateJuly 21 2009
- Dimensions13.49 x 2.59 x 20.32 cm
- ISBN-100061756350
- ISBN-13978-0061756351
Product description
Review
frequently hilarious omnibus of meditations on favorite YA novels.... Her suggestions will prove superhelpful (not to mention wildly entertaining) for educators, librarians and parents. — Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Lizzie Skurnick has written on books and culture extensively for the New York Times Book Review, Times Sunday Styles, the LA Times, NPR.org, The Washington Post and many other publications. Her blog, Old Hag, was a Forbes Best of the Web pick. Look for Shelf Discovery on Facebook.
Product details
- Publisher : William Morrow Paperbacks; Illustrated edition (July 21 2009)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 448 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0061756350
- ISBN-13 : 978-0061756351
- Item weight : 381 g
- Dimensions : 13.49 x 2.59 x 20.32 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,600,075 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Lizzie Skurnick is the author of "That Should Be a Word," a compendium of words for the modern age, based on her New York Times Book Review column of the same name. She's also the author of "Shelf Discovery," a collection of essays on the best teen reading of her youth, based on her "Fine Lines" column on Jezebel.com, and the editor of Lizzie Skurnick Books, an imprint of Ig publishing, which reissues the best young adult books from the 30s to the 80s, including the popular "All-of-a-Kind Family" series. She lives in Jersey City, NJ.
Customer reviews
Top reviews from other countries
One thing to know about this book is that it's not about contemporary YA, although current readers might enjoy this look down memory lane. Skurnick is writing about teen classics by authors like Lois Duncan and Madeleine L'Engle, and about books that never belonged in the teen genre (Jean Auel? V.C. Andrews?) but were nevertheless popular with young readers. Not only did I enjoy reading about favorite books that I had forgotten about, but as a reading teacher, it was helpful to be reminded that controversial topics are hardly new to YA fiction.
While this book probably won't appeal to teens, it's essential reading for anyone who came of age with the Wakefield twins. If you don't know who the Wakefield twins are, then this probably isn't the book for you.
I'm going to try and encourage my book club to read this book, paired with some of the YA adult classics she talks about. I also wish so many of these books weren't out of print. Time to get away from the kindle and get to the library, I suppose!
Speaking of the kindle - the covers of the books she is writing about show up really well. I actually was pretty amazed at that bit of formatting. What is not good - you cannot really tell when the normal writing begins/ends and when places where she is quoting passages begin/end. It's a little annoying but not insurmountable.