IN Paula Danziger's Can You Sue Your Parents for Malpractice? (Mammoth, £2.99 in UK), the heroine is a normal 14-year-old called Laura. Her older sister is a pain, her boyfriend has been stolen by Sandy Linwood, and her parents quarrel continually. She has chosen "Law for Children and Young People" as her special option at school. As she says, "It's absolutely disgusting being fourteen. You've got no rights whatsoever. Your parents get to make all the decisions: Who gets the single bedroom. How much allowance is enough.
Catherine, in Karen Cushman's Catherine, Called Birdy (Macmillan, £3.99 in UK), has identical problems: siblings, the opposite sex and parental interference. But Catherine is daughter of Rollo and the Lady Aislinn. . . of the village of Stonebridge in the shire of Lincoln, in the country of England in the hands of God" and her tale takes place in "the year of Our Lord 1290". She is keeping a diary in which the first entry, dated 12th Day of September, sets the tone: "I am commanded to write an account of my days: I am bit by fleas and plagued by family. That is all there is to say." Not quite all, though. Her father is about to try to marry her off to any horrid old man who's rich enough. Birdy, being as feisty a character as any of Paula Danziger's, has other plans.
The whole of medieval life is here, from fleas to haymaking and bear baiting, feast days, fast days, weddings and funerals. It is a fascinating read.
The same can be said of The Voices of Silence, by Bel Mooney (Mammoth, £3.99 in UK). The time is the fall of the Iron Curtain, the place, Romania. Flora is thirteen and she, too, has problems. Her parents have started quarrelling. Life is not easy. She lives on the tenth floor in an "ugly mean estate" at the centre of Bucharest. There are no lifts, long queues for bread and milk (fruit, bacon and cheese are "a feast"), heat and light cannot be taken for granted. A new boy, Daniel, who charms his way into her affections at school, turns out to be the son of a Securitate man. And Flora's father is involved in the rising against Ceaucescu.
The strength of both The Voices of Silence and Catherine, called Birdy is that neither is a historical treatise. Both, like Paula Danziger's work, are well-written, engrossing stories about typical 13/14-year-old girls.
The two historical novels, however, don't half put the plight of a normal American (or Irish) teenager into perspective. Read in sequence, they would be excellent books for class discussion.