Frank Kogan

I went through a phase of reading the 'young adult' Judy Blume books when I was around 10 - stuff that dealt with the physical problems of puberty way before I had to deal with it myself (and ended up making me immensely paranoid about the whole business), though I found all the emotional stuff rather immature in comparison - most of it seemed to concern the teenager's relationship with their parents/divorce rather than OMG I FANCY THIS GUY BUT ARGH I DON'T HAVE ANY HORMONES YET. The gendered aspect was extremely significant here - although I had obviously read books with a male protagonist before, until Judy Blume I had never read a kid's book where someone actually described the perils of having a penis before. Duuude. The only other books I've read that did a similar thing were the first two Adrian Mole books, but I came to those much later on.

Most of the time I read books where the protagonist was several years older than me but their age wasn't really a defining aspect of their character (school was just a structural backdrop and puberty was apparently taboo outside JB books - kissing was as good as it got). By the time I was actually a young adult (say 13-14) I didn't really have time to read many books except the Discworld novels and Lord Of The Rings. I got my hormone fix from trashy Virginia Andrews novels which all followed the same plot: poor girl inherits vast fortune, unwittingly sleeps with family member, runs away to become ballerina. Hahahah I want to re-read Flowers In The Attic now...