Hey YA readers! Let’s catch up on the latest in news.
We’re giving away 16 of the books featured on Recommended! Click here, or on the image below to enter:
Grab a snack and a glass of water. There’s a lot of great reading this week!
- First: do you know of any teen/YA festivals that are open to the public and happen between July and December? I’d love to hear about them for a round-up in this newsletter. All of the details on how to submit your information is here.
- Lauren Oliver’s Panic has had a pilot picked up for Amazon.
- Diversify your reading with these YA titles from micropresses.
- A couple of nice pieces on the adaptation of The Miseducation of Cameron Post. Here’s an interview with the director and how she reconsidered the YA adaptation format, and here’s an interview with author emily m. danforth on the adaptation.
- You can catch all of the Harry Potter films in theaters this fall.
- Fall’s most anticipated children’s and YA books.
- Awesome news: Foreshadow YA met its fundraising goal. You can still donate to the campaign, and you should read the first issue, containing three wholly original YA short stories. All free, all online.
- Have you heard of the Always Fits subscription box that sends you vintage middle grade and YA titles? It sounds so fun.
- Speaking of vintage YA, this piece in the Washington Post about Lurlene McDaniel — who is still writing! — is worth a read.
- The traits that YA heroines in dystopian novels have in common.
- Enjoy this interview with Jenny Han about the forthcoming adaptation of To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before (available THIS weekend on Netflix!).
- Here are the most popular YA books of 2018 so far, according to Goodreads.
- The Hummingbird Dagger sounds fascinating!
- YA author Nic Stone wrote a fiery, must-read piece on why being black and woke means being angry all the time.
- Have you read Lita Judge’s recent YA graphic verse biography of Mary Shelley, Mary’s Monster? If not, you should, and then no matter what, enjoy this interview with the author/illustrator.
- Filming for the His Dark Materials television show is underway.
- Everything that’s known so far about the adaptation of The Sun Is Also A Star.
- 7 YA authors talk about how the political landscape has impacted their work.
- Why more people aren’t screaming about this is beyond me: Idris Elba will be taking on G. Neri’s Ghetto Cowboy next.
- Lamar Giles has shared some secret adaptation news!
- Check out the cover and synopsis for Sona Charaipotra’s upcoming book Symptoms of a Heartbreak. It’s her first solo-author book, and I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait.
- Hulu has ordered a series based on a WattPad YA sensation, based on “Light as a feather, stiff as a board.” The book will come out from Simon Pulse. Both should hit in fall.
For Your TBR
I Am Still Alive by Kate Alice Marshall
I’m about half-way through this, but I feel confident enough to say it’s a book worth adding to that massive TBR I know you’ve got going on. This is an adventure book, about a girl named Jess who has recently lost her mother in a car accident. The accident caused her some physical impairments, too, and the story begins when she’s sent to live with her father in what she believes will be remote Alaska (it…is not).
Traversing “Before” and “After,” the book looks at what caused the shack she and her dad were living in to burn down and left her alone, with nothing but her dad’s dog, and how it is she does — or maybe doesn’t — survive.
Know going in that it might not end well for the dog, and that because it’s a novel set in the wilderness, there are times when animals do not make it out alive. But if you or the readers you know are okay with this, it’s an excellent “girl vs. wild” story and a debut novel to boot.
Cheap Reads
Grab these in ebook format while they’re on sale. Prices are current as of August 14:
Want something post-apocalyptic? Grab Maureen McGowan’s Deviants, which is the first in a series, for $1.
If you would like some dragons, you might like Jodi Meadows’s Before She Ignites, currently only $2.
Marcus Zusak’s I Am The Messenger is a whole $2.
One of my favorite mental health themed YA reads — and a National Book Award winner — Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman is $2.
Contemporary queen Emery Lord’s The Names They Gave Us can be yours for $2.
Kody Keplinger’s fabulous debut The DUFF is $3.
Start Kate Elliott’s high fantasy YA series Court of Fives with the first book for $3.
Want a science fiction adventure about super criminals? $3 will snag you Emily Lloyd-Jones’s Illusive.
Maybe you want to try one of Lurlene McDaniels’s newer books? You can pick up Somebody’s Baby for $2.
Recent YA Book Mail
Here’s what hit my inbox this week!
From top to bottom:
Here To Stay by Sara Farizan (It’s fantastic, as you’d expect from Farizan. She’ll be stopping by the newsletter in a few weeks to talk more about this surprisingly funny book about racism, Islamophobia, and basketball).
That’s Not What Happened by Kody Keplinger (I loved this story of what happens to the survivors of a school shooting when they’re the last ones to know the truth…as opposed to the truth people believe about the incident).
White Stag by Kara Barbieri (“WattPad sensation”)
Imprison The Sky by A. C. Gaughen
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Thanks for hanging out and we’ll see you again next week. Get excited: it’s a really, really thrilling interview with a legendary author of books for kids and teens.
— Kelly Jensen, @veronikellymars on Twitter and Instagram.