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

[lo_rez]

Would you include stories in which actually deciphering the (meaning of) the reference book/object is central? If so, almost all of Patricia McKillip's works require the heroes to revisit/re-interpret/translate a story (i.e., of the past) in order to achieve their quests toward the future. The most literal example is The Book of Atrix Wolfe.

Re Harry Potter: The Half-Blood Prince's potions textbook might also qualify, in a skewed way?

Maybe along the same lines, Alan Garner's The Owl Service presents kind of a chilling example of what happens when the hero fails the test implied by the availability of a reference text/object (not learning from history, being doomed to repeat it)?

[deborah]

Man, I have been meaning to reread The Owl Service for yonks. Now I have an excuse. :D

Thank you!