TEENAGERS: Teenager territory can be both exhilarating and depressing; the map is brightly coloured, darkly shaded and constantly changing. There are wide-open spaces, roller-coaster rides, dangerous roads, mere bags' ends, writes Niall MacMonagle
All the more reason then to remember Polly Devlin's words while crossing that unpredictable, volatile terrain: "Books are a let-out, a get-out, a path to the future". The books listed here, in the 12 plus category, are as different as their readers. And how innocent is innocent? Some youngsters have seen X-rated movies and horrible things on television; they know every four-letter word and then some. But when the bad and the ugly are dealt with honestly and sensitively in literature their experience can be deepened, not sullied.
Both Sharon Creech's Love That Dog, featuring Jack, the reluctant poetry lover, and her latest, Ruby Holler (Bloomsbury, £10.99) are charming but admirably avoid sentimentality. The 13-year-old "trouble twins" Dallas and Florida, abandoned at birth, grow up in Boxton Creek Home run by Mr and Mrs Trepid: "middle-aged, cranky and tired". Sixty-six short chapters tell of their adventures when Tiller and Sairy, in their 60s, adopt the pair and they go to live in "a lush, green hidden valley" where the maple trees "turn scarlet red, and all those red leaves look like a million bazillion rubies dangling on the trees". A river journey and a mountain hike, a heart attack and buried money add adventure, and Creech, like her character Dallas, has a gift for making beautiful word-pictures.
Dark Waters by Catherine MacPhail (Bloomsbury, £5.99) tells of Col, who "was only six when his father was killed - driving a getaway car in a robbery". Big brother Mungo is a nasty piece of work, and MacPhail is terrific at creating domestic tension and class conflict. Though Col saves "posh" Dominic Sampson from drowning, he is an uneasy hero. When he discovers the truth about Klaus, a Latvian refugee and illegal immigrant, a show-down is inevitable: Col has to make the most serious, difficult and necessary decision of his life. MacPhail's absorbing plot, finely-observed characters, the presence of a ghost and a moral conundrum all add up to an extraordinarily interesting read.
In Lian Hearn's talked-about Across the Nightingale Floor (Macmillan £12.99), first of a planned trilogy, the evocation of feudal Japan is brilliantly, magically atmospheric. It unfolds like a beautifully filmed piece: winding mountain roads, food, clothes, interiors. The seasons are vividly presented: "The red autumn lilies were fading. Persimmons turned gold on the trees, while the leaves became brittle and spiny chestnut shells lay in the lanes and alleys, spilling out their glossy fruit."
The book's dramatic beginning and strong plot are real strengths. At 15, Tomasu, one of the Hidden - a gentle, prayerful cult - finds his family destroyed, and from that moment "Revenge took me on as a pupil". This sophisticated story tells of a determined, revengeful Tomasu, renamed Takeo, and 15-year-old Kaede, "whose life was over before it had begun", and who knows that "there are worse things than death". Attempted rape; Tomasu's admission that, at 15, he had been to a brothel; Jato, the snake sword; severed heads; imprisonment; clan warfare; massacres - these mean sex and violence ("the hard bulge of his sex against her" is hardly children's fare though Hearn claims her book is for all ages); but, for the most part, Hearn handles this convincingly within a cultural framework and skilfully uses first- and third-person narrative in this very ambitious and impressive novel.
This autumn sees the welcome launch of Young Picador, which draws on writers from Germany, the US and Scotland. Malka (£9.99) by Mirjam Pressler is based on Malka Mai, now a grandmother, living in a Tel Aviv suburb. When we first meet her in September 1943, Malka is a seven-year-old Jewish girl living in a "godforsaken hole" in occupied Poland with her mother and sister. The novel traces their difficult and dangerous journey to Budapest, during which Malka becomes ill and has to be left behind. The people and places are described in detail; seven chapters describe the seven months from September to March. The harshness is never sensationalised, yet Pressler looks grim reality in the face. When Malka comes across a dead boy in the street, "she understood why the boy's coat and boots had been so big - it was because he had taken them from a dead person, a grown-up dead person". The nightmare of the Holocaust is the backdrop, but personal relations and family, the plight of refugees, identity are at the heart of the novel. This is one for the serious, reflective young reader.
Julie Bertagna's Exodus (£9.99) creates a post-television, post-God world of melting ice-caps, drowning worlds and swallowing seas where the diet consists of eggs, cabbage soup and potato bread, and where "books" is a "defunct word". For the fan of the futuristic - not my favourite genre, but Bertagna's wonderful writing knocked my prejudices sideways as I followed 15-year-old Mara's adventures both in cyberspace and across water, her encounters with a talking fox, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, Martin Luther King. Haunted by the past, this is a novel that reminds us of what matters: the power of storytelling and that age-old spirit of survival.
Children have already been sexualised in advertising and fashion. Children's books are now at it. Young Picadors, supposedly, are for 12-plus readers, but Massive (£9.99) by Julia Bell and Brock Cole's The Facts Speak for Themselves (£8.99) though outstanding, memorable and brilliantly written, are more suited to older teenagers.
In Massive, plump 14-year-old Carmen doesn't know who her father is, and lives with her anorexic, bulimic, neurotic mother. In a world where "thin is in", Carmen's confusion and loneliness are expertly handled and her relationships with her Gran and Aunt allow even more interesting explorations of complex issues. The bitchy, bullying school scenes are horribly depressing and convincing, the mother's mental and physical decline frightening. Riveting, disturbing but accurate and very involving.
Brock Cole's book is even more disturbing, and I hesitate before recommending it even to the over-15s. But then, there's 15 and 15. The facts do speak for themselves but, more interestingly, behind the facts are wounds, pain. It begins with two deaths - a shooting and a suicide - and when 13-year-old Linda tells her story, she gives a distressing and disturbing account of her dysfunctional mother, the many men in their lives and married family man and sexual predator Jack Green. Cole claims that he writes neither for children nor adults - "I simply write" - and does not apologise for the serious issues raised here. The book is provocative, carries a Childline contact number and website, but the writing is spare, taut, superb and Linda's voice, both caring and doomed, is compelling.
No gingham tablecloth or apple-pie here, but this Young Picador tells it how it can be and tells it brilliantly.
Niall MacMonagle teaches English at Wesley College, Dublin. Off the Wall, an anthology of wacky poems, which he edited, is published this month by Marino