Book Review: Kay Ann

Title: Kay Ann

Author: Grace & Harold Johnson

Date: 1951

Publisher: Whittlesey House / McGraw-Hill

ISBN: none

Length: 221 pages

Quote: "Of course, she'd had a grand summer around home, playing tennis, swimming and riding...but...there wasn't much thrill in going out with Jerry."

This was actually the sort of girls' school story I would have liked when I was fifteen...old enough to have felt a hormone surge, sensible enough to know I didn't want to have sex that year, and very much interested in reading anything written by anyone who was aware that people could ignore their hormones and survive.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't have discovered it when I was fifteen. Probably afraid that high school girls wouldn't read a story about a girl who actually busted a crush and got a life, the publisher made sure to supply a blurb about Kay Ann's "new appreciation of Jerry." You have to read all the way to the end of the book to learn that Kay Ann comes to appreciate Jerry as a friend who shares her interests, not as a "boyfriend." There's no swooning, spooning, or June-ing anywhere in this book...but it starts out as if there will be. That means the book puts off readers who don't want a romance and disappoints readers who do, even though, taken for what it is, it's a satisfactory story.

Actually it's a pretty realistic portrait of a tenth grade preppy-type's life. Kay Ann just might end up married to Jerry. He's a nice normal sixteen-year-old boy, still growing, not troubled by hormone surges yet; give him time. Or she might end up married to someone else. Meanwhile, she indulges in a few strictly secret swoons over the new teacher, but refuses to embarrass herself by making any noticeable moves toward him, so when his wife joins him in town she does not want to die of embarrassment. Meanwhile, she keeps on doing the things she's always enjoyed, with friends and relatives and the things that will be part of her adult life (especially if she marries Jerry). She throws all that adolescent energy into the family business, and has a bang-up year.

Not many years after Kay Ann, McGraw-Hill published Eloise Jarvis McGraw's Greensleeves, a realistic but much more sophisticated novel, with some erotic moments, about an older girl who decides to postpone romance while going to college...after discovering that she feels about equally passionate toward a good friend, and toward a man who may not be quite "a jerk" but is definitely an "arrogant, unmitigated, beastly blob of glup." Greensleeves was an easier sell than Kay Ann; it was still circulating in all the libraries into the 1980s. Kay Ann was, apparently, considered dead by its own publisher, because prior to about 1980 one authentic girl-power book was enough of a risk for a publisher to promote--McGraw-Hill couldn't have afforded two.

Too bad. Kay Ann is an accessible, believable heroine for a high school girls' story. The heroine of Greensleeves was not only college-age, but a multilingual European movie star's daughter. I enjoyed Greensleeves very much, in grade ten, but its protagonist is a little too aspirational to be an immediate role model for high school students.

In theory more girl-power stories are being written and published now. Still, for high school girls who might enjoy a blast from the past, here is a nice, wholesome, non-preachy, chaste novel about the real pleasures of tenth grade life. When this book review went live for the first time, fifteen years ago, people remembered Kay Ann and searched for this book. It could become a favorite for anyone who reads it at all.