dangermom, my father liberally handed out E. Blyton, Doolittle and loads of other books rife with ethnic and gender stereotyping. I feel sad to think they could be censored or edited out or no longer printed because of that type of stuff-I remember them being a great springboard for discussion. My mom and dad don’t censor literature or music though (never at any age, my dad let me idly read through the French Lieutenant’s Woman when my mom was in school when I was 7 or 8).
Besides, the zillionth time George declares she wants to be a boy, or Bill the horsey girl in Malory Towers who forms such a close relationship with the Hon. Clarissa is sooooo much funnier when you grow up and ponder all the subtle sapphic potential…
Also, they were widely available at the libraries I frequented in Quebec and Massachusetts.
I’m not sure I’d compare it to Catcher, but it’s definitely very different from what I thought it would be–that is, chick lit but at a boarding school, making best friends for life, having midnight feasts a la Enid Blyton. It’s more of a girl from the midwest who’s an outsider at an East coast prep school and her observations from life on the outside. It’s the kind of book that’s intensely depressing but not so much because anything actually depressing happens, more because of who the character is.
I hope this isn’t considered threadshitting, but I hated Curtis Sittenfeld’s “Prep” so much I started a thread about it a couple of years ago to vent my hatred. (There may be mild spoilers in that thread, but, honestly, I don’t think that book had enough of a plot to spoil.)
Granted, the book was a best-seller, so there must be many people out there who loved it – I, however, most emphatically did not.
