Peggy Orenstein's books include the New York Times best-selling memoir, Waiting for Daisy; Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Kids, Love and Life in a Half-Changed World; SchoolGirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem and the Confidence Gap; and Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture. Her new book is Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape.Recently I asked Orenstein about what she was reading. Her reply:
I go back and forth between reading books for adults and YA books, partly because my daughter and I like to read books together and partly because I love YA books. Right now I’m reading what is one of the most beloved books for young people in England but not, I think, especially popular here. It’s called Good Night, Mr. Tom. It’s the story of an abused child who is evacuated from London to the country during World War II toVisit Peggy Orenstein's website.live with a crusty but compassionate elderly man. The boy gradually blooms under Mr. Tom’s loving care and the friendship of the children in the town. That’s as far as I’ve gotten, but apparently the boy eventually is forced to go back to his mother and after months of silence, Mr. Tom goes looking for him. I actually started reading it because I have a memory of another book that I read and loved as a child—it wasn’t this one, which was published while I was in college, I believe—that was about also about an evacuated boy and an elderly man. I’ve always wanted to find that book again but I can’t remember anything else about it, not the title, not the author, not even really the plot. Searching for it on the web, I always ended up with Good Night, Mr. Tom. It’s a great book, and I’m sharing it with my daughter but I still wish I could find the one from my own childhood.
The Page 69 Test: Waiting for Daisy.
The Page 99 Test: Cinderella Ate My Daughter.
--Marshal Zeringue
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