Are They Reading Us? Feminist Teenage Fiction

Children stop reading when they reach their teens, which upsets not only teachers but also publishers under economic pressure and with an eye to the future. Mainstream publishers routinely categorize literature as for 'adults' or 'children', and subdivide children's books by age'for older children' and by gender. Classifying books in this way raises both ideological and practical difficulties. 71Vhere does the line between childhood and adulthood fall? Is the distinction between power and powerlessness, experience and innocence, competence and incompetence, paid work and study? Are the preoccupations and literary needs of children fundamentally different from those of adults or is the distinction a way of opening up new markets? And when and why do girls' books start to differ from boys'? I was one of those teenagers who stopped reading, or that is how T remembered it. When I came to write this article and listed some of the fiction that I read out of school between the ages of eleven and seventeen, I was surprised. It turned out to be a motley collection, ranging from The Five Chimneys about Auschwitz Cry the Beloved Country and The Grapes of Wrath via Arthur Conan Doyle and Wilkie Collins to Agatha Christie and James Bond. A few of these books I found lying about the house but, since I was not an official 'reader', I am not sure anyone was aware that I read them, cried over them, judged them, learnt through them and used them as a breathing space in the most stressful and difficult period of my life. C. S. Lewis said, 'No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty' (Meek et al., 1977: 85). The reality, as anyone who works or lives with children will know, is that many children's books are banal and simple minded, with a lifespan of minutes rather than years. But they sell. Children's publishing has doubled in the last ten years, and often subsidizes adult fiction lists. The recession has driven publishers to

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