I first read Salinger at about age 13, too, in school, and it was the perfect age. You are so right not to deprive your son of him.

Salinger is one of those writers who (like Tom Robbins) actually may be better read when you're young because his tone can seem cloying when you're older. Jonathan Yardley, the Pulitzer-winning former book critic for the Washington Post, has done a merciless takedown of Catcher that has become something of a classic in the pans-of-books-people-worship genre.