#paperback crush

[52booksproject]

Book 34 Paperback Crush

Random letters RL came up. I was thinking for sure I'd go with an RL Stine Goosebumps or something since I'd never read one, but interestingly enough the search turned up another book about books he wrote. Paperback Crush by Gabrielle Moss is about the Sweet Valley High/Babysitters Club/etc books that defined young adult (white, female, heteronormative) reading in the 1980s and 1990s. As some of you certainly know, RL Stine dabbled in the genre before hitting his gift for horror.

I myself didn't read many of the books or series mentioned- save Choose Your Own Adventure, which my hick self calls Twistaplots after the "B" brand of those kind of books.

The book is fairly comprehensive. It covers the broad history of Young Adult and then mentions notable series and their histories going by category School, Family, Clubs, Horses, etc. It also includes notable exceptions to the heteronormative, white, etc. books with special touches on books that did reach out to queer teens and teens of color. And, of course, Claudia Kishi who even I'd heard of by reputation.

A lot of the book is making fun of the covers of the books and I'm down with that. They're pretty silly, and it's never in a really meanspirited way. This author loves those books too. Moss even found out how Hodges Soileau painted all the Babysitter's Club covers.

BEST LINE: Before Sweet Valley, I'd been a shy, unpopular dork. But after Sweet Valley, I was something much, much better: a shy, unpopular dork who could retreat into a pastel parallel universe.

SHOULD YOU READ THIS BOOK: Did you love these kinds of books, know someone who did, or just want to know a bit about the history of YA? This comprehensive book is a must then.

ART PROJECT: Moss mentions that RL Stine sounded a little mournful when interviewed about giving up humor for horror. I agree that humor probably has lost one of its talents. I have a Choose Your Own Adventure called Indiana Jones and the Curse of Horror Island written by Stine. The first real choice you're given is to either dash into some flying bullets, or avoid them. If you avoid them you end up in a crate that never takes off for horror island and your adventure is over. You lose. It's as if Stine is saying: "welcome to the world of Indiana Jones, where dashing into bullets is the only thing that makes sense." which is hilarious and true. I was going to share some of the art from this as my project, but I've completely misplaced the book. I promise to keep looking and share when I do find it. But in its place is a cover from another classic Choose Your Own Adventure.

[nprbooks]

A couple years ago, author Gabrielle Moss was feeling "worn down by the world" and found herself impulse buying an entire crate of "Sweet Valley High" books on eBay for $25.

“I started wondering ... what was the impact of reading all these books?" she says. She attempts to answer that question in Paperback Crush, a deep dive into teen lit of the '80s and '90s. Check out her conversation with NPR’s Ailsa Chang here.

-- Petra

[bitesizebookreviews]

Paperback Crush

Paperback Crush

Gabrielle Moss

256 pages, Quirk Books

October 2018

Here’s a confession: I’m a total Mary Anne Spier, and if you know what that means, this book is for you. It is, as the cover says, a ‘totally radical history of 80s and 90s teen fiction.’ 

In Paperback Crush, author Gabrielle Moss delves deep into the teenage literature of the this era. No trope is left unexamined, as she discusses teenage love, friends, family, school, clubs (and camp!) and of course horror. Women who came of age during this time had their favorites. Whether it was Sweet Valley, Baby-Sitters Club, Norma Klein, Christopher Pike or many many others, your favorite is probably discussed at some point in this amazing book. 

Though in our adulthood, we may look back and think of these books as silly or like nonsense, they weren’t because so many of us became readers because of them. Quite a few of these books were jumping off points for our later feminism to grow. And yes, there was silliness and sometimes misogyny, and as is often pointed out here, a lot of white-washing. But, as Moss says, “A book can be culturally pioneering and also not very good at the same time.” 

[gher-bear]

For fans of vintage YA, a humorous and in-depth history of beloved teen literature from the 1980s and 1990s, full of trivia and pop culture fun. Those pink covers. That flimsy paper. The nonstop series installments that hooked readers throughout their entire adolescence. These were not the serious-issue novels of the 1970s, nor the blockbuster YA trilogies that arrived in the 2000s. Nestled in between were the girl-centric teen books of the '80s and '90s--short, cheap, and utterly adored. In Paperback Crush, author Gabrielle Moss explores the history of this genre with affection and humor, highlighting the best-known series along with their many diverse knockoffs. From friendship clubs and school newspapers to pesky siblings and glamorous beauty queens, these stories feature girl protagonists in all their glory. Journey back to your younger days, a time of girl power nourished by sustained silent reading. Let Paperback Crush lead you on a visual tour of nostalgia-inducing book covers from the library stacks of the past.

[darklingichor]

Paperback Crush by Gabrielle Moss

I love books like this.

This is a humor filled, sightly snarky love letter to YA books that came out in the 80's and 90's This was not a time of Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, or Hunger Games (though the love triangle in the last would have been right at home, I think).

Some books looked at serious issues but it wasn't usually in an interesting and adventure filled backdrop. They were mostly set in highschool. A lot of YA were things like Sweet Valley High, Fear Street, and romantic comedy. They weren't usually meant to make you think, they were meant to be entertainment.

This book started out as Moss's way to get herself out of a funk. And her way of doing that was to buy a box of old Sweet Valley High books and escape into that pastel, world where I imagine everything smells veugely like those Strawberry Shortcake dolls I had as a kid. She decided to write a book about the lit marketed to teenagers when she was a teen.

I get this, because I do this. Things get tough, I jump into old sitcoms.

I am an unashamed old millennial. Don't worry, I'm not going to go off on tide pods and the music of today, or fashion. Face it, we did a lot of dumb stuff in the 90's. We just didn't have a video platform to share it. If we had, we would have.

I am not without sin, I am so not going to cast stones.

I just remember a lot of the books analyzed in this book, and it was an awesome wave of nostalgia, mixed with the thought: Wow, some fucked up shit was happening in the world while I watched She-Ra. And also later when I was lost in Choose Your Own Adventure books.

It's cool, Moss all at once anaylizes these books, makes fun of them, and shows just how important even the shlockest one was, to our development. Not to say that each one had a good message, some were down right awful. But they did make reading fun.

She looks at a wide range of genres from the "issue" books like "Cousins" by Virginia Hamilton, which I read and sort of still haunts me. Sick lit, the first I read was one called... Sam... Sam is dying... Or Sam is dead... Losing Sam... I dunno something with Sam in the title and death in the book.

Horror (Fear Street Saga fed right into my developing history nerd brain) and of course romance (Kiss me, Creep by Marian Woodruff is the only one I remember loving, because it was a romcom *and* it had a shipwreck in it!)

Moss points out all the good, the bad, and how they made readers out of us. I also really love the fact that she puts it into the context of the times. Family values was the buzz phrase in the 80's it was Regan's America. We didn't get as much stuff like The Late Great Me which looks at teen alcoholism and how one's parents can be just as cracked as your peers. A lot of the books reflected the cultural shift. Into more conservative viewpoint, or at least a viewpoint where the threats were minor (bullies would be punished and things would get better. Who am I going to the school dance with?) Or external (Stranger Danger, drugs). In the 90's there was a shift to horror. Any surprise? They literally broadcast most of the first Gulf War, they were scaring the fuck out of grade school kids with stories of smack and AIDS.

In 5th grade, my class was given our first sex-ed course in the form of a video for the girls about periods, and kinda sorta mentioning that in connection with sex and pregnancy, (I don't know what the boys were shown, but rumor had it they were given condoms, but none of the girls ever saw them, so who knows?) and then a few months later we were shown a video about HIV and AIDS, I don't remember much about the second video except for that it blamed gay people and made it seem like any contact with body fluids would make you melt like the Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

At the time, I didn't think it was fair to blame people for an illness. I was always taught that no matter what, everyone who needed medical care should be treated with compassion. To me, blaming anyone who is sick, for being sick, was mean, and did no one any good. And to blame a group for the spread of a disease just seemed like a good way to get people hurt.  I still feel this way now, but looking back on it, I'm pissed off that a group of kids were fed this line of bull. You're telling a group of 5th graders that gay people started AIDS... In the 90's... In a town of less than 3000 people, that had (at the time) 15 churches and one bookstore? Sure, make an already toxic environment for queer kids fucking radioactive.

There was also a lot of DARE stuff that sort of made it sound like anything was going to get you addicted to drugs. I remember one time, they said not to take stickers from other kids because there were cases where someone's family member had laced them with LSD and sent them out with a kid and got the all these kids on acid, which will destroy your brain after one use.

Welcome to the 90's - Steve Urkel is funny and EVERYTHING WANTS TO KILL YOU. Holy fuck, give me a book about the Salem which trials, quick, reality is too intense!

Anyway

I loved the tone of this book and it actually makes me want to go and find a lot of those books that I hadn't read and see what I think of them.

[aces-and-blackberry-blossoms]

Paperback Crush by Gabrielle Moss

Paperback Crush by Gabrielle Moss

This is a humor filled, sightly snarky love letter to YA books that came out in the 80’s and 90’s This was not a time of Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, or Hunger Games (though the love triangle in the last would have been right at home, I think). Some books looked at serious issues but it wasn’t usually in an interesting and adventure filled backdrop. They were mostly set in highschool. A lot of…

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[radedneko]

[Referring to the time-travel series Swept Away] Remember, a book can be culturally pioneering and also not very good at the same time.

Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of '80s and '90s Teen Fiction ~by Gabrielle Moss

[longwindedliterary-blog]

Finished April 18, 2020. Four and a half stars.

Paperback Crush by Gabrielle Moss

Ah, I had so much fun with this book! I literally yelled when the director of my previous Master’s program was quoted. I am realizing more and more that I love love love love love reading about publishing history that focuses on paperbacks. Duh, I’m a die-hard paperback gal! But I love the way Moss discussed this odd time in Children’s Lit/YA publishing and it was really informative and well-researched. Also so much fun.