First Times.

Deborah Dowson is a Canaadian children’s librarian in North Wales,
Pennsylvania.

A teen’s first job, first kiss, first time staying home alone, first time seeing a dead body, and other similar “firsts” are shared in this collection of short stories for young adults. Many stories are told from the perspective of an adult narrator recalling an experience that happened to them in the past. For example, “Wings” tells of watching a plane crash during World War II and several other stories are set in the 1960s and 1970s. A few of the stories are contemporary, such as “The Boy,” which describes a first boyfriend who is more apt to text message his girlfriend than call her, but generally the stories are set in a time before cellphones and the Internet.

The collection as a whole has a rather formal style that is reminiscent of a literature textbook. The subject matter is generally serious, such as in “Golden Boy,” where a young man becomes disillusioned with his uncle, or “Solitary Night,” where a naive teen is fooled by a peeping Tom, or “Fore!,” where a caddy is duped into running drugs for one of his clients. There is a bit of comic relief in the stories “First Time Never Holding Hands” and “Issues,” but by far the stories detail challenging events that profoundly impact a teen growing up. Most of the authors have been previously published and the quality of writing is quite good. The collection would be appropriate for classroom use. Recommended.