Sandra Scoppettone

I haven't re-read this for many years and it seemed like time. A copy floated around the house when I was a child and I bought my own copy some decades later. I adore this faux children's book narrated by a beatnik child who lives on Bleeker Street in Greenwich Village with her parents, Hugh (a poet) and Marcia (a sculptor). The text is funny and poignant by turns, with cultural references that I didn't understand as a child but appreciate now. The illustrations by Louise Fitzhugh are show more charming and dynamic. I've always loved the illustration on page 86 where High and Marcia are asleep on a bare mattress, curled up fetally with their backs to each other. If you remember the Village when it was, like, not square, you'll, like, dig Suzuki Beane. show less

1962. Suzuki Beane, a beatnik girl from Bleeker St., and her friend Henry, whose square parents have money, decide to run away together because their parents don’t understand their relationship and don’t treat them with respect. Book says more about children’s rights than beatniks and squares really, although that part is cool. The beatnik parents are mean to the square little boy, and the square parents treat Suzuki like a circus freak. They all need to look in the mirror. Sandra show more Scoppetone and Louise Fitzhugh, the illustrator and author of Harriet the Spy were lesbians and probably together when they collaborated on this tiny masterpiece. I read somewhere that it was their hip response to Eloise. show less

I loved 'Happy Endings Are All Alike' when I was a teenager, so now I am a grown-up who can buy things from Amazon I picked this up. It's a similar book - teenage page-turning angst, two boys in love in a drama club, the way the other kids are cruel to them because of this.

There are lots of things I probably wouldn't have picked up on reading it as a teenager - the irritating unselfaware voice of the first person teenage narrator, the really heavy handed foreshadowing that there will be show more Tragedy...

I guess the main thing that's strange about reading this book in the Future, where I have a nice relaxed liberal social circle and gay marriage is legal, is the strange tension in it. On one hand, it's selling a 'love is love and gay people are just normal people who should be allowed to love, and people who persecute them are arses' message. But on the other hand there is the huge trope of 'if people find out you are gay your friends will try to torture you and then you will Die Tragically' that is probably less helpful and supportive than we think it was, and has probably been overdone with hindsight, and this book is a prime example of it. show less

“And so what if happy endings didn't exist? Happy moments did.”

Sandra Scoppettone-Happy Endings Are All Alike

Does contain possible trigger regarding a very graphic rape scene.

This book has stayed with me since childhood and I recently had the chance to do a reread and found it every bit as compelling as I did back then..

reading this, one has to remember the book was way ahead of its time. Its about the love affair of two high school girls, Jaret and Peggy. They are close friends who fall show more in love.

It is, to the best of my recollection, one of the first books ever published in this genre. I loved it then and I love it now. But for new readers, you have to know that going in because attitudes back then were quite a bit different to say the least.

SPOILERS:

This book maybe triggering as it contains a vile nasty rape depiction. These girls keep their affair secret but are "outed" when a psychopathic boy who has been obsessed with Jaret, discovers her secret, rapes her and when charged, his defense is that the love affair between Jaret and Peggy "drove him" to it.

That would not fly today. It is rather surreal sometimes realizing how different the world is today and what it maybe like in say another few decades..or even over a hundred years from now when most of us wont even be here. In any event this is realistic young adult fiction at its best but should be read with caution. I give it 5 stars. show less