Teenage Worrier

Popular series of UK young adult books, written by Ros Asquith and published between 1992 and 2000. Most of them took the form of a "dictionary" of teenage life, interspersed with observations from the 15-year-old heroine, Scarlett "Letty" Chubb. The final two volumes were Letty's diaries as she attempted to pass her school leaving exams, find love and begin a career as a film director.

The series consisted of:

• I Was a Teenage Worrier
• The Teenage Worrier's Guide to Lurve
• The Teenage Worrier's Guide to Life
• The Teenage Worrier's Pocket Guide to Mind and Body
• The Teenage Worrier's Pocket Guide to Family
• The Teenage Worrier's Pocket Guide to Romance
• The Teenage Worrier's Pocket Guide to Success
• The Teenage Worrier's Worry Files
• The Panick Diary

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Tropes found in the books:

• Abhorrent Admirer - Brian Bolt
• Adults Are Useless
• An Aesop - all the books contained a moral of some form
• Alpha Bitch - Ruth, Van and Elsie in the later books
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents
• Annoying Younger Sibling
• Berserk Button - Letty's distaste for the colour beige
• Bittersweet Ending - Letty has a new love interest (Jack Spriggs, whom she thought was dating her friend,) has decided not to worry about her exams and things have resolved themselves for her best friends Aggy and Hazel. However, she decides she can't follow her dream of becoming a film director because she included dishonest Basil in the final cut of her film contest entry about war, at the expense of real-life refugee Josef. She also can't forgive Basil for lying to her and robbing Aggy's house
• Black Best Friend
• Book Dumb - Letty, who is very articulate, has a lot of general knowledge and is sensitive to political issues; but she cannot spell well and her results at school are atrocious.
• Brother Chuck - Letty's friend Spiggy (Sarah Spiggott) is a major character in The Teenage Worrier's Guide to Lurve but does not reappear after this, despite the mention that their friendship was repaired.
• Bumbling Dad
• Calling the Old Man Out - in The Teenage Worrier's Worry Files
• Cloudcuckoolander - Zelda in The Teenage Worrier's Panick Diary. Letty may count towards this trope because of her propensity for daydreaming.
• Cosmetic Catastrophe
• Did Not Get the Girl - Letty does not get together with either of her three major love interests: Daniel Hope because she lost interest in him, Adam Stone who accused her of having another boyfriend or Basil Barrington who turns out to be a petty criminal on the run.
• Emo Teen
• Frozen in Time - the books were published over eight years but the characters never aged. However, birthdays and holidays were not mentioned (except for The Teenage Worrier's Worry Files, set at Christmas.)
• Getting Crap Past the Radar - Done several times, such as Letty having a classmate named Chlamydia Clutterbuck and visiting a restaurant called "Foo King's"
• I Want My Jetpack - The Teenage Worrier's Guide to Life stated that Letty had bought a five-year diary to mark the August 1999 total solar eclipse, but she was still the same age (and presumably still awaiting the eclipse) when the last book was published in late 2000. The book was later reprinted and updated with the date of a solar eclipse in the next century, with Letty stating that she hoped to see it even though she would be over a hundred years old at the time.
• Important Haircut - Letty had one at the end of the first book, but by the follow-up she was drawn with shoulder length hair again (and it was mentioned that her fringe had regrown long enough for her to hide behind as usual)
• Lipstick Lesbian - Hazel
• Love Makes You Crazy
• Meaningful Name - Letty's school headmaster Mr Portillo (named after Conservative MP Michael Portillo) and annoying classmate Chlamydia Clutterbuck, among others
• Most Writers Are Writers - Letty's dream is to be a film director, but she frequently mentions that she is also the published author of the Teenage Worrier series.
• Noodle Incident - Letty sometimes refers to an awkward incident between her and Brian that involved "a bag of flour and a bicycle tyre", but refuses to go into details.
• One-Book Author - Letty's father, who, we are told, is the author of a brilliant and touching novel called "Moving On" for which he won several prizes before his daughter was born; but at least fifteen years on, he's never got around to finishing the follow-up. In one of the books, "Moving On" got a re-release, and The Teenage Worrier's Worry Files has a plot in which Letty gets the wrong impression from some research he's doing for his new novel. The Teenage Worrier series ended without us ever discovering if he would have been successful.
• Parental Neglect - the neglectful behaviour of Letty's parents is played for laughs as they are rarely at home, refuse to cook or buy groceries, smoke and get drunk in the house, and largely ignore her in favour of Benjy. In one book when there is no food in the house, they are more worried about Benjy or the CATS starving than their daughter starving.
• Retcon - Hazel is named as Hazel Williams in I Was a Teenage Worrier but becomes Hazel Appleby in the later books. The private school she attends is initially St Mary's Academy and then retconned to St Cheynganggs.
• Running Gag - Benjy's fear of floors, Letty's fear of the word "death," Aggy's large family, Brian Bolt confusing the words "plutonic" and "platonic"
• Sadist Teacher
• Sorry Occifer: Mention is made of the time Letty's father was pulled over for drunk driving and told the officer "I admit I've been driving but I'm perfectly fit to drink."
• Stalker with a Crush - Brian
• Teen Genius - Aggy
• Teen Pregnancy - Letty's classmate Priscilla Crump has one over the last two books.
• Theme Naming - Letty (short for Scarlett) and her brother Ashley were both named after characters from Gone With the Wind. In one book she claims they teamed up to stop their parents naming the youngest brother "Rhett".
• Theme Twin Naming - In The Teenage Worrier's Panick Diary, Letty's classmate names her newborn twins Barin and Rabina. Turns out to be significant because the names are (more or less) anagrams of "Brian" - Brian Bolt turns out to be the father.
• Unusual Euphemism - Letty suffers panic attacks when she attempts to say or write the word "death", so she uses "banana" in its place. It's mentioned that this has caused problems with essays about the life cycle of beansprouts.
• Zany Scheme