Ageless and Timeless Literature

For my final project in The Adolescent in American Literature, I chose to create a class called "Ageless and Timeless Literature." This idea was inspired by The Hunger Games, to a certain extent; Healy and I talked about the repetitiveness of this story, from an ancient Greek myth to an episode of Jimmy Neutron to the new sci-fi movie, Gamer. Society is still intrigued by the same story, transcending both time and age.

As someone who plans to never grow up, I decided that I would create two sets of books, each with a children's book, a young adult novel and a classic novel, all of which would be from any time, preferably, three different historical moments. All of these books deal with growing up in some way--all protagonists are at some stage of growing up. The overall theme of the course will be that you never stop growing up; you just change its name.

SET 1
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The Looking Glass Wars
The Glass Menagerie

SET 2
Peter Pan
Never After
Catcher in the Rye

Interestingly, both children's books are classics, both young adult books are brand new (published within the last three years) and both adult books are modern classics.

I haven't read either of these young adult novels, but all of the reviews I've seen have been spectacular.