As a part-time library aide in a middle school, I’m surprised at how much teen and young adult fiction is written in the first person. I know the reigning conventional wisdom states that first-person narration is more compelling, more intimate, more affecting.Yet, a new book I read and an old book I’ve listened to, read aloud, have given me plenty of reasons to challenge that conventional thought.

Operation Yes! by Sara Lewis Holmes was published in 2009. This contemporary novel takes an old-fashioned approach to narrating the story of students in classroom on a military base. The third-person narration allows the reader to brush up close, looking over the shoulders and into the hearts of  selected characters as they deal with important issues: the deployment of a parent, the crushing injuries suffered by a sibling, the uncertainty of war. This classroom story had me in tears by the end, and I never missed a first-person narrator.

Similarly, as I have been listening to my husband read aloud Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables to our children, I’ve been struck by how deftly Montgomery creates characters you care about while using the third person. I’ve rarely felt that I’ve “known” a character better than I know Anne Shirley. Her personality jumps off the page through her words and actions. We don’t need to hear Anne’s inner thoughts; Montgomery has already shown us as much as we need to love her main character.

Both books are a pleasure to read—and wonderful reminders that third-person narratives can go straight to the heart.

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