Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Hinton, S(usan) E(loise) - John Rowe Townsend

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JOHN ROWE TOWNSEND

[S. E. Hinton] was in her teens when she wrote The Outsiders …, a novel of violence and feuding between greasers and socialites. The book is technically remarkable for so young a writer; its background appears authentic; but true feeling is hopelessly entangled with false, bad-film sentimentality, and the plot is creakingly unbelievable. It may be noted that, just as slum children in novels by middle-class writers can easily be nice middle-class children under the skin, so the greasers in this book by 'a seventeen-year-old whose best friends are greasers' sometimes look like sheep in wolves' clothing. (p. 295)

John Rowe Townsend, "How Young Is an Adult?" in his Written for Children: An Outline of English-Language Children's Literature, revised edition, J. B. Lippincott, Publishers, 1974, pp. 291-300.∗

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1. Introduction
2. Lillian N. Gerhardt
3. Thomas Fleming
4. William Jay Jacobs
5. A. Chambers
6. Sheryl B. Andrews
7. Michael Cart
8. The Times Literary Supplement
9. John Rowe Townsend
10. Jane Abramson
11. Anita Silvey
12. Robert Berkvist
13. Dorothy Nimmo
14. The Council On Interracial Books For Children
15. Paxton Davis
16. Margery Fisher
17. Lance Salway
18. Susan Thompson
19. Copyright

1. S. E. Hinton