Happy Beloved Author Birthday Week!

As Google reminds us with its delightful doodle,* Mark Twain was born 176 years ago today. Also born this week: L.M. Montgomery (today) and Louisa May Alcott, Madeleine L’Engle, and C.S. Lewis (all yesterday). 

Without giving it too much thought, I can probably safely say that these five authors would make up half of my top ten list. (Though it’s admittedly hard for me to pick favorites.) Certainly, if Tolkien and Dickens had been born this week, rather than January and February, respectively, this week’s birthday authors would easily represent the majority of my young-adult reading. 

As I reflected on “why these authors?” this morning during my normal wake-up routine of coffee sipping and internet reading, I ran across Adam Gopnik’s latest piece in The New Yorker. In “The Dragon’s Egg,” Gopnik examines “high fantasy for young adults.” I highly recommend reading the whole article, but part of the conclusion rang especially true as I considered this particular mix of authors: 

A narrative whose purpose is not to push the hero or heroine toward a moment of moral crisis, à la “Huckleberry Finn” or “Little Women,” but to put him through a telescoped series of ordeals, which aim only at preparing him for the next series of ordeals: this is the story of [adolescent] life. ... The fantasy readers’ learned habit of thinking historically is an acquisition as profound in its way as the old novelistic training in thinking about life as a series of moral lessons. 

And perhaps, since I return to these authors repeatedly—especially, it seems, during the holiday season—this combination of ordeals, lore, and morality is suited for more than just the adolescent mind. 

Are there “young adult” books you read and reread, copyeditors? Have you ever wondered what made them resonate then and now?

* If you missed the Twain logo on the Google home page today, you can see it on my “bookish interests” Pinterest board. 

Image courtesy of Shandi-lee.