The Dream Watcher
Barbara Wersba
Paperback
(Front Street, Oct. 1, 2004)
Albert Scully is the quintessential miserable teenager. He considers himself the "All-American" failure until he meets Mrs. Orpha Woodfin, an eighty-year-old neighborhood eccentric who helps him to see the value of being an individual. Originally published in 1968 - the same year as Paul Zindel's The Pigman and the year after S.E. Hinton's The Outsider - The Dream Watcher heralded the beginning of books written specifically for young adults.