The best classic YA books that are coming-of-age gems

Although written before YA literature was even a thing, Huck Finn is still the Big Daddy of them all! So many writers, including me, honed their craft by studying the simple but elegant vernacular of this first-person narration. Mark Twain gives careful consideration to each word he uses, which is why this novel was so admired by writers such as Ernest Hemingway, who wrote, "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." And it has a beautiful message of acceptance and rising above conventional beliefs to become a more decent human being to boot!

Another coming-of-age classic written before YA was a thing. Salinger is a master of dialogue and description, especially when it comes to his young protagonist, Holden Caulfield, who, although outwardly cynical and jaded, is simply vulnerable as he tries to find a place for himself in a world that can often seem insincere (phony) and downright threatening. In a way, Holden Caulfield represents all of us, even if more than fifty years have passed since some of us were teenagers.

One could argue that S. E. Hinton, at seventeen years old, wrote the book that really created the genre we now know as YA. Her first-person narration through Ponyboy Curtis also began to bend the rigid gender roles many of us felt at the time, whether we knew it or not, coming out of the fifties. Many didn’t realize at first that Ponyboy, a fourteen-year-old greaser, was narrated through the eyes of a seventeen-year-old girl, and that perspective softened the then rigid lines of gender identity. When I used this book in the classroom (as I often did), it was appreciated by girls as well as by the most reluctant of boy readers, thus making it an English teacher’s dream!

I read this book when I finishing an early draft of my own first novel and I was thoroughly impressed as well as a little intimidated by it. Having drummed up the courage to write my own coming-of-age novel after reading another YA novel that was popular at the time which I felt had clunky dialogue and narration, I was amazed at Spinelli's spot-on dialogue and crisp narration which captured the quirky and (sometimes) wonderful world of a 7th-grade narrator who was no longer a little kid but who hadn’t yet entered into young adulthood. It remains one of my favorites even today.

I had the pleasure of getting to know Richard Peck right before the publication of my first novel after I had given his name (as well as Jerry Spinelli’s) to my publisher when my editor asked for a short list of writers I’d like galleys sent to in search of early reactions. Dreamland Lake is the reason I added Richard to my list after discovering that, similar to my soon-to-be-published novel, it was the story of two boys finding a dead body. Peck’s ear for dialogue and eye for detail is impeccable, as is his fluent narration. Dreamland Lake is an underrated gem!