NICK HORNBY, SLAM, PENGUIN 13+
KM PEYTON, MINNA’S QUEST, USBORNE, 8+

However grim it can seem to be the parent of a teenaged girl – and I speak as one who spent last week-end mopping up my daughter’s room after her first serious encounter with alcohol – being the parent of a teenaged boy these days is worse. More likely to get mugged, fail exams, and be as misunderstood as Harry Enfield’s Kevin, they also have far less control over their fertility than girls.

Sam, the fifteen-year-old narrator of Slam, is the son of a woman who herself got pregnant at 17, and who has spent the rest of her life catching up on her education and missed opportunities. A nice boy who loves his Mum, he works hard at school, stays out of fights and is bright enough to be encouraged to apply to art college. The joy of his life, however, is skating (or skateboarding), and his hero is Tony Hawk, who plays a similar role in his imaginative life that David Beckham does to the heroine of Bend it Like Beckham. Sam talks to his hero’s poster, and (a particularly funny touch,) believes TH gives him advice from his lunk-headed autobiography.

Not that advice is much good, because Sam commits the crime parents fear most: he gets fifteen-year old Alicia pregnant. A girl from a middle-class home in Highbury New Park, she is really pretty, and dim enough to want to be a model. She seduces him, and once they’ve done it, “she was like a crackhead, except that instead of crack it was sex.”

This is Nick Hornby’s first novel for younger readers, and I must admit that I was prejudiced against it. I dislike Hornby man intensely – all those self-indulgent riffs being a mask for what seems like genuine selfishness, and an immaturity which a children’s book would seem to emphasise. However, not only is Slam curiously gripping, it is probably one of the best contraceptives you could give your teen, because it goes into the details of Sam and Alicia’s relationship and future with sympathy, sense and honesty.  Although the magical element (being “whizzed” into the future to see how the pregnancy pans out) is silly, Sam has genuine charm, largely because he is the first Hornby hero who does really square up to his personal responsibilities regarding his girlfriend and child. If it does nothing more than alert a best-selling author’s readership to the existence of the morning-after pill, it is worth the price.

Someone who does teenagers brilliantly is KM Peyton, whose series about Pennington (start with Seventeenth Summer) makes Hornby’s hero pretty tame. Her new book, Minna’s Quest, is about a British girl in Roman Briton who saves an abandoned foal. In return for his help, her brother demands she give the foal, Silva, to him when he is old enough, and she reluctantly makes this promise although Cerdic lacks her instinctive rapport with Silva.

Then, when the fort is invaded by Viking pirates, Cerdic is sent to fetch help across the river. His nerve fails, and it is Minna who, on Silva’s back, braves the icy water to save not only her people but the Roman boy she loves. Peyton understands the strength and pain of being young like no other, and if her teenaged girl does something idiotic, at least it’s on horseback, and doesn’t involve an amphora of her parents’ wine.

Minna’s Journey is for younger readers, but should reach budding historians as well as pony-mad girls of 8+.