I started collecting children's books when I was in high school, and I think I owe it all to the Seventeen Book of Young Living. This fluffy teen girl guide book got me thinking about the fact that books written for young people of a certain era offer a glimpse of the values adult society was seeking to mandate.
The Seventeen Book of Young Living
By Enid Haupt
Copyright 1957
Wonderful portrait of idealized teenage living--a whirl of dates, fashion, sweetly decorated rooms and wedding day dreams. Includes a surprisingly strong anti-prejudice chapter but only the vaguest intimation of s-e-x.
Inside story: The owner of this book, oh-so-appropriately used the first name "Twinkle"
Sample wisdom: "...just as there can only be one skipper to a boat, one driver to a car, or one president of a company, so there can only be one head of a happy house--and that is, by law, by taxes, by census, and by women's intuition, the husband."
More wisdom
McCall's Guide to Teenage Beauty and Glamour
Copyright 1959, 1965 printing
By Betsy Keiffer
A guide primarily focusing on improving one's appearance and manners.
Sample wisdom: "...men are conservative creatures. They are also sensitive souls with invisible antennae that can pick up for miles any disapproving glances or comments on their date's behavior. It's terribly important to them to be proud of the girl they are with--so be sure they can be proud of you."
'Twixt Twelve and Twenty
By Pat Boone
Copyright 1958, 1959 printing
The singing star offers wholesome advice for young people. Lots of Biblical references and anecdotes from Boone's own youth.
Inside story: This book is inscribed, "To Carol Sue, from mother and dad on your twelfth birthday, March 10, 1959"
Sample wisdom: "And of course, there are spankings and spankings. There is the delayed spanking that sets in when you're too old to go across Mama's knee and have to wait till you get home and lean over the bathtub. There is the angry spanking and the loving spanking. My mother never gave "loving" spankings. I wouldn't know what they were. But hers weren't angry either; they were intelligent and they were just." Boone says he received the last of those spankings at age 17.
Teenagers Guide for Living
By Judson T. Landis and Mary G. Landis
Copyright 1957, 1965 printing
The dust jacket bears an endorsement from Eleanor Roosevelt, among others, and it's no wonder: this book is eminently sensible.
Sample wisdom: "If you are a girl and you find that your interest is in the general area of social service, and you also know that you wish to marry and have a family, then you should think of a type of social service job which would also fit in with being a wife and mother." For instance, the book lists nursing as a good alternative to an airline stewardess career.
The Seventeen Book of Etiquette and Entertaining
Copyright 1963, 1967 printing
An etiquette guide, of course.
Inside story: Someone has made two pages of notes on wedding etiquette under the title "Things I have learned from others mistakes." She had obviously been to some lively weddings, judging from my favorite rules: "The bride is always, albeit of happy countenance, dignified. She may smile, but no horseplay" and "Do not encourage drunkenness--by your demeanor suggest moderation."
Sample wisdom: (On how to refuse a kiss) "If it's a gay under-the-mistletoe or New Year's kiss, enjoy it and don't stir up a scene over nothing. If it's a determined, boy-has-plans kiss, humor or distraction is the best way to salvage the situation. If one or both of you starts laughing, or can be distracted, you can avoid the rather dull feminine defenses of scratching, screaming and kicking."
Hi There, High School!
By Gay Head
Copyright 1953, 1972 printing
An extremely perky Scholastic introduction to the world of high school.
Sample wisdom: "You'll really be in the swing of things at Central High this year if you start by learning all you can about your school...In what year was your school founded? When did the first class graduate? Who is your school's most famous graduate?" (I can't tell you what a ticket to popularity such information would have been at my high school.)
What About Teenage Marriage?
By Jeanne Sakol
Copyright 1961, 1966 printing
Well, what about it? Not surprisingly, the author is against it.
Sample wisdom: "After the age of thirty, it is true that your chances of marrying diminish but this gives you a good twelve to fifteen years to find just the right man." (This is only if you aren't one of "the mental misfits who will never marry.")
Understanding the Adolescent Girl
By Grace Loucks Elliot
Copyright 1930, 1934 printing
Technically not a guide for teenagers but for people who deal with them. Sometimes pseudo-scientific but extremely reasonable on most topics.
Sample Wisdom: "Whenever girls lack the opportunity to know and to build relationships with boys, or are afraid of their developing sex feelings, and of men as sexed beings, the relations with their own sex have to carry an extra tension which biologically they are not suited to carry."
The Girl that You Marry
By Dr. James H.S. Bossard and Dr. Eleanor Stoker Boll
Copyright 1960
A guide to those baffling girls for prospective grooms
Some chapter titles: She is Ritualistic and Conservative, She Needs Security, She Wants to Be a Mother
Sample wisdom: "If she never has a child she has missed the duty and the fulfillment for which she was intended and she has wasted her most important physiological potential."
The Wonderful World of Teens
By Warren W. Wiersbe
Copyright 1962, 1968 printing
A largely sensible guide distinguished by a strong Evangelical Christian emphasis
Sample wisdom: "Please keep in mind that teenage fellows and teenage girls are not sexually aroused in the same way. Fellows are aroused mentally through what they see, hear and think, and girls are aroused physically through direct touch in certain sensitive areas."
Personal Help Library Vol. III: For Boys and Young Men
By Louise Francis Spaller and Prof. T.W. Shannon, M.A.
Copyright 1921
Oh, my. This very thick book is a treasure trove of interesting tidbits. The first half deals with such boyish activities as scouting, swimming and hunting; the second half is the good stuff.
Inside story: The inscription reads, "1923, from Mother to her boy, to enable you my son to be a better man."
Sample wisdom: "You are some mother's boy who, like a queen, glided to the bed of suffering and her feet came near touching the chilly waters of death to bring you into being."
More wisdom
A Teenager's Guide to Life and Love
By Dr. Benjamin Spock
Copyright 1970
The child care expert turns his attention to teens; "life and love" translates primarily as sex
Sample wisdom: "Roughly speaking, there are two kinds of dates, at least from a boy's point of view. In one he feels drawn to a girl primarily by her physical attractiveness (which includes a certain seductiveness of personality) and will go as far as he has the boldness to try or as the girl will permit. In the other he is attracted by the girl's whole personality, including her physical appeal, and wants to know her better; somewhere in the front or back of his mind is the thought that this might possibly turn out to be the exciting relationship of his life."
Party Perfect
By Gay Head
Copyright 1959, 1962 printing
A narrowly-focused Scholastic guide to throwing the perfect bash
Inside story: Someone has placed a "Peter is great" Monkees sticker on the inside front cover.
Sample wisdom: "By Jupiter -- be the first one in your crowd to give an out-of-this-world party! This is not as mad as it sounds. The day will come when travel to outer space will be as everyday as going for a spin in the family car. Instead of taking a joy ride, you'll go for a moon ride."
Boys and Sex
By Dr. Wardell Pomeroy
Copyright 1968, 1972 printing
An almost gleefully graphic and thorough treatment of this topic
Sample wisdom: "Intercourse with animals is usually infrequent among those boys who practice it, but there are some who build up a strong emotional attachment to a particular animal...I have known cases of farm boys who have had a loving sexual relationship with an animal and who felt good about their behavior until they got to college, where they learned for the first time that what they had done was 'abnormal.' Then they were upset and thought of themselves as some kind of monster."
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