More Teen Characters Dealing with Adult Issues

Peeled by Joan  Bauer:  Sometimes an author gets into a theme that seems to play out in all of the books they write.  It's almost like some of the popular book series that are out their now, but each book is actually different.  The thing that connects all of the books are the types of problems, the type of characters, and how the problems are solved.  This is the case with Joan Bauer's book, "Peeled".  Joan  Bauer has over 12 books published that are all different, but all contain some kind of wayward teenager, a bit of disfunctionalism in the family, an adult mentoring character, and best friends. The most common denominator in  her books seem to be the fact that the adults in the stories seem to be ignorant, incompetent, misguided, and dependent on the teens to solve the major problems in the community.


In the story Peeled, Hildy Biddle is stuck with the burden of uncovering the mystery of the haunted Ludlow house.  It seems all of the adults have skeletons on their closet as Hildy's investigation gets  her closer to the truth.  Her desire to be the best journalist in her high school and the community is only augmented by the local paper's desire to continually provide false facts and undermine the investigation. It's amazing how much faith the community puts into the published media in Banesville, New York. As the pieces of the puzzle start to fall into place, the players in a dastardly plan are reveled. Who's going to believe a high school junior and her little newspaper articles? Apparently somebody is listening.

Joan Bauer is one of the first authors I began to follow after I read the book, Squashed.  I wasn't even very fond of the book. Hope Was Here became one of the books I recommend to my classes every  year.  I really like the powerful teen characters that take matters into their own hands as the situations get tough. It's fun to watch them grow as a person as the climax nears.  There always seems to be a comforting adult that guides the character with compassion, but still lets them fail and get back up again. I hope every middle school or high school student can identify some adult like that.  Maybe, like me, they won't recognize who their guardian angle was until years later.