7 Children’s Book Characters Who Need a YA Book

Dinnie Doone (Bloomability, by Sharon Creech)
Domenica Santolina Doone is “kidnapped” by her aunt and uncle in the name of opportunity to attend a fancy boarding school in Switzerland, where she finds unlikely friends and frenemies (though that wasn’t a word back in 1998), including my first ever book crush, Guthrie, who pronounces everything “such the best” or “fantastico,” which I just realized is the reason I, too, pronounce many things “such the best.” This book was just made for a YA update post–high school graduation, where Dinnie goes on an after graduation trip (maybe to South America or Asia, since she spent so much time in Europe) and runs into Guthrie, Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight-style, but with one difference: please keep them friends only!

Margaret Simon (Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, by Judy Blume)
Well, Margaret finally got her period at the end of the book, but the searching and research she did to reconcile her parents’ (lapsed) different religions didn’t really end, and you know she’s someone who was going to do a lot of sexual exploration going forward. I can see Margaret in her senior year going to Planned Parenthood and Take Back the Night marches with Laura, the girl everyone was mean to for being more physically developed but with whom Margaret would surely develop a friendship with later on. She and neighbor Nancy have gone their separate ways in high school, but Nancy confides in Margaret when she finds herself pregnant, and now these sex-positive teenagers have a lot to confront.

Ella and Char (Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine)
After Ella breaks the curse and gets to live happily ever after with Char (come on, you didn’t guess?), all we learn is that she becomes Court Linguist and they have at least two children (this is fantasy, so married people with children are still fair game and rather young, too). So let’s backtrack: who doesn’t love Prince Charmont? Who doesn’t want to know all he was doing whenever he wasn’t encountering Ella in the woods about to get eaten by an ogre? There are plenty of books about girls who don’t want to be princesses—what about boys fed up with their princely duties?

Nicholas Allen (Frindle, by Andrew Clements)
Before there was Mark Zuckerberg, there was Nicholas Allen, who one day decided to call a simple pen a “frindle” instead and caused a stir in his classroom—and the world. After the word is trademarked, Nick becomes a rich man, and that’s all we know. Without a doubt, he became an entrepreneur even before having access to his trust fund. His YA adventure would be all about building an app in high school—one that gets hacked, leaving him to deal with the aftermath.

Byron, Kenny and Joetta (The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963, by Christopher Paul Curtis)
As a kid, you read this and laugh at the hijinks Byron gets into, while also receiving what might be your earliest introduction to the ugly racial history of the South. Upon rereading, you may notice the nuance in how black kids from the midwest are totally unprepared to have a different social standing when they go to Birmingham, and what it means to leave Byron there to work on his attitude and behavior before he gets into trouble as an adult. What happens when Byron goes home and has to reconnect with Kenny? How does Joetta’s experience during the church bombing affect her as she gets older? A book alternating among all three perspectives exploring how the teens find their way post–Civil Rights Act of 1964 would tell us.

Madeline (The Madeline series, by Ludwig Bemelmans)
Who doesn’t love a boarding school story? If you go by the fact that the first book was published in 1939, Madeline would be a young teenager by the end of World War II. Her parents want her to leave boarding school during the occupation of Paris to stay safe, but brave Madeline will have none of that. She convinces Miss Clavel to admit a Jewish student into their Catholic school in order to hide from the Nazis, and the two become fast friends. Ten of the other little girls in two straight lines are onboard, but who is the one they can’t trust?

Harold (Harold and the Purple Crayon, by Crockett Johnson)
There is no doubt in my mind that creative, resourceful Harold grew into a creative (but loner) teenager. In his graphic novel update, Harold (don’t call him Harry) tries to impress a girl by drawing a new world for them to enter together, but his purple crayon becomes a nub too small to draw unbroken lines with, and they can’t get back home. Time to develop some new art skills.