There is something peculiarly subversive about Zindel's books that appeals to the adolescent. Adults, particularly authoritarian figures like policemen or teachers, are usually portrayed in a bad light, and the reader can feel himself happily encapsulated in an immature world in which the young are wronged, misunderstood, and generally knocked about; where the battle-lines between the generations are very clearly drawn; and the teenager who thinks he's got problems can be at ease, identify with the central characters, or find he's not the only misfit, unsuccessful at home or at school, with his friends, with the opposite sex. Whether life is really like this is another matter. For the adult, reading the collected works of Paul Zindel is a slightly tedious process, which is not the experience one has with some writers of teenage fiction. The world, in fact, is not as distorted as it appears to be...