Bridge to a Classic

I was in the bookstore last month (why, oh why do I go in there) to see the newest YA books and I came across Jane by April Lindner.



The novel is a modern retelling of Jane Eyre. This time our female protagonist is Jane Moore, who becomes a nanny when she has to drop out of college due to finances (her parents die in a car crash; her brother and sister take what they can get and leave their younger sister hanging). Shy, plain (per her description) and naive, Jane gets the job most prized: the nanny for famous rock start Nico Rathburn.

She moves to his estate and, well, the rest is pretty much history (if you know Jane Eyre, then you know what I mean).

While I could not put this book down, I won't say it is one of my top realistic fiction novels. However, I am not sure if part of that is my age or not. [I am quite cynical by nature, so a young and naive girl marrying one of the world's most famous rock stars doesn't register with me] I think if I had read this book as a 15-year-old, I would have loved it.

I do think it is a perfect bridge to the classic novel and that is the wonderful quality of YA literature like this. The themes, the plot, the characters, and even the setting--though they are all 21st century--will provide the connections that some of our students will need in order to read the Bronte novel. While I would not teach it as a whole class novel, I would most definitely have it in my classroom library.