{"id":96855,"date":"2016-04-12T17:08:54","date_gmt":"2016-04-12T21:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=96855"},"modified":"2016-04-12T18:44:43","modified_gmt":"2016-04-12T22:44:43","slug":"fifteen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/12\/fifteen\/","title":{"rendered":"Fifteen"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

From the cover of a seventies edition of Fifteen<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n

Beverly Cleary has turned one hundred. And while there\u2019s no shortage of well-deserved and lovely tributes out there, I wanted to take a moment to talk about one of my favorite of her books:\u00a0Fifteen<\/a><\/em>, a YA novel published in 1956. Like all of Cleary\u2019s work, it combines gentle observational humor with a genuine understanding of young people. And like the rest of her oeuvre, it holds up, even decades down the line.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jane Purdy is a teenage girl living in the suburbs of San Francisco. While babysitting an indulged and neglected brat, Jane meets the dog-food delivery boy, a new kid in town named Stan Crandall. What follows is the gradual and realistic evolution of their relationship. Jane, an inexperienced dater, is thrilled by Stan\u2019s attention, and she likes him a lot, but there are problems: a \u201csmooth\u201d girl from his past; a sophisticated, cashmere-clad nemesis who makes Jane feel frumpy and Miss Muffet-ish; a trip to Chinatown that makes Jane feel gauche. When Stan picks her up, he steps on a cat toy, which embarrasses him. Jane\u2019s dad makes a lame joke. It takes Jane three tries to get her arm into her coat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In short, Cleary brings us all the small challenges and triumphs that made even a 1950s adolescence such a roller coaster. Jane tries to impress Stan by drinking coffee and pretending to be blas\u00e9; of course, in the end, she learns that he likes her as she really is.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cleary sees the humor in all this without ever minimizing her young characters\u2019\u2014or readers\u2019\u2014feelings. These incidents might be small in the grand scheme of a life, but in the moment, they\u2019re grave and real. When Jane acts flirtatious to seem more sophisticated and alienates Stan, for instance, Cleary writes, \u201cThe humiliation that Jane had felt turned to something else\u2014grief perhaps, or regret. Regret that she had not known how to act with a boy, regret that she had not been wiser.\u201d And when a short, purse-carrying nerd asks Jane for a date, the awkwardness and heartache of the moment are real.<\/p>\n

I love all of Cleary\u2019s fiction, from the iconic\u00a0Ramona\u00a0series to the poignant\u00a0Dear Mr. Henshaw<\/em>\u00a0to her other midcentury YAs,\u00a0The Luckiest Girl<\/em>\u00a0and the almost painfully real\u00a0Jean and Johnny<\/em>. (I\u2019ve never warmed up to the memoirs, which seem to me to lack some of the humor and generosity of her fictional work.) But\u00a0Fifteen<\/em>\u00a0holds a special place in my heart; it is the sweetest of her books. And even reading it now, I can\u2019t help but feel a catch of excitement when the phone rings and a strange voice asks,\u00a0\u201cI know this is probably sort of sudden \u2026 but I was wondering if you would care to go to the movies with me tomorrow night.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beverly Cleary has turned one hundred. And while there\u2019s no shortage of well-deserved and lovely tributes out there, I wanted to take a moment to talk about one of my favorite of her books:\u00a0Fifteen, a YA novel published in 1956. Like all of Cleary\u2019s work, it combines gentle observational humor with a genuine understanding of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[4064,16631,9158,17,21933,21932,15779,21934],"class_list":["post-96855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-adolescence","tag-beverly-cleary","tag-birthdays","tag-books","tag-centenaries","tag-fifteen","tag-young-adult-literature","tag-young-love"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nRereading Beverly Cleary\u2019s \u201cFifteen\u201d on Her Hundredth Birthday<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"April 12, 2016 \u2013 Beverly Cleary has turned one hundred. 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