SEVENTEENTH SUMMER by Maureen Daly (1942)

Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster; 340 pages; romance; ages 12 and up; ISBN: 978-1-4169-9463-3.

Angie Morrow has graduated from high school in a small town in Wisconsin and will enter college in Chicago in the fall. She's never had a boyfriend before, but when Jack Duluth, a star athlete at school, notices her at the local drug store and asks her out on a date, they quickly fall for each other. But is it really love? As the summer winds down, they must decide what to do about their feelings for each other before college and work (Jack is employed at his family's bakery) pull them apart, perhaps permanently.

It's amusing but refreshing to read a book set in the 1930s that proves no matter how many electronic gadgets we carry around these days or how much social mores have changed, men and women, boys and girls, etc. still have no idea what to do with themselves when confronted with the blush of first love. Seventeenth Summer will seem absolutely chaste compared to a YA book like Gossip Girl, but that should make it a safe bet for parents and teachers who tend to be squeamish about the sexual content of the books tweens often want to read when reading "up."

Unfortunately, Maureen Daly's first novel, which she wrote when she was still in college, is excessively long, as if she begged her editor not to chop out a single detail about the weather or leaves swaying in the breeze or what's for breakfast. Of course, first love can make a guy or gal lose their perspective on all kinds of things. Seventeenth Summer is charming, but if you ask me, it wore out its welcome sooner rather than later.

For further reading—and in a contemporary setting, to boot—check out The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han (2009).