The Outsiders

by S.E. Hinton
personal copy, paperback 156 pages
genre: YA realistic fiction

I knew I was "teaching" this for seventh grade language arts and wanted to be prepared. I hadn't read this in about (or over?) thirty years! It was a much quicker read than I remembered. And for some reason, I thought that either Ponyboy or Sodapop died in the story . . . so clearly I needed to re-read it to actually remember the story correctly.

It wasn't as well-written as I remembered it to be, but I went online to check the veracity of a tag on my copy: "a revealing novel about teenagers - by a teenager." I knew that Susan Hinton published as "S.E." because of her gender and publishers' belief that boys wouldn't write a book by a girl. But I didn't know that she was only 15 when she wrote it and 17 when it was published! That's amazing!

Even though it was written several decades ago, the story still seems to resonate for teenagers. Interesting.