The Wrong Crowd: A Tale Of Teens Behaving Badly

Meg Wolitzer is the author of a book for young readers, The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman.

In reality, I may be a middle-aged woman with two nearly grown sons, but in my heart I am a teenage girl who has found herself pregnant and doesn’t know what to do. For if you came of age, as I did, reading Paul Zindel’s My Darling, My Hamburger, then you probably still feel that you know what it’s like to be a high school student whose life almost derails.

I sometimes take out my old copy of this book and have a look; not because it’s a cautionary tale (the writing is too subtle) or because it speaks to today’s young readers (in some important aspects it seems dated), but because it reminds me of who I was when I first picked it up.