Children’s Books : YOUNG ADULT BOOKS : Old Enough to Wait While a Story Grows

Conventional wisdom has it that young adult novels must be written exclusively from the point of view of young adults. That young adults aren’t interested in how their elders think and feel. That the teen-age main character must be introduced and described clearly on page 1, because members of the TV Generation presumably can’t relish more subtle development. But here are four novelists who have ignored such wisdom and written challenging, absorbing stories. Thank goodness.

In A Kindness (Orchard Books: $13.95; 117 pp.), Cynthia Rylant portrays a family undergoing change, as seen through the eyes of not only 15-year-old Chip Becker but also his mother, Anne. The author also feels free to address the reader directly. The changes begin when the stability of Chip’s relationship with his mother, a single parent, is threatened. Anne tells him that she is pregnant; what she won’t tell him is the name of the father of the child. Chip’s resentment explodes in all directions, and he loses not only his comfortable rapport with his mother but also with his girlfriend. How his fury changes to love for the new baby and how Chip makes peace with himself is at the heart of this tender, sensitive story. Rylant’s 1987 novel, “A Fine White Dust,” was a Newbery Honor Book.

Another Newbery Honor Book author (of “The Moves Make the Man”), Bruce Brooks cuts his readers no slack. No Kidding by Bruce Brooks (Harper & Row: $13.95; 207 pp.), also a story about a mother-son conflict, is a fine novel for readers who can tolerate not knowing, who don’t object to turning quite a few pages before they learn what “AO” means and can begin to figure out what “Steemers” are. While it’s not a mystery, there are mysteriously hazy elements to the story of Sam and his younger brother, Ollie, set at some time in the future. Street crime is no longer a problem. Most diseases have been eradicated. But 70 percent of the adult population in the 21st century is alcoholic, and their teen-aged offspring have had to take over responsibility for themselves as well as for their parents. The books’s jacket illustration shows a boy standing in a pair of men’s wing-tipped shoes that are miles too big for him. That boy is Sam, who put his mom in a drunk tank and his brother in a foster home and, now that his mother has finisher her treatment and is about to be discharged, must decide what’s to happen next. The story comes together in bits and pieces, out of sequence, from various points of view. It demands a lot from the reader, and it’s worth the effort.

Is there any young adult who hasn’t read Paul Zindel’s novels? The newest, A Begonia for Miss Applebaum by Paul Zindel (Harper & Row: $12.95; 180 pp.) will certainly be snapped up by Zindel fans. The story, about death and dying and living, is told by high school students Henry and Zelda. Miss Applebaum is their science teacher, the kind you always wished you had (and lucky you, if you did)--a woman whose wide-ranging intellect and imagination open new worlds. But Henry and Zelda learn that Miss Applebaum has retired from teaching because she is dying. In the meantime, though, she is very much alive, and in alternating chapters Henry and Zelda describe their sometimes wacky adventures with her in her eccentric apartment in Manhattan’s Central park and in the Museum of Natural History. Then Henry and Zelda become involved on another level and begin to intervene in their teacher’s life--and in her death. Unfortunately the ending of the novel is so unbelievable that I suggest readers skip the last chapter completely. Better yet, they should write their own ending.

Crutches by Peter Hartling, translated by Elizabeth D. Crawford (Lothrop, Lee & Shepard: $11.95; 163 pp.) is the story of a young boy who has been separated from his mother but has somehow managed to reach Vienna, searching for her and his Aunt Wanda. But Aunt Wanda’s house has been destroyed by bombs, there is no sign of his mother, and Thomas is alone, hungry, and afraid. Then he meets a strange and rather surly one-legged man, who wants only to be called Crutches. Boy and man become friends, and the touching story, suitable for readers as young as 10, is about their survival in difficult times and their growing affection for one other.