Seventeenth Summer Review

Seventeenth Summer

Bibliographic Information

Daly, Maureen. Seventeenth Summer. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1942. Print. 

Summary

Seventeenth Summer is the remembering of Angie Morrow’s seventeenth summer, 1938. She is the third of four sisters in a small town in Wisconsin. Her two older sisters have dated, both at home and at college, but Angie is surprised when she is courted by the high school’s basketball star, Jack Duluth. They spend the summer developing their relationship, but both know that Angie is going to go off to college in Chicago when the summer ends while Jack will be required to stay and work in his family’s bakery. In the end, they must decide what that separation means for them. The story is told from Angie’s perspective, looking back and telling the story of the summer she first fell in love. 

Analysis

The story is a great early embodiment of the genre of teen summer love from the teen’s own perspective. It certainly has the same feel as many of the realistic fiction teen romances out there currently, just more chaste in many ways. I found it very interesting to see how our cultural understanding of dating and relationships have changed. It is mentioned often that it seems inappropriate for a girl who is only 17 to be seeing the same boy night after night, which would seem almost scandalous to many today. We’re much more focused on only dating one person at a time for teenagers than this book seemed to be. On the other hand, Angie wonders if she’s too young to have a crush on a boy. In a culture where we start using crush as an innocent infatuation that even young girls have, that sounds absurd. These contrasts will appeal to an audience who enjoys the structure and feel of young adult romance while also wishing to learn about the past. 

Daly began writing this story when she herself was 17 and it is loosely based on her own experiences, so her style of writing is very personable and nearly diary-like. However, it is very of its time and can sometimes feel overwrought or even aimed to a younger audience. These could be turn offs to some readers, though it may be easily overlooked with the understanding of it being written in such a different time period. Perhaps most disconcerting to me was the knowledge that in a mere few years, these 17 year olds would be the boys shipping off to World War II. I think this may also hit many teens, who have often studied World War II in depth in school, and feel a little eerie, just as it did to me. 

Overall, Seventeenth Summer is essentially an early example of a book written for teens, by a teen. This, alongside its evident development of the genre of young adult romance, secures it a place in YA literature for many years to come. The lack of heavy issues, sex, or language also makes it accessible from an earlier age than many of the modern books in this genre of YA. The most scandalous mentions are of beer drinking (with Jack’s classmates, who are all the legal drinking age of 18) and smoking (which was not considered scandalous at the time). Presented correctly, this book could certainly appeal to many young adult readers and still feel interesting and intriguing, even as it pulls the reader into an older time period. 

Activity

An interesting activity (especially if you choose to correlate Our Town as suggested in my related resources) would be to have a group turn the story of Seventeenth Summer into a short play. They could do it three acts and develop the characters via dialogue rather than seeing it all through the eyes of Angie. This would help the group flesh out and identify with more characters from the story and feel like they’re experiencing the time period. 

A less interactive but just as productive activity could be to encourage journalling of one’s own summer. I would recommend this simply be an encouraged activity (rather than a shared one) so that the writers could feel that they’re writing in privacy, much as it seems Angie is. This would open students or patrons to assessing their own growth and hopes for the future. 

Related Resources

Seventeenth Summer is a clear and direct predecessor to some of the “chick lit” that is popular today. For readers interested in the coming of age and romance of the story, I would absolutely recommend looking into Sarah Dessen’s work. She even specifically has a few books related to the theme of a teenager over the course of a summer. 

Dessen, Sarah. That Summer. New York: Orchard Books, 1996. Print. 

If a reader is interested in seeing more of small town life in the late 1930’s, Our Town would be a wonderful read. While some readers may be turned away by the challenge of reading a play, many other young adults will enjoy the format. Published in 1938, it gives a fuller view of what life around Angie would have been like, especially for someone like Jack.

Wilder, Thornton. Our Town. New York: Harper Perennial, 1998. Print. 

Published Review

Leggett, Karen. “Seventeenth Summer.” Review of Seventeenth Summer by Maureen Daly. Children’s Literature. Accesed via CLCD, http://ezproxy.twu.edu:4529/#/bookdetail/1/0/PePnjKklgqepIOMk/bdrtop.