Dating, Love, and Sex

In discussing YA novels that focus on dating, love, and sexuality, we read and discussed The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart. This novel is the story of a teen girl at an upper class boarding school, who grows from awkward gawky girl into a stunning young woman over one summer. Coming back to school the next year, Frankie gets used to the new attention, and begins dating cool senior Matt. However, Frankie's new boyfriend is a member of the school's all-male secret society, The Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds. Feeling a victim of her circumstances, being female and judged on her looks by the "cool crowd," Frankie covertly tries to take over this secret society by coordinating pranks through manipulative emails. When Frankie must face the consequences of her actions, she brings the reader to strong criticism of gender double-standards in a way students haven't considered before. It is a fun story for teens in its sense of secrecy and danger while exploring gender issues in a world fairly close to their own.

This novel is a tough one for me to place in a classroom. There are definitely some interesting aspects of the novel I would want to explore with students, including some fun with wordplay, a couple really great metaphors, and an interesting narrator perspective. However, this is a novel that deals, on the plot level, mostly with dating. There is some room for teaching Marxist and feminist criticism out of this book, and while I do like the idea of using easier material to teach difficult concepts like literary criticism, there is no getting around the pretty simple plot line of this book. I'm so torn, because it would be nice to see kids working on literary criticism without spending class time summarizing plot because of difficult language. Still, I think there are better books to do so with, including earlier review book Looking for Alaska. In many ways, I see The Disreputable History as the poor man's Looking for Alaska--a strong female narrator that boys swoon for, finding a way to subvert the power stuck in upper-class patriarchal society, but without the stunning style and greater life lessons of John Green's novel.

Suggested Grade Level: 9th-10th grade
Appropriateness: Some language and sexuality, subversion of authority