The Gospel According To Teens

A couple of weeks back, I conducted a teacher-training session. Immediately after that, an experienced teacher-cum-novelist met up with me for a chat. We talked about the possibilities of working together - either as teachers or amateur-writers. She told me about the popularity of chic-lit and I confessed my own love for the genre. I'm a closet-fan of chic-lit. In other words, I usually don't tell people openly that I read teensy-girly books on crushes, heartaches, dresses and back-biting bitchiness but the truth of it is that I do. I really do. And I enjoy them a lot more than most other things (aside from the spandex-clad heroes that populate my four-colour fantasies). Some recommendations:

"Does My Head Look Big In This?" by Randa Abdel-Fattah.

"Ten Things I Hate About Me" also by Randa Abdel-Fattah.

The best chic-lit novels are about self-acceptance and accepting others. Like the above examples, the stories are about the identity-crisis and peer-pressure faced by adolescent Muslim girls in an all-white (read: secular Christian) school. Truth is, I don't think I like chic-lit per se. I think I'm really a fan of teen/young reads. There's a difference. Fact is, I don't think I'll ever pick up a volume of the "Gossip Girl" series but I'm a huge fan of "The Gospel According To Larry" series (by Janet Tashjian). Being young, being stupid, being too intelligent for the adult community, being reckless, being a teen (or even a tween). Gosh, I think I identify with that level of people a lot more these days. It's probably got to do with the fact that I'm surrounded by people that age all the time. Heck, my daughter is taking her first steps into being a teenager already! As for me, I not sure that I've outgrown my adolescence yet! I used to read theology and philosophy when I was old. It's liberating to finally not be a grown-up again...

"The Gospel According To Larry" by Janet Tashjian