In the context of Irish writing and publishing for the young, Claire Hennessy's Dear Diary (Poolbeg, £3.99) represents a significant development. We have had young authors before, though none quite as young as 12, as is the case here. We have had various depictions of adolescent angst, dealt with in styles aspiring to contemporary realism, though none which focuses as strongly on the pre-teen transitional period between primary and secondary school. We have had, increasingly, evidence of a new frankness in language and theme - though, given the precise age of the characters here, nothing which quite as daringly sets out to cross new frontiers.
It all adds up to a book which, almost certainly, will be tremendously popular with young readers, particularly girls, in their final primary year. Hennessy has the advantage of an insider's insights into her age-group's obsessions and portrays them, in her chosen diary entries format, with a racinesss and candour which will appeal to her target audience. For most adult readers, however, the interest will be sociological rather than literary. How do we respond to a nation of 12-year-old girls apparently fixated on sex, periods, discos, slumber parties and Leonardo DiCaprio - and to the sadness which obviously underlies so much of their surface exuberance?
While the setting of Jacqueline Wilson's Girls Out Late (Doubleday, £10.99 in UK) is contemporary London and her three "girls" are clearly in their early teens, her book has much in common, thematically and linguistically, with Hennessy's. The essential difference lies, inevitably, in Wilson's experience as a writer. There is an ease here, almost a slickness, in what amounts to a young romance story, as we follow the fluctuations of our heroines' rivalries and friendships and the discovery by one of them of what she hopes is love. Wilson chronicles her characters' follies and vulnerabilities with sharpness and sympathy, being well attuned to adult hypocrisy and prevarication.
To judge merely by the title of Veronica Bennett's The Boy Free Zone (Walker, £9.99 in UK) it might seem that here at last is a teenage novel where girls have an opportunity to think of something other than the male. But for 15-year-olds Annabel and Lucy, the initially empty summer holidays are quickly transformed by Sebastian, whose arrival from America creates tension between the two friends and throughout their English village community. That sense of teenage understanding that, as Annabel expresses it at one point, "each day pushed childhood deeper into the past", is excellently caught by Bennett in this entertaining and thoughtful novel.
The childhoods in Robert Swindells' harsh and uncompromising Dosh (Hamish Hamilton, £10.99 in UK) are portrayed as being pulled prematurely into the world of adult exploitation and degeneracy. Here, in the vividly realised setting of a North of England comprehensive school, a flourishing protection racket operated by a bullying section of the pupils is soon seen to be merely a front for something even uglier beyond the school gates. Swindells' strong social conscience is, as always, much in evidence, as is his courage in refusing to deny the dark and sinister sides of our natures: the denouement will challenge even the least fainthearted of its readers, young or old.
Notions of authorial social conscience and courage surface also in Louis Sachar's truly outstanding Holes (Bloomsbury, £10.99 in UK), the sort of book which demonstrates beyond argument that, at its absolute best, young adult fiction can make as powerful an impact as its more senior counterpart. We are here at the Texas "Juvenile Correctional Facility" known as Camp Green Lake, where teenage offenders exhaustingly serve their sentences as hole-diggers. It is a brutal regime, but one to which our hero Stanley brings a degree of acquiescence: previous generations of his family have likewise paid the price for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Sachar's brilliance lies in the interweaving of these past histories with young Stanley's present predicament and in the terse, almost matter-of-fact style employed to link them. Add these to its potent and colourful characterisation - the Camp's Warden is unforgettable - and the result is a novel which is as multi-layered as the onions which contribute so tellingly to the final unravelling of the plot. By the time we reach the closing pages, we have moved, in more senses than one, to caviar and champagne.
Finally, a very warm recommendation for Susan Cooper's King of Shadows (Bodley Head, £10.99 in UK), a time-slip story in which young American actor Nat Field journeys back to Elizabethan England. Here he meets Shakespeare and acts with him in a marvellously re-created performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Cooper skilfully counterpoints the worlds of contemporary and Elizabethan theatre, and paints a heart-warming picture of the intimate bond between playwright and performer.
Robert Dunbar lectures in English at the Church of Ireland College of Education, Dublin