June 6, 1933: The first drive-in theatre opens.

Once you discount the series books (Mercy Watson, Wishbone, Buffy, Boxcar Children), there are surprisingly few stories about drive-ins in the kidlit world.

So someone might want to jump on that.

Years later, and the first paragraph of Marjorie Reynolds' The Starlite Drive-In still kills me:

I wasn't there when they dug up the bones at the old drive-in theater, but I heard about them within the hour. In a small town, word travels like heat lightening across a parched summer sky. Irma Schmidt phoned Aunt Bliss and delivered the news with such volume that her voice carried across the kitchen to where I was sitting.

Love that.

Anyway, it's one of those that is often categorized as YA (that's where it was shelved in the library I borrowed it from, and School Library Journal reviewed it as such), but I don't personally really consider it to be YA: the majority of the storyline takes place when Callie is twelve or thirteen, yes, but she's also looking back on the whole thing from adulthood.

YA appeal? TOTALLY. But her voice and her perspective would make me more inclined to shelve it with the grown-up books.

Or at least cross-promote it.

Regardless of what shelf it should go on, it's a good one.