Score

Brilliant as it is, I don't think ALL QUIET really fits the bill. Paul's narration is from a point of view of his essential adulthood near the end of the war. But I guess that's open to interpretation.

I don't think # 1 and 2 belong to the list: they were not 'addressed to a grown-up audience', I remember reading them before my teens

Just because we may read them in or before our teens, doesn't mean they were meant for teenagers (Star book in this category: Gulliver's Travels. A political satire written for adults, that is now read by children. Often confused children!). In Twain's case in particular I would argue against this interpretation.

I agree -- and ditto for "Mockingbird." The book was written in the 1960s, at the height of racial tensions in the U.S. -- and it contains pointed social commentary. It's to Harper Lee's great credit that, inter alia by choosing a juvenile narrator, she managed to get her points across in a way that everybody can (or should be able to) understand. But it is manifestly NOT children's literature!

Yep. And in Twain's case, there wasn't even a concept of "adolescent literature" at the time! There may have been such a concept when Mockingbird was written, but it wasn't a big trend if it did exist, and Mockingbird was not part of it. I became a teenager in the very late 70s, and even then "YA" was not much of a concept; I remember transiting from what was clearly children's literature to adult novels my mother thought I might like. This was normal.

Themis-Athena wrote: "I agree -- and ditto for "Mockingbird." The book was written in the 1960s, at the height of racial tensions in the U.S. -- and it contains pointed social commentary. It's to Harper Lee's great cr..."

Here's the definition of The Listopia's list for "Juvenile Narrators in Books for Grown-Ups" that you have created.
" Novels and memoirs addressed to a grown-up audience, but narrated from a child's or teenager's perspective (AND, in the event of a first-person narrative, in a juvenile narrative voice; i.e. NOT in the voice of an adult looking back to their childhood, as is the case in, e.g., Dickens's "Great Expectations" and "David Copperfield" or Grass's "Tin Drum," as well as in most childhood memoirs, but books where the author genuinely and completely espouses the juvenile narrator's perspective throughout all, or substantially all of the book). "

This is an interesting list as always! The two words " Juvenile Narrators " are the keys to built this list. I agree with you that To Kill a Mockingbird is NOT children's literature.

This book is a genre of the novel which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood, named " The Bildungsroman"

Here's the definition from wikipedia with a list of books.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungs...
Some other titles in the same literary genre

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (1847)
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie (2000)
The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino (1957)
The Adolescent by Fedor Dostoievski (1875)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (1876)
The World According to Garp by John Irving (1978)

And finally, the definition of " The Children Literature " (under fourteen)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children...

And the definition of " YA literature " ( young persons between fourteen and twenty-one)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young-ad...

Yes -- Dai Sijie's book and "Garp" definitely belong on this list as well ... Thanks for mentioning them, Michelle, and also for researching all those definitions!

Susanna wrote: "Yep. And in Twain's case, there wasn't even a concept of "adolescent literature" at the time! There may have been such a concept when Mockingbird was written, but it wasn't a big trend if it did exist, and Mockingbird was not part of it. I became a teenager in the very late 70s, and even then "YA" was not much of a concept; I remember transiting from what was clearly children's literature to adult novels my mother thought I might like. This was normal."

Yes, that's exactly my experience as well ... :)

You guys might be right ... indeed, I hadn't thought of the 'YA' genre, which those two books should belong more than to 'Children's books'
If by 'adults' we mean 'young adults' as well, I guess I'll have to vote those books too :)

Correct me if my recall plays me false, but isn't the Narrator in Lord of the Flies outside of Ralph's consciousness, but "looking over his shoulder", as it were. We could use Wayne Booth's Rhetoric of Fiction along about now.

What about The Boy in the Striped Pajamas andEmpire of the Sun?

Laura wrote: "What about The Boy in the Striped Pajamas andEmpire of the Sun?"

Don't know them, but the same scrutiny should be applied to each and to all in this list: Do we have a young person thinking and talking the story, perhaps to us or to someone else.

Laura: Bring 'em on.

Thom: "Looking over his shoulder" is close enough. If not (and leaving the realm of youthful POV), what are you going to do about a beast such as Wolf Hall? It's Cromwell's POV all the way through, even though strictly in third person narrative with nary an "I" even in dialogue, a substantial part of which is actually even indirect speech if you look at it (and I've yet to make up my mind how much of Cromwell's inner life I'm being served -- in "Bring Up the Bodies" as well, for that matter).

What I'm looking for is books that aren't obviously written with hindsight 20/20 (or even 15/20 or 18/20) awareness and analysis, but which take me into the a child's narrative POV, telling or recounting the events as if they were being experienced/relived at the moment of their telling, and with the same unawareness of what's going to happen next, as in first experiencing these events.

Themis-Athena wrote: "Laura: Bring 'em on.

Thom: "Looking over his shoulder" is close enough. If not (and leaving the realm of youthful POV), what are you going to do about a beast such as Wolf Hall? It's Cromwell's ..."

The Narrator is the story teller, not the Central Consciousness or the Point of View, IMO....Quoth my mentor, the late Austin Wright of the Chicago School of Neo-Aristotelian Formalism.

Who's the narrator in a 3d person (or 2d person!) account told strictly from the POV of the novel's protagonist, then? That's why I'm emphasing (in the list description, to begin with) "perspective" and "point of view." I don't care whether it's a 1st, 2nd or 3rd person narrative. I do care about point of view.

Themis-Athena wrote: "Who's the narrator in a 3d person (or 2d person!) account told strictly from the POV of the novel's protagonist, then? That's why I'm emphasing (in the list description, to begin with) "perspectiv..."

No general answer applies. Narration and POV are often two different things. Holden Caulfield is a first-person narrator (obviously). In Jack London's "To Build a Fire", the Narrator is omniscient, but the POV is clearly that of "the Man"... interspersed with that of the dog. In Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis McComber," the POV shifts at one point to that of a lion lurking near the people in the story !

Exactly -- all of which however only brings us back to: I don't care about the narrator. I do care about point of view ...

What do you think about The Glass Castle? It's been a couple of years, and I can't recall whether most of it is a juvenile narrator, or an adult remembering it...

Looks like this list is dead. Too bad.