handbooks, dictionaries, encyclopedias: reference as bildungsroman

[deborah]

In some YA novels, the heroes have to decipher their journey through a literal guidebook they find.

Sometimes it's a manual provided by the PTB, as in So You Want To Be A Wizard by dduane.

Sometimes it's a guide left by the parents' generation, as in Jellicoe Road, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, or the Marauder's Map of the Harry Potter books. There's something similar in the Rebel Angels books, right?

In Walter Dean Meyers' Handbook for Boys, there's no literal book, but the title layers an implication of guidebook nature over the advice given by the prior generation.

Other examples? astern and I will thank you.

Comments

[kareila]

Does The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy count as YA? Everyone I knew in high school read it then.

Also, the plot of The Spiderwick Chronicles revolves around a Guide to Faerie that falls into the children's hands.

There is a book that is central to The Invention of Hugo Cabret, a book of Hugo's father's drawings of an automaton that contains the clues to help him fix it.

[deborah]

Ooh, thank you. Very helpful!