SCHOOL’S OUT ’86 : Classics on Back Shelf as Youths Select Library’s ‘Fast-Food Books’

The average teen-ager visiting the library this summer probably will pass by the classics and go to what author Jim Trelease calls “fast-food books”--romances, mysteries, science-fiction.

“What their friends read and like is what they’ll read,” said Elizabeth Martinez Smith, director of the Orange County Public Library. “They’ll check out something popular and pass it around.”

The fact that teens are unlikely to choose such novels as “Moby Dick,” “Huckleberry Finn” and “Jane Eyre” this summer doesn’t seem to have teachers or librarians concerned, however.

Some consider it an accomplishment to get teens to read anything more substantial than TV Guide.

While some high school teachers may still optimistically send home summer reading lists of classics, many have started recommending what they see as the best in contemporary fiction for teen-agers. Thus, as Trelease puts it in his book, “The Read-Aloud Handbook,” they hope to “build appetites (to say nothing of reading skills) for more nourishing books later.”

No classics are among the 1985 “Teachers Choices” for high school students, a list of 24 books recommended by the National Council of Teachers of English. Instead, the 1985 list includes such contemporary books as Richard Peck’s “Remembering the Good Times,” a novel about two teens coming to terms with the suicide of a close friend, and Cynthia Voigt’s “The Runner,” a story set in 1968 about how the Vietnam War, racial tensions and a domineering father affect a teen-age boy.

Another group, the Orange County Reading Assn., recommends that teens read the books nominated for the California Young Reader Medal Program, according to Lori Morgan, the association’s past president. The books are nominated primarily by teachers and librarians across the state on the basis of their popularity and quality. A committee narrows the list of about 250 nominations to three to five of the most popular in each category, and then students are asked to select the winners.

Nearly 300,000 students voted in the 1985-86 program’s primary, intermediate, junior high and high school categories, Morgan said. The winner at the high school level was Meredith Pierce’s “The Darkangel,” a fantasy story about a girl’s fight against a vampirish figure threatening to unleash its evil on the world.

The nominated books that teens will have to read before they can vote for next year’s winner in the high school category are “Pursuit” by Michael French, “A Handful of Stars” by Barbara Girion and “Close to the Edge” by Gloria Miklowitz. All three deal with teen-agers in crisis.

Importance of Popularity

Morgan, who is in charge of the kindergarten through 12th-grade reading program in the Orange Unified School District, recommends these books because they are popular among teens. “That’s important, because if they start a book at the beginning of summer that they don’t like very well, usually it just sits,” she said. “But if they keep reading, the likelihood is greater that they’ll want to find another good book to read.

“Reading is like any other skill. The more you do it, the better you get at it.”

Smith said many teens choose popular magazines over books.

“We think that’s valuable, too, because they’re reading and thinking,” she said. “It’s hard to get kids that age to spend a lot of time reading. This is a difficult time for them. They’re pulled by so many other interests, and there’s so much peer pressure.”

Smith is optimistic that teens who read popular fiction today will later discover the classics. “None of us reads at the same level throughout our lifetime. We need to make allowances for that. We want the kids with us all along.”

Morgan and Smith said the odds that teens will read literature as adults are better if their parents have demonstrated a love for books.

“It’s important for kids to observe their parents reading and enjoying books so they will see that it’s a worthwhile way to spend their time,” Smith said.