Firsts

On my son’s first birthday, he experienced his first ice cream sandwich. I’m sure we have a picture somewhere of his blissful grin in a face covered in melted ice cream and smeared chocolate. The summer my daughter turned seven she rode a bicycle for the first time without training wheels. Since we lived on a hill that descended into a busy street, she was mostly confined to big lazy circles in the street in front of our house. In a few weeks, they will both make their first plane trip, unaccompanied by any adults, to Austin to visit their grandparents.

I heard an excerpt from an interview with Jenny Han the other day where she mentioned something like “Firsts are best because they are beginnings.” That’s partly why she is drawn to writing about teenagers. And why we, as adult readers, are drawn to YA fiction. If you haven’t read Han's trilogy, The Summer I Turned Pretty, start there. Then you can watch the melodramatic, but nonetheless engrossing, series adapted from the books that was just released on Prime.

If you still haven’t gotten your fill of firsts, then I recommend Breathless by Jennifer Niven. Claude and her mother are “banished” to an island off the coast of Georgia the summer after her senior year after her parents separate. With little to no cell service, she can’t rely on the text support of her best friend (who she loves more than “libraries and sunshine and boys with guitars”), so she turns to the other young people in her midst. An encounter with Miah starts off as a welcome distraction, but soon forces her to face her issues with trust and acceptance.

What is your favorite "first" fiction?