Category: What’s Up in YA

Hello YA Fans!

This week’s “What’s Up in YA?” is sponsored by Audiobooks.com.

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A number of emails came through in response to last week’s newsletter. I thought it would be worth addressing a recurring theme in a number of them which boiled down to this: keep politics out of a newsletter about YA books.

The response to that, in a word, is no.

Reading is a political act. Whether or not you believe yourself to be political or active or socially conscious, partaking in reading is inherently political.

So no, politics don’t be removed from talking about YA books — or any books — here or elsewhere in the Book Riot world. That’s what we do, and it’s what we do well.

That said, let’s take a look at some recent news from around the YA world, link-style:

• There’s an official trailer out for the film adaptation of Lauren Oliver’s Before I Fall (which hits theaters in early March). I know that Zoey Deutch is only 22 in real life, but she and her co-stars look that age, rather than teenagers.

• Speaking of adaptations, there’s a release date for A Wrinkle in Time: April 2018.
• The film rights to Sarah Weeks’s So B. It were acquired by Good Deed Entertainment.

• I didn’t know there was a film adaptation of The Miseducation of Cameron Post coming, but there is, and here’s who will be starring.

• The cover for Leigh Bardugo’s YA take on Wonder Woman is out.  

• The World Science Fiction Society is considering adding a YA-specific award that can be given out at their WorldCon event (they do the Hugo and Campbell awards, for those who may be more familiar with those). Can you help name the award?

• This is an interesting piece about an adult reader picking up Twilight AS an adult and seeing the abusive relationships at play. It’s thoughtful and critical, but it’s a prime example, I think, of why adults have to remember to take off the adult lenses when reading YA books and accept that teenagers are the characters in the story and thus, are the ones making dumb mistakes. It doesn’t at all excuse abuse, but this is a fascinating exercise in teen vs adult eyes and readership. I see a lot of people complain about teenagers being dumb in YA books, and too often, it’s adults who are forgetting that YA books are about teenagers. . . and teenagers do dumb things (which is part of why stories about them are so good!).

• Bustle has been doing an excellent job on YA news lately, if that weren’t clear. Here’s a piece that fans of Melina Marchetta will love — it’s an interview with her about her recent adult novel, but it teases at another potential Saving Francesca sequel. If you haven’t read those books, do yourself the big favor of checking out Marchetta’s YA work. You can start with the Francesca books (which I adore!) or dive right into her fantasy series, which begins with Froi of the Exiles (as someone who doesn’t read enough fantasy, I found myself deeply in love with this story).

• A lot of people shared this piece over the last couple of weeks, and there could easily be an entire newsletter dedicated to it. It’s about gay characters in YA and how they’re no longer as taboo as they once were. It, of course, is pretty much limited to gay boys in YA; that’s not a bad thing, except it’s exceptionally limiting about the range of queer stories that are finding their way onto more and more shelves in YA. Looking for some love for books like Sarah McCarry’s About A Girl (with two girls kissing on the cover!), Malinda Lo’s Adaptation duology (which features a romantic queer relationship among more than two people!), and trans love/romantic YA stories like Anna-Marie McLemore’s When The Moon Was Ours and Meredith Russo’s If I Was Your Girl. I also get my back up a bit about the phrase “taking over” when it comes to any marginalized group eking out even the slightest space on a bookshelf.

How about some “best of” 2016 news? If I’m being perfectly honest, I cannot read these lists yet. I find the “best of” creep happening in October to be a disservice to books and to readers; I understand the “best of” lists hitting in mid/late November, if for no other reason than it serves as a shopping list for many, but October is way, way too soon. I can’t comment on these because I’ve yet to read them, but I know they’ll be of interest to many (spoiler: in December I’m sure we’ll be talking about these in more depth!):

• Publisher’s Weekly 2016 best YA books.

• School Library Journal’s 2016 best books. This is a video, but the slideshow of titles will be available Monday, November 21 (so today — writing a newsletter to the future is weird, y’all!).

• Amazon’s best books of 2016, YA/Teen picks.

• What I can comment on in regards to the “best of” designations is that John Lewis won the National Book Award for his comic March, Book 3. What an excellent title to earn this distinction.

Still needing to think about the election? Although the entirety of this newsletter has been politics, let me go ahead and proclaim this part of the newsletter is BLATANTLY POLITICAL. Here’s some good reading and action plans in the wake of our future as Americans…and global citizens:

• Book creators vow to support children.

• 100s of children’s book authors pledge to combat bigotry…aka: some authors you should be supporting.

• Tessa Gratton’s “As I Lay Awake” is a reflection more than worth reading and thinking about.

• Likewise, so is Malinda Lo’s “Moving Forward Toward Justice.”

• A fellow YA lover is putting together a book drive of inclusive reading for one of the local book organizations in her hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. Want to help out? She’s offered up a list of ways you can help get diverse books into the hands of kids.

If you’re struggling with what you can do, actionable steps you can take to make a difference, one of the things worth doing is making a phone call or two. This week, I poked around for an organization to which I could donate books locally — I’m lucky to get so many books sent to me and one thing I can do is drive them to a local facility that will get them into the hands of kids. I’m in a small town in Wisconsin in a very red county; organizations that help kids and families exist everywhere, and it literally takes a phone call to set up a relationship. I’m eager to be driving 100s of books over to the non-profit that houses and supports children from abuse and neglect, and it was through that phone call I got to hear stories about how many of the children and teens there are avid, devoted readers.

So I’m ending this newsletter with this: can you help? Can you take one step that betters the lives of young readers in some capacity this week?

If you do, if you’ve been thinking about it, or if you need support or ideas, please drop a response and I’d love to share, generate ideas, or offer support to taking those steps. Want to help but have no idea where to begin? Let me know. I am happy to shoulder some of the work to put you in touch with local orgs or with orgs that are local to me or other YA/teen advocates. Together we can do something, even at a small level. Safety pins are great, but they don’t do the work.

We have to do the work.

Hello YA Readers. . .

This week’s “What’s Up in YA?” is sponsored by Swoon Reads. 

Swoon Reads publishes the latest and greatest in YA fiction with the help of readers and writers like you. We’re dedicated to the undiscovered, and we seek out the very best in bright, new bookish talent. From heroic epics, to alien adventures, to all-the-feels romance—if you’re loving it, we’ll publish it. We involve our community in every step of the publishing process, and work closely with selected writers to get their book ready for publication. Together, we bring new stories to life, because we believe that great books are better shared.

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I began drafting this newsletter before the election and found myself unable to pull together anything worth sharing in the hours after. Instead of sharing links or a book list or anything else I could muster — all of those things felt stiff and inauthentic — I reached out to a YA writer and asked if she’d have something positive to say in all of this.

And she did.

Please read what Justina Ireland asks us to think about and asks us to do in the wake of news so many of us find unsettling, surprising, upsetting.

Let her words stir you into action.

*

Donald Trump has just been elected president and I know for many, many readers it feels like a punch in the gut.  For many young people and young adult readers, especially those with Muslim, Jewish, Black, Latin@, Asian, and LGBTQIAP+ identities, what has transpired feels like a personal attack.  And it is.  We have been told by a large portion of America that our truths, and our Americanism, isn’t true citizenship.  We are not the real America.

We have been attacked in our own home. It’s every fear, every whispered thought about the dark corners of white America’s hearts, being made real and whole.

It is a validation of the worst kind.

For the longest time whiteness in America has not been defined by what it is, so much as what it is not: it is not Muslim or Jewish, it is not Black or Brown or Asian.  But now whiteness for the first time in our country’s history is being defined by what it is: it is uneducated, angry, sexist, and afraid. It is resistant to change and to facts, and would rather reside in an idealized past that never was rather than embrace a vibrant, globalized future.

This definition of whiteness, and by extension the United States, is the antithesis of all that is Young Adult literature.

YA has always been daring.  It is when it defies and deconstructs current societal norms and prejudices that YA literature is at its best. YA books have broken down walls and forged new pathways.  They have held a hand out to the most marginalized of our society (even if that hand was not frequent enough) and forged understanding across lines of disability, race, neurodivergence, religion, gender, class, and sexual identity.  This is what makes YA great, and it is what we must focus on as our light in the years ahead.  Books have the unique ability to help us understand what it feels to be ourselves and others in the same instant. Great literature validates our humanity and the humanity of others.  We must harness our love of the written word and use that light to plot a path forward.

While the country may take a step backward, Young Adult literature must not.  We must continue to push forward, to ensure the voices and lives of teens are depicted with sensitivity and nuance and the core truth of what really makes America great: not a hegemony that doesn’t truly exist, but those differences that enable us to see the world more fully and honestly.

We must continue to embrace stories of those voices silenced by the fearful, and we must ensure those stories reflect an honest truth and not the stale lies of the past.  It is the bravery of Young Adult books, Middle Grade books, and children’s books as a whole that will teach younger generations of all colors that there is no reason for fear, that instead of trying to “Make America Great Again” in a flawed mimicry of the past, we can make it better than ever before.

Let’s go read, write, and share some amazing books.

*

Justina Ireland lives with her husband, kid, and dog in Pennsylvania. She is the author of Vengeance Bound and Promise of Shadows, both currently available from Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers. And her forthcoming bookDread Nation will be available in 2018 from the HarperCollins imprint Balzer and Bray. You can find Justina on Twitter as @justinaireland or visit her websitejustinaireland.com.

Hello YA Readers!

This week’s “What’s Up in YA?” newsletter is sponsored by Spontaneous. 

Mara Carlyle’s senior year is going as normally as could be expected, until—wa-bam!—fellow senior Katelyn Ogden explodes during third period pre-calc. Katelyn is the first, but she won’t be the last teenager to blow up without warning or explanation. As the seniors continue to pop like balloons, smart and hilarious Mara narrates the end of their world as she knows it. But within an explosive year punctuated by romance, quarantine, lifelong friendship, and the hope of making it to graduation lies a funny, super honest, and truly moving story of being a teenager and the heartache of saying goodbye.

At the tail end of last month, the New York Times ran an article by Ginia Bellafante which many readers found to be somewhere between good enough and forgettable enough — perhaps in part because it is a pretty innocuous piece, save for the fact that some readers were irritated by the article’s accompanying image (consider that foreshadowing).  

The longer I’ve thought about the piece, though, the more frustrating it becomes. Let’s break this down bit by bit and closely read what it is Bellafante is really saying.

The piece begins with talking about growing up in the suburbs and reading Judy Blume’s iconic Are You There God?: It’s Me, Margaret. It then proceeds to highlight a couple more early YA authors, including Paul Zindel (The Pigman, among others) and Norma Klein (Domestic Arrangements, among others). But then there’s this paragraph:

For women who grew up in the 1970s and early ’80s — nurtured in the fictions of Ms. Blume, Paul Zindel and Norma Klein among others, writers for whom an urbane brand of social realism was the only reasonable métier — the arrival of the “Twilight” franchise a decade ago, with its enormous success, signaled a gloomy period of regression for the young-adult novel.

And so, the references to Twilight begin. Like any good YA article about ten years past prime, this piece references a mega successful franchise as the beginning of the downfall for young adult fiction. But what stands out is not the tired argument of Twilight being the ruin of YA; what stands out is that Bellafante notes that it’s middle age women who saw the franchise as the downfall of the YA novel.

In other words: not teenagers.

A distinct product of Bush-era gender politics rather than a renunciation of them, the series ultimately has its heroine forfeit a chance to go to Dartmouth to stay home and tend to her half-vampire baby, one conceived after a night of violent sex that leaves her body bruised with a husband who is at least 100 years old.

There was a piece not too long ago, one referenced in this here newsletter, about how YA is too liberal, offering no space for readers whose belief systems don’t fall into left-leaning politics. And yet, here’s an argument that Twilight, with the huge success it had, helmed by a woman who is Mormon, is problematic because it doesn’t reject the American politics of 2005. Because it’s not prescriptively against something, it’s for it, apparently.

It can’t be a vampire book, and it can’t be a book that launched deep and meaningful reading lives for thousands and thousands of young readers.

Rather than digging into the big books of this year, though, the article dives right into contemporary times:

Now, though, the appetite for paranormal lunacy has abated, and issue-driven fiction set very much in a universe of urbanism’s chief concerns is having a renaissance.

I’m going to ignore the phrase “paranormal lunacy” because it’s reductive and patronizing, but it’s curious how there are over 10 years of YA history ignored here. And not only are the years 2005 – 2015 ignored, there is no discussion of what else was going on in 2005 besides Twilight. Those of us who’ve been around long enough or who have been involved in the YA world for a good chunk of time realize that Twilight wasn’t a mega hit the minute it landed. It took time, the right marketing, the book getting into the right hands, and the era of the time being fruitful for such a success.

And it’s curious that these books — many of which were also big hits of 2005 and well beyond — are not mentioned at all:

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

Looking for Alaska by John Green

Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan (middle grade, but with tremendous crossover appeal to YA readers)

13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson

The Boyfriend List by E Lockhart

The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Keeping You a Secret by Julie Anne Peters

Autobiography of My Dead Brother by Walter Dean Myers

As well as books in continuing series by Meg Cabot (yes, The Princess Diaries!), Holly Black, Christopher Paolini, and others. Some other familiar authors who published books in 2005 include David Levithan, Celia Rees, Ron Koertge, Adele Griffin, Robin Wasserman, and Caroline B. Cooney.

To reduce the downfall of YA to one book and one year is to ignore the wealth of talent and good reading happening at the same time, in the same place, under the same historical and political conditions.

This week, “All American Boys,” a novel by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, an outgrowth of the Black Lives Matter movement, appears on The New York Times’s best-seller list for young-adult books. The story follows the beating of an innocent black child by a white police officer who thinks he has stolen a bag of chips.

Here’s the pivot: Bellafante moves from the downfall of YA through Twilight in 2005 to today’s growth of contemporary, modern issues like Black Lives Matter. She continues:

In a similar vein, “The Hate U Give,” to be released early next year, chronicles the story of a 16-year-old prep-school girl who witnesses a police officer shoot her unarmed best friend. A movie version of the novel, by Angela Thomas, is already in progress. And right now, prominently displayed at Barnes & Noble in Downtown Brooklyn, is “Bright Lights, Dark Nights,” a novel about racial profiling set against the backdrop of drugs and violence.

Ah ha. This is really an article about urban-set fiction about black teenagers and racial profiling. 

The recent upheavals in the economy stemming from the financial crisis, the rise of racial tensions and the increased animosity toward immigrants that the current election cycle has fed and exposed have arguably made this new catalog inevitable. The world has intruded in the lives of children in so many ugly ways.

But are these books so new? Is this an entirely new catalog? Where’s mention of Kekla Magoon and her book How It Went Down? 

Consider this: in 2005, as well as before and well after, we had authors writing about urban realities for teenagers. We had the great Walter Dean Myers, for one, as well as Coe Booth (Tyrell, etc), Jaime Adoff (The Death of Jayson Porter), Sharon Draper (The Battle of Jericho and others), Sharon Flake (The Skin I’m In), Angela Johnson (First Part Last), Jacqueline Woodson (After Tupac and D Foster), and a slew of books from imprints like Dafina and KTeen, which focused on black teens in urban stories.

Let’s not forget, either, there were white writers telling these stories, too, including folks like Paul Volponi (Black and White) and Paul Griffin (Stay With Me).

In some sense these new realist novels are even grittier than their predecessors from the 1970s, even though children, especially in New York where crime rates were so high, faced greater perils then. The classic young-adult novel of that period typically dealt with characters managing the fracture of American family life — divorce, a mother’s new boyfriend and so on — but those characters most often enjoyed the comforts of middle-class life. Norma Klein’s Manhattan was as sophisticated as any Woody Allen would devise. Children today may finally be resisting the elusive insulation we crave for them.

Children have had access to books and story tellers interested in coming of age realism, as well as urban grit, since the beginning of YA. Even in those horrible years between the emergence of Twilight and today, authors wrote these stories, and readers — teenagers — found them, either through their own searching or the help of gatekeepers.

But what’s going unsaid here is the thing that needs to be said: these books were never written for nor marketed to those middle age white ladies who are now discovering these gritty, urban coming-of-age stories thanks to better marketing and placement in bookstores. These books were never “for” them in the first place, and even in today’s market where adult buyers make up the majority of YA book purchases, these books are not “for” them. Rather, it’s thanks to the nonstop hard work of those behind diversity movements (a phrase I loathe because “diversity” is simply reality) who are getting more of these books at the forefront of bookstores and into the minds of those readers, like Bellafante, who never once had to pick up books like these.

Let’s step back again, though, and consider what this piece says: back in the 70s and 80s, grit was written by white people.

Today, it’s being written by authors of color.

Both are sweeping over generalizations about what grit is and is not, and it overlooks the rich history of YA grit that’s been written before and will continue to be written. It’s thanks to the work of Myers, of Woodson, of Flake, of Draper, and of the other authors listed above who’ve been writing “urban set gritty stories” that parallel the eras and times in which they wrote that today’s authors doing gritty, urban-set fiction are able to tell their stories, too.

So sure, Twilight mirrored the gender politics of 2005 and the Bush era. But Twilight was not the only YA book out then; it was one of many, many hundreds of YA books, and one that chose to zig, rather than zag with the times. Likewise, it’s a book about white characters written by a white author. It cannot and should not be the standard of YA for one year, nor for an era. It’s a bubble which got great marketing and got lucky.

Not to mention that it did extremely well with middle class white ladies, the exact audience that gritty YA isn’t written toward.

Now if only I could better explain why a picture of a white coauthor is paired with this piece that is distinctly about black authors and black fiction, rather than any of the black writers mentioned.

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I can’t help but link again to an interview done here earlier this year with YA author Brandy Colbert. The books we’re seeing promoted and discussed by and about black people are excellent and important and it is, without question, about damn time they’re getting table placement and big discussions about them in places like The New York Times.

But what about those books by black authors that aren’t gritty, urban-set stories? What about those black teens who are suburban? Who are also coming-of-age, but perhaps have lives that aren’t gritty (or that are gritty but not in the way we associate “gritty” with “inner city”)? These books deserve their time, too.

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Thanks for hanging out again for another edition of “What’s Up in YA?”. If nothing else, I hope this piece helped further open your reading lives to a wealth of fiction and authors of color who deserve your attention and consideration, even if they aren’t brand new (or if they are!). It’s worth noting that the majority of authors noted above have a nice, thick catalog of reads, even though they aren’t all mentioned or linked to. 

We’ll see you again next week.

Hello YA Fans!

This week’s edition of “This Week in YA” is sponsored by Way Down Dark.

Seventeen-year-old Chan’s ancestors left a dying Earth hundreds of years ago, in search of a new home. Generations later, they are still searching . . . Every day aboard the interstellar ship Australia is hell, where no one is safe. The Australia is filled with murderous gangs and twisted cults, vying for supremacy. Fierce and self-sufficient, Chan has learned to avoid the mayhem but then she makes an extraordinary discovery–there may be a way to return to Earth. But doing so will bring her to the attention of the murderers and fanatics, putting her and everyone she loves in danger.

 

Let’s take a look at the last few weeks in YA news, since there’s been quite a bit worth sharing or thinking about:

 

• First, the latest Book Mail box is up and available in the Book Riot Store. This is the YA edition, curated by your newsletter writer, and the theme for this box is Strange and Peculiar. There are two hardcover books, as well as three great bookish goodies — two of which are exclusive to this box. Check it out.

• I love stories about people’s jobs that are a bit unexpected. In this case, it’s Jennifer Connelly’s stint as a YA book cover model. And speaking of modeling for book covers, Jamie Canaves at Book Riot rounded up a few now-famous people who modeled on book covers — not all of these are YA, but many are.

• After five years, the independent YA press Jolly Fish is shutting its doors. This piece at Bustle sums up a number of reactions from around the YA community. The books currently published by the press will remain on sale through the end of October, and you can check out what they are and purchase them with the handy round-up from The Bookavid.

• JK Rowling’s “Fantastic Beasts” franchise will be five films long.

• A partnership between Lee & Low Books, First Book, and the National Education Association Foundation will get diverse books into the hands of kids and into schools in low income areas. Partnerships like this, which meet the kids where they are, are the ones I think are most effective. Kudos.  

• I can’t remember if I shared this one in the last linked-up newsletter or not, but in any case, it is worth a reshare: Amandla Stenberg will be in The Darkest Minds movie. I welcome Amandla as the new face for YA films, and I love this piece about the 5 YA roles she could play next.

• I’ve seen this same headline used in about eighteen other outlets and I find it a little annoying each time. That said, there have been some badass interviews lately with Ransom Riggs and Tahereh Mafi. This is a particularly good one.

• More YA Star Wars novels. This isn’t surprising, seeing that these books are doing really, really well.

• SE Hinton, why though?

• Some casting news for Down a Dark Hall. I’m pretty excited about this entire project, as it’s one of the adaptations that Stephenie Meyer is producing.

• I’m so glad to see the publication date for The Hate U Give got moved up, especially after reading this excerpt. One of my most anticipated 2017 reads, and I suspect I am not alone in that.

 

And a few links from Book Riot on YA:

 

• 100 YA books with little or no romance. Yes, they exist!

• And then sink your teeth into 100 must-read YA historical fantasies.

• 10 YA books worth listening to on audio.

• How about some queer Asian YA books?

• The evolution of LGBTQ+ book covers in YA.

• An interview with Maria Padian about her new book Wrecked, YA books as a category, and about rape culture.

 

Though there will be no edition of “What’s Up in YA?” on Halloween, I couldn’t end this one without talking about how great YA horror is. If you’re itching for a title or two, may I suggest trying out any of these 65 great YA horror reads by women?

Thanks for hanging out for another round of YA news and talk. We’ll be back in early November with more. Until then, grab yourself some candles, flashlights, blankets, and some spine-tingling reads.

Or, you know, whatever it is you want to spend your last days of October curling up with.

Hello, YA fans!

This week’s newsletter is sponsored by Wrecked by Maria Padian.

On the same night college freshman Haley sustains a career-ending concussion on the soccer field, her bookish roommate Jenny arrives home shell-shocked from a wild party. The next morning, on the other side of campus, Jordan brags to his housemate, Richard, about the cute freshman he hooked up with. When Jenny formally accuses Jordan of rape, gossip spreads like wildfire through the campus. Wrecked by Maria Padian, a gut-wrenching, powerful, kaleidoscopic account of a sexual assault on campus, is a must-read.

I promised in the last newsletter that there would be an excellent interview in this week’s edition. At the time, I hadn’t yet seen the answers and now that I have, all I can say is, you’re in for a treat, YA fans!

September 15 kicked off a month-long celebration of Hispanic Heritage, and I could think of no better way to talk about this than to interview an up-and-coming rising star in YA, Anna-Marie McLemore. Anna-Marie is a queer Latina whose first book The Weight of Feathers was short listed for the William C. Morris Debut Award and whose second book, the just-released When The Moon Was Ours, is long listed for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.

Before diving in, I’ll take a moment to plug an older post I wrote on my personal blog: A YA reading list to Hispanic Heritage Month. It’s a little wonky in formatting, but for those of you seeking a great book by a Hispanic author or who want more background on the celebration itself (i.e., Why is it mid-September through mid-October? Who does it celebrate?), here you go.

And now, let’s talk with Anna-Marie!

 

Before we dive into talking about a host of other things, give us the pitch for THE WEIGHT OF FEATHERS, as well as the pitch for your latest book, WHEN THE MOON WAS OURS!

The Weight of Feathers is the love story of two teens from rival families of traveling shows, the Mexican-American Palomas, who perform as mermaids, and the Romani Corbeaus, who are descended from a long line of French tightrope walkers.

When the Moon Was Ours tells the story of Sam, a transgender boy known for painting moon lamps and hanging them in the trees throughout his small town, and Miel, a Latina girl who grows roses from her wrist. Miel and Sam have been friends since the night Miel appeared from a water tower as a child; now, years later, they find themselves up against four sisters rumored to be witches.

You openly identify as a queer Latina writer — can you talk a bit as to why stating your identity is important to you as a writer and how you translate those experiences into your own stories?

Claiming my identity has been important both for my own spirit—for taking pride in my intersecting identities and my communities—and as part of being visible for and within my communities. I’m a light-skinned, dark-haired and dark-eyed Latina, and often people see me and understand me as “other”—not white or “not quite white”—but don’t know what I am. While we never owe anyone an answer to the question “What are you?” I want to be a visible as part of the Latinx community, especially since I’m queer. And since we’re talking about declaring queer identity, I am extremely straight-passing; when I’m not out with the Transboy, I’m usually assumed to be straight. While fellow members of the LGBTQ community often flag me as their own, straight, cis people usually don’t. They sometimes get the sense that I’m a little different, but that’s often as much part of being of-color as being queer. So claiming my queerness is in part about pride, in part about visibility as a queer woman of color, and in part about letting go of some of my straight-passing privilege in a way that I hope helps show the range and diversity in our community.

Do you find yourself feeling extra pressure to “get it right?” How do you balance the need to tell a story with the pain points that come from being a minority voice in the YA world? Do you feel there are more expectations for you as a queer female writer of color than writers who don’t identify as a minority or who don’t choose to be open about their identities?

My hope is that all authors, no matter their identities, feel a responsibility to their readers and to themselves to “get it right.” But I do think that when there are fewer stories by any one kind of marginalized voice, it’s hard for authors not to feel the added pressure of what role their stories will or should play. An author and blogger who knows YA titles as thoroughly as anyone else I can think of recently told me that When the Moon Was Ours is one of the only titles she has on hand to recommend that has both a trans* main character and an interracial romance between two main characters of color. So that’s an example of how it’s a tremendous honor to me when anyone recommends my books, but I do feel the weight of that responsibility. The hope, of course, is that, no matter what kind of book, no matter what kind of main character a reader asks for, there will eventually be many titles to recommend. I think that’s one of the things we hope for as we talk about diversity and inclusion in literature. We look toward the hope of many mirrors. However long that dream of many mirrors takes, I want to do the best I can as a queer female writer of color, both in the stories I tell and in the ways I engage in the community.

Who and/or what have been some of your influences as a queer writer of color?

The first novel by a queer Latina author I can remember reading is Carla Trujillo’s What Night Brings. That book to me had the draw of being both a mirror book and a window book. A mirror in that so much about narrator Marci Cruz’s culture was familiar to me. A window in that this young woman is looking at feminine women with the sort of gaze we tend to attribute to boys and men, like what we see in The Virgin Suicides. And that was such a strange and disconcerting and wonderful moment of “Oh. Do queer women look at us”—and by us I mean feminine-presenting queer women, femmes, the community I was only just starting to understand—“like that? Do queer women look at us like men look at us?” That made queer attraction real to me in a way it wasn’t before. I had never seen the attraction of a queer Latina woman depicted on the page before.

When it comes to YA, Malinda Lo was the author who drew me into the idea that there was room for the stories of queer women of color. Ash transfixed me, and every novel she’s written after has given me another breathless moment of “Oh. We (meaning queer women of color) can write those stories. We can write those genres. There is room for us, and if there’s not, we will make room.” She’s an author who has done so much to make that room, to open what so many queer women of color think of as stories that can belong to us, both as readers and as writers.  

And in terms of queer authors who wrote in Spanish, Lorca has been, and continues to be, a tremendous influence. His poetry and his plays were absolutely transformative to me. They had commonalities with a culture I knew, and they had a kind of passion that was even more meaningful to me when I understood his perspective as a gay man. To read such beautiful stories and images, and to know they had come from a heart that loved in a way that his society rejected and ultimately killed, was heartbreaking, haunting, and life-changing. He is one of my most deeply held reference points for why magical realism is so important to me. You feel it in his words and his characters, that meeting of oppression and transcendence, of being broken down and still finding the beautiful.

Your two books pull threads through them that readers might identify — Romeo & Juliet comes through in THE WEIGHT OF FEATHERS while the tale of La Llorona weaves its way a bit through WHEN THE MOON WAS OURS. Can you talk a bit about the power of stories and how they influence your own writing?

I grew up in a family that loves and values stories. Some of those stories, like the legend of la llorona, belong to our cultures, and they hold places in our hearts that are both harrowing and hopeful. Others, like Romeo & Juliet, have largely been claimed by white narratives, this despite the fact that so many cultures have their own stories with similar themes. My family taught me that sometimes, if we want stories of our own, we have to claim them, we have to create them, we have to make them ours.

Your books are readily identifiable as “magical realism.” This term has gained a lot of use in the YA world over the last couple of years to describe a wide swath of novels. But “magical realism” has significant cultural associations and meanings that separate it from fantasy reads. Can you talk a bit about what magical realism is, why you write it, and what YA books you see fitting into it?

Magical realism is a literary and cultural language. I hesitate to give a brief, one-sentence definition of magical realism for the same reasons I hesitate to give a short definition of what it means to be Latina. Magical realism is more than seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. In a culture of oppression, seeing the magical in the midst of the tragic, the unjust, the heartbreaking is a way of survival, for people, for communities, for cultures. We must find our magic where it lives, or we will lose it. Our spirits depend on not overlooking that which might be dismissed or ignored. When the moon speaks in Lorca’s Blood Wedding, I take a deeper breath not because this seems impossible, but because the moon’s words stay with me. That’s really I think why I write it, it’s how I express what I know, that the world is more brutal than so many people believe, and more beautiful they than imagine.

One of the most classically depicted moments of magical realism I’ve ever found in YA is in Guadalupe Garcia McCall’s Summer of the Mariposas, when the five sisters at the heart of the story speak to la llorona. La llorona is a legendary figure in Mexican-American culture; in my community, we all hear her story growing up. But these sisters speak to her, and she speaks to them, as though they’re simply relatives who haven’t seen each other in years.

I also must mention Laura Ruby’s Bone Gap and Nova Ren Suma’s Imaginary Girls, because Laura and Nova are two of the YA authors I admire most. I go back to their books often. I should mention that both Laura and Nova have called their books something other than magical realism; Laura calls Bone Gap a Midwestern fairy tale, which I love. Their books have hints of magical realism blended with elements that are uniquely their own.

Though Hispanic Heritage Month is coming to an end, reading and discussing diverse books is something that we’re all interested in. What have been some of your favorite YA and/or YA crossover reads written by those with a Hispanic and/or Latinx heritage?

Maria Virginia Farinango and Laura Resau’s The Queen of Water is the story of a young Ecuadorian girl fighting to have a chance at an education, independence, and the life she imagines; Laura Resau, the co-author who Farinango trusted to help tell her story, has also written many books, and she’s an example I constantly cite as a white author who respectfully and authentically depicts Latinx culture. Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe has two characters I just loved spending time with; their relationship is both fun and poignant, and the way it unfolds is gradual and powerful.

One of my favorite magical realism stories, Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate, sets traditional magical realism against the landscape of familial closeness and conflict. Not technically YA, but I read it as a teen, and it was one of the books that made me a reader. It shares themes of becoming your own and making your own choices with many of my favorite YA books.

The Alchemist is a classic by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho, and it also has themes of making your own life that I think would resonant with readers who love YA.  Right now I’m reading The House of Impossible Loves by Cristina López Barrio, and I am loving it so far; at its core is the question of how much daughters want to be like or different from their mothers. And thanks to more diverse books reaching shelves every year, my TBR list is growing, including my TBR of specifically Latinx voices.

____________________

 

A big, big thank you to Anna-Marie for this wonderful conversation and YA readers, hopefully you found even more books to add to your towering piles! And if you haven’t already read her books, make sure they’re on your piles because both are wonderful, lush stories that exemplify all of the best parts of YA and why YA is such a rich category of books. 

Enjoy your reading and we’ll see you back in two weeks! 

 

Welcome to Fall, YA Fans!

This week’s edition of “What’s Up in YA?” is sponsored by Look Past.

Look Past is a gripping murder mystery involving a transgender teen and a fundamentalist religious sect. Avery is a trans boy who was in love with his friend Mary, but was shunned by her conservative reverend father. Mary is murdered in a brutal way because of her love for Avery, and he could be next. With the entire town caught in the grip of fear, the killer remains at large. Avery is torn between finding the killer and saving himself—not just from the hands of a vicious murderer, but from everyone who thinks he should try to be “normal.”

In the next issue of “What’s Up in YA?,” we have a fun interview with an emerging YA powerhouse talking about Hispanic Heritage Month, magical realism, and a whole lot more. So for that, we’ll take it a little bit slower in this issue — let’s take a look at some of the big news from around the world of YA.

• I’d completely forgotten that Lauren Kate’s Fallen was being made into a film. The trailer has hit, and the article attached to it is interesting — there’s not a release date for the film, and there’s a push to get fans talking so that it will debut. Eventually.

• Did you know that Bernie Sanders is publishing a YA book? It’s a non-fic title being adapted from his next adult release.

• Tis the beginning of award season! You can check out the Kirkus Young Readers’ Literature short list here, then check out the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature here. Some crossovers there!

• “Be not afraid of discomfort. If you can’t put yourself in a situation where you are uncomfortable then you will never grow. You will never change. You’ll never learn. I think for me, the discomfort of drowning is what taught me to swim” — this quote from Jason Reynolds is one of the many great pieces of insight and advice authors for young readers offer up to those ready to leave home for the first time.

• Ann M. Martin talks about the enduring legacy of The Baby-Sitters Club, 30 years after its original publication. Of most interest to me reading this piece was learning Martin is queer!

• There is now a director attached to Simon Vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda.

• Hulu ordered a pilot for the adaptation of Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass. Which of her series will hit screens first?

• Lizzie Skurnick books will no longer be acquiring new titles. This story is pretty interesting since it sounds like not all of the cooks in the kitchen were in agreement about the dish to be served. I’ve liked the Skurnick reissues that I’ve read quite a bit and hope we still see some more. If this bullet point made no sense to you, check out what it is.

• Remember Marley Dias of #1000BlackGirlBooks? She’s now created a mini-zine for Elle.com. This girl is rad.

 

From Book Riot…

• On a totally selfish note, I got to show off the cover to my own anthology, Here We Are: Feminism For The Real World, which hits shelves in February. I’m still in awe of the cover and that contributor list.

• A round-up of 100 must-read historical YA novels. Anything you’d add?

• A look at YA novels with shifting POVs.

• YA book covers that don’t whitewash. Some great covers here!

 

Thanks for hanging out with us another week, and we’ll be back with a fabulous author-reading-book discussion in two weeks. In the mean time, pick up a great YA book or two and have fun.

Welcome to September, YA fans!

This week’s newsletter is sponsored by Ghostly Echoes by William Ritter.

In the third volume of the highly addictive New York Times bestselling Jackaby series, Jenny Cavanaugh, the ghostly lady of 926 Augur Lane, has enlisted the services of her fellow residents  to solve a decade-old murder—her own. Abigail Rook and her eccentric employer, R. F. Jackaby, dive into the cold case, starting with a search for Jenny’s fiancé, who went missing the night she died. EW.com calls the series “fast-paced and full of intrigue.” It’s “Sherlock Holmes crossed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” says the Chicago Tribune.

 

As you’re reading this, your newsletter writer is deep in the desert, soaking in the last few weeks of summer….and uninterrupted reading time. That means this week’s newsletter is dedicated to catching up on the links of interest. Dig in!

 

• First: did you know that we have a new YA-based tote bag in the Book Riot Store? This rad tote, with a quote from Nova Ren Suma’s The Walls Around Us was created for the first YA Book Mail Box, but we decided we’d put it in the store, too. Check it out and snag one. If you’re curious, it’s very big and has a nice pocket inside — it’s perfect for toting your library or bookstore hauls, some notebooks, pens, your phone, and other goods.

 

 

• A Monster Calls, the film based on the book by Patrick Ness (which might lean more middle grade than YA), is getting pushed back by a couple of months. Here’s info on the new release date and the latest trailer.

 

 

• Jennifer Yuh Nelson is on as the director for the adaptation of The Darkest Minds. Yeah lady director! Yeah lady director who is a woman of color!

 

• Speaking of female directors, Lumberjanes has one, too.

 

• Remember the announcement of YA X-Files books? Here are the covers for what will be hitting shelves early next year.

 

• In Italy, their young adults are getting nearly $600 to spend on books. This is awesome.

 

• Itching for some nostalgia reading? Here’s a piece from Broadly about our collective obsession with The Baby-Sitters Club. One of our Book Riot contributors just wrote a piece of interest, too, recommending books to the members of the BSC.  

 

• Malorie Blackman’s Naughts and Crosses is being adapted by the BBC. This is a huge deal for UK YA — Blackman has a massive and devoted following. (It’s always fascinating to me to see how different the reception is in the UK or in Australia as opposed to the US and vice versa!).

 

• There are two more books slated for the wildly popular “Ember in the Ashes” series.  

 

• 20,000 copies of Jason Reynolds’s books will be given out to kids. So great.

 

• There are more questions to be asked about this than answers to be had, so stay with me here. There is a proposal — not a written book yet — for the YA audience about The Donner Party which has already had its rights snapped for film? And it’s from Paper Lantern Lit (in basic terms, a book packager like Alloy that comes up with ideas and hires writers for them…think going for “Pretty Little Liars” type popularity and ubiquity). I don’t know how I feel about such a tragic, horrifying event being…commodified like that? And it’s not even a book yet! But the movie rights have been sold? “The Hunger?” Like I said, questions.  

 

• Getting ready for the spring 2017 YA books? Here’s a preview from Publishers Weekly (& hey! I spot a familiar name there!).

 

• Marvel’s Runaways is getting a Netflix deal. This series was always hugely popular in my libraries.

 

• YA author Corinne Duyvis is writing a Guardians of the Galaxy novel.

 

And because we’ve had a lot of YA writing over on Book Riot recently, let’s catch up with it:

 

• YA book recommendations for fans of Stranger Things. This was such a fun list to write!

 

• YA book covers worth loving….especially because they feature girls of color on ‘em!

 

• A wee bit biting but also not incorrect (& also clearly written with love!), here’s a look at fandom according to YA fiction.  

 

• 25 YA paperbacks for your fall reading pleasure. That’s backlist, baby.

 

• YA books with shifting POVs.

 

• A round-up of YA authors who literally rock . . . since they’re musicians.

 

• An early peek at some intersectional YA hitting shelves in 2017.

 

• And finally, an interview and look behind the scenes of cover design with Dave Caplan, Creative Director at Little, Brown. This entire series of interviews is outstanding for cover and design nerds.

 

May your books be fantastic and your end-of-summer delightful. We’ll be back with another installment of “What’s Up in YA?” in two weeks!

Good end-of-August, YA lovers!

This week’s “What’s Up in YA?” newsletter is sponsored by Harmony from Europe Comics.

One day, Harmony wakes up in an unfamiliar basement having completely lost her memory. All she now knows of the world is the name of her “host,” the mysterious voices in her head and a newly discovered talent for telekinesis. She’s going to have to get her memory back pretty quickly in order to face the dangers that await her. There are so many unanswered questions, and the fight has only just begun…

 

I know what you’re thinking: she’s going to write about that terrible YA article this week! And you’re right. I am.

But not in the way that you’re expecting.

Instead, let’s talk about what makes literature important, what makes literature leave and impact, and what it is, as a whole, that makes some books “more important” than others.

I’ve pondered before what a YA canon might look like. What are the books which are so important in the YA world that we’ll be reading them forever? That we’ll consider them foundational books in the YA world? What are the books which the teenagers of the next generations will not only read, but will also potentially study in their high school or college classrooms and dissect, seeking out the meaning behind an author’s choice of giving their characters red shoes and green eyes?

Let’s take this a little bit further. We know what books are considered essential, important, and “literary” works — they’re the classics, the bulk of which are written by white guys in history who had the time, the money, the luxury, and the status to write and be published well. Not all of the books we know as part of the canon now were seen that way during their publication, just as there are plenty of books that were wildly popular throughout history that have been forgotten completely.

But those books, regardless of their status as classics in the canon, still left a tremendous impact on culture during the time, as well as long after.

Have you ever heard of the book Trilby by George du Maurier? Published in 1894 in Harper’s Monthly, it was a wildly popular story that sold hundreds of thousands of copies in the US. I wouldn’t be surprised if your initial reaction is never having heard of it. Regardless of being a runaway bestseller in the US and abroad at the turn of the century, it’s a book that is difficult to track down now, as well as a book that’s not read or considered part of the literary canon. It’s not one you’ll likely find in your public library (though it is available in some).

I’ve referenced that book before, and I reference it here again because the power of the book hasn’t left our culture, despite the book itself not being part of the classics/canon. You’ve heard of Svengali, right? If you grew up in a certain era in the Midwest, especially in the Chicago area, you might be familiar with the hosted horror show Svengoolie.  

The lineage of both Svengali and Svengoolie can be traced back to Trilby. (There is, of course, a lot to be said here about the antisemitism of this character, but for the purposes of this newsletter, know that that’s a thing).

It doesn’t end there, though. Surely, you’ve heard of the trilby hat? That, too, can be traced back to Du Maurier’s novel, and it was one of the popular fashion trends for men in the UK; it’s still in production and seen throughout the world even today.

Oh, and Trilby has been credited as a major inspiration for The Phantom of the Opera.

If a book has this much cultural power, even more than a century after its publication, how come it isn’t something we’re studying more closely in literary circles or in our literature courses?

Because sometimes, the power of a book isn’t in its longevity or in its power to be part of the elite “literary canon.”

Sometimes the power is in the cultural impact a book has when it’s published, as well as long afterward.

Where Nutt uses his platform to talk about how today’s teens — especially boys — are being harmed by popular YA literature, what he’s getting at is that he is worried about his place in the literary world as a white guy. While YA isn’t great at being inclusive, the calls for it to become more aware of these faults and fix them is a huge aspect of the YA world right now. YA is where female writers, as well as female characters, have had the chance to have a space, to be heard, to have power, to explore the limits of their worlds.

These are the things that, Nutt argues, are harmful.

And they are harmful precisely because they are not part of the White Male Literary Canon.

YA is a young category of fiction, and it’s one that’s ripe for being picked at, for having think pieces written about, and for being called harmful, shameful, and awful for teen readers. Of course, those arguments come from adult readers, many of whom still reference 10+ year old titles in their quest to sound relevant.

Whether or not YA remains robust and begins to build its own canon of literary masterpieces, what matters today, right now, and what will matter for decades upon decades, is that YA has a social and cultural currency that cannot be argued. How much of our language, how many of our references, and how many of our cultural connections come from YA? How much of our shared understanding of the world around us will emerge from our engagement with books like those found in YA?

Patronus.

Katniss.

Mockingjay.

Sparkly vampires.

The Feels.

Even if you don’t know where those references come from, chances are you know what they are or you’ve heard them in regular conversations or used them yourself. Phrases like “patronus” from Harry Potter become woven effortlessly into our vocabularies, used in place of highly appropriative phrases that might otherwise be used. You find yourself with a case of “the feels” after a great read or a great movie.

These are things that connect us with one another. These cultural references, pulled from the YA world and YA literature, have as much pull and importance as the books that we consider classics. The importance might not look the same or feel the same, it may not be studied in the same way in classrooms, but it still matters. 

Perhaps there is a reason these titles are so frequently referenced in pieces that argue YA’s value/harm/etc.

Rather than decry another article about how YA is ruining readers, why not instead spend some time reading the incredible journalism, the thoughtful and heart wrenching, the blood-splattered and pain-driven, the joyous and the insightful pieces that pepper the entirety of the YA world, both in the literature, as well as in the blogs, the websites, and from the people who are passionate and driven by this category of books?

I know which matters more in the long run.

100 years from now, even if we don’t see The Hunger Games or Twilight or The Fault in Our Stars or any number of other wildly popular, bestselling YA books in the limited canon (either in the YA world or broader literary world), their impact does not change. The #WeNeedDiverseBooks movement, the call for more inclusivity, the calling out of problems in the YA world, the pointing to these huge books as being extremely white (and the responses to seeing these books not represented that way on the big screen), those things matter and come directly as a result of being able to share in the common interests and passions for literature and good, representative reading.

Instead, it carves a path toward more and more connection, more and more commonality, between us and the world around us.

And that matters, too.

____________________

A big, fat round-up of YA news will come your way in the next edition of this newsletter. In the mean time, if you’re still feeling a little worked up over that article, why not pull out YA author and Book Riot contributor Justina Ireland‘s handy little YA article Bingo card and go to town? 

Hey YA fans!

This week’s newsletter is sponsored by Mary E. Pearson’s The Beauty of Darkness. 

Lia and Rafe have escaped Venda, and the path before them is winding and dangerous–what will happen now? This third and final book in the Remnant Chronicles is not to be missed. New York Times-bestselling author Mary  E. Pearson’s combination of intrigue, suspense, romance, and action makes  this a riveting page-turner that you won’t be able to put down!

This newsletter won’t have a huge amount of new things to talk about — just a short round-up of newsy items at the end — in part because this will be a longgggg read. Now that I’ve thoroughly confused you, let me explain.

In early July, as well as in the last newsletter, I asked you to share your favorite 2016 YA reads so far.

And you responded.

It wasn’t a small response. We’re talking roughly 1,700 of you — about 10% — of the subscribers to this newsletter chimed in with your favorite reads. Because there were so many responses, I whittled down the favorite reads by these criteria:

1. The book was published between January 1, 2016 and August 8, 2016. I kept off books that are coming that people have read advanced copies of or are anticipating (I loved reading so many responses along the lines of “I haven’t read x yet but I know I’m going to love it”).

2. The book was published as a YA book. I didn’t worry about fiction or non-fiction; it just needed to be a book explicitly marketed as YA. A lot of stuff skirts both the middle grade and the adult lines and YA readers read up and down, but just to keep numbers easier, I made the executive calls.

3. The books were published in the US. Not that I don’t appreciate the responses for books that were published outside the states — again, awesome to see those! — but they’re likely hard for readers here to check out.

4. I consolidated multiple responses for the same titles. In the list, you’ll see some titles have a * beside them. That means 15 or more readers listed it as their favorite.

5. For those responses with multiple answers, I went with the first title or the first title that was published this year in the timeframe.

6. Errors are mine. Because 1,700 responses!

That brought a grand total of 131 unique titles among your favorite YA reads this year.

This is such a fun list, rich with YA of all shapes and sizes. There are series books, there are stand alone titles, there are books which got a lot of buzz, as well as quieter reads. There’s both fiction and non-fiction represented here. It was neat to see the responses and be pleasantly surprised a book showed up that wasn’t one I’d expected to see. It’s also nice to see titles that published early on in the year — the ones that could be easy to forget — make an appearance.

Grab your TBRs. Here are your 131 favorite YA reads from January – August 8, 2016, in alphabetical order. I’m linking the titles so you can click through to read descriptions. Pasting them here would kill everyone’s bandwidth (& apologies if this comes out as one longgggg list — if that doesn’t work for you, click here for the readable and clickable spreadsheet).

*A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro

A Fierce and Subtle Poison by Samantha Mabry

A Tangle of Gold by Jaclyn Moriarty

*A Torch Against the Night by Sabaa Tahir

A Totally Awkward Love Story by Tom Ellen and Lucy Ivison

*A Tyranny of Petticoats edited by Jessica Spotswood

A World Without You by Beth Revis

After the Woods by Kim Savage

All the Feels by Danika Stone

American Girls by Allison Umminger

*And I Darken by Kiersten White

Ask Me How I Got Here by Christine Heppermann

Asking For It by Louise O’Neill

Assassin’s Heart by Sarah Ahiers

Autofocus by Lauren Gibaldi

*Being Jazz by Jazz Jennings

Beware That Girl by Teresa Toten

Blackhearts by Nicole Castroman

Bookishly Ever After by Isabel Bandiera

Burn Baby Burn by Meg Medina

Burning Glass by Kathryn Purdie

Burning Midnight by Will McIntosh

*Calamity by Brandon Sanderson

Chasing Impossible by Katie McGarry

Consider by Kristy Acevedo

*Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas

Cure for the Common Universe by Christian McKay Heidicker

Dark Days Club by Alison Goodman

Devil and the Bluebird by Jennifer Mason-Black

Down with the Shine by Kate Karyus Quinn

Drag Teen by Jeffry Self

Dreamology by Lucy Keating

Escape from Asylum by Madeleine Roux

Everland by Wendy Spinale

*Every Exquisite Thing by Matthew Quick

*Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E. K. Johnston

Firstlife by Gena Showalter

Firsts by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

*Flamecaster by Cinda Williams Chima

Flannery by Lisa Moore

Flawed by Cecelia Ahern

Forbidden Wish by Jessica Khoury

Forest of Ruin by Kelley Armstrong

Front Lines by Michael Grant

Ghostly Echoes by William Ritter

*Girl Against the Universe by Paula Stokes

*Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard

Half Lost by Sally Green

*Highly Illogical Behavior by John Corey Whaley

Hurricane Kiss by Deborah Blumenthal

I Woke Up Dead At The Mall by Judy Sheehan

If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo

Ivory and Bone by Julie Eshbaugh

Into the Dim by Janet Taylor

Julia Vanishes by Catherine Egan

*Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare

Let The Wind Rise by Shannon Messenger

Lois Lane: Double Down by Gwenda Bond

Mirror in the Sky by Aditi Khorana

Misunderstood: Why The Humble Rat May Be Your Best Pet Ever by Rachel Toor

My Kind of Crazy by Robin Ruel

*My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows

Nil On Fire by Lynne Matson

No Love Allowed by Kate Evangelista

Outrun the Moon by Stacey Lee

Paper and Fire by Rachel Caine

*Passenger by Alexandra Bracken

Places No One Knows by Brenna Yovanoff

Rebel Bully Geek Pariah by Erin Jade Lange

*Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton

Riders by Veronica Rossi

Ruined by Amy Tintera

Run by Kody Keplinger

*Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

Saving Montgomery Sole by Jillian Tamaki

*Scarlett Epstein Hates it Here by Anna Breslaw

See How They Run by Ally Carter

Shadow Queen by C.J Redwine

Starflight by Melissa Landers

*Stars Above by Marissa Meyer

*Summer Days and Summer Nights edited by Stephanie Perkins

Tell Me Three Things by Julie Buxbaum

Thanks for the Trouble by Tommy Wallach

The Blood Between Us by Zac Brewer

*The Crown by Kiera Cass

*The Crown’s Game by Evelyn Skye

The Darkest Corners by Kara Thomas

The Geek’s Guide to Unrequited Love by Sarvenaz Tash

The Girl From Everywhere by Heidi Heilig

The Glittering Court by Richelle Mead

The Great American Whatever by Tim Federle

The Haters by Jesse Andrews

The Island by Olivia Levez

The King Slayer by Virginia Boecker

The Last Boy and Girl in the World by Siobhan Vivian

The Last Star by Rick Yancey

The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge

The Long Game by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

The Loose Ends List by Carrie Firestone

*The Love That Split The World by Emily Henry

The Memory of Light by Francisco X. Stork

The Museum of Heartbreak by Meg Leder

The Only Thing Worse Than Me is You by Lily Anderson

The Outliers by Kimberly McCreight

*The Problem With Forever by Jennifer Armentrout

*The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater

*The Rose & The Dagger by Renee Ahdieh

The Safest Lies by Megan Miranda

The Sleeping Prince by Melinda Salisbury

*The Smell of Other People’s Houses by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock

The Square Root of Summer by Harriet R. Hapgood

*The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokhi

The Symptoms of Being Human by Jeff Garvin

Titans by Victoria Scott

*The Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson

The Way I Used To Be by Amber Smith

*The Winner’s Kiss by Marie Rutkoski

This Is The Part Where You Laugh by Peter Brown Hoffmeister

*This is Where it Ends by Marieke Nijkamp

This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab

Three Truth and a Lie by Brent Hartinger

*Truthwitch by Susan Dennard

Unbecoming by Jenny Downham

Up To This Pointe by Jennifer Longo

*We Are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson

*When We Collided by Emery Lord

Wild Swans by Jessica Spotswood

Wink Poppy Midnight by April Genevieve Tucholke

With Malice by Eileen Cook

You Know Me Well by Nina LaCour & David Levithan

You Were Here by Cori McCarthy

 

A huge, huge thank you to everyone who submitted a response. I know I asked some additional questions but after playing with these answers, I figured this would be enough to bust even the biggest reader’s to-read lists.

 

A handful of interesting/news-worthy links worth sharing:

* Though this piece is about books for kids under the YA set, it’s really worthwhile reading since the same observations about female protagonists made there can be said about YA.

* A wonderfully in-depth look at the evolution of LGBTQ+ YA stories.

* The Thousandth Floor, which is publishing later this month, has been picked up for a TV series. Not surprising at all, given it’s an Alloy book — they’re the same company behind things like Pretty Little Liars and Gossip Girl.

* The adaptation of the “Chaos Walking” series by Patrick Ness has scored a big name — Daisy Ridley.

* A sweet little reminder that reading YA is totally okay for adults.

 

And a few links from Book Riot: 

* I was blown away by the tremendous (!) response to this piece about why YA needs more quitters.

* A round-up of queer YA set at summer camp.

*Podcasts for YA fans.

 

Thanks for hanging out with us for another collection of YA news and fun. “What’s Up in YA?” will hit your inboxes again in two weeks.

In the meantime, perhaps a book or two mentioned here will suck you in.

Welcome to August, YA fans!

This week’s newsletter is sponsored by Harmony from Europe Comics. 

One day, Harmony wakes up in an unfamiliar basement having completely lost her memory. All she now knows of the world is the name of her “host,” the mysterious voices in her head and a newly discovered talent for telekinesis. She’s going to have to get her memory back pretty quickly in order to face the dangers that await her. There are so many unanswered questions, and the fight has only just begun…

 

Let’s take this week’s newsletter as a giant catch-up on recent YA news, interesting pieces from around the web, and adaptation updates. There has been a lot of exciting and thought-provoking linkage that’s hit my radar lately, and I hope you find a thing or two or ten that’s interesting.

 

• We Need Diverse Books is running a wonderful summer feature that pairs up books you’ve read and loved with diverse books you should pick up. It’s not all YA, but they’ve had a healthy selection. A number of the books on the left are ones I haven’t read, so it’ll be nice to catch up with all of these recs.

 

• Sarah J Maas fan? You’ll be treated to 6 (!!) more books in her Court of Thorns and Roses series, as well as 2 more in her Throne of Glass series. Wowza.

 

• Jason Reynolds will be writing a Miles Morales YA novel. It’s nice to see how inclusive the authors selected to write these comic adaptations have been — DC’s selections announced earlier this year are promising.

 

• This piece on the state of disability representation on YA book covers from Corinne Duyvis and Kayla Whaley at Disability in Kid Lit is outstanding. It’s given me a lot of pause for what I’m seeing on covers and what I’m not seeing.

 

• If you’re already thinking about YA books in 2017, then you’ll want to peruse the Publishers Weekly Spring 2017 children’s announcements. It’s not comprehensive, but it’s a nice taste of what’s to come.

 

• I really appreciate how The Guardian encourages teenagers write pieces. This one, about whether or not YA is too politically correct, has been on my mind for a few weeks now. The piece struggles to separate the idea of political correctness and diversity, suggesting that some authors do the second by relying too heavily on the first but….I don’t see it. I think through my adult eyes and my experience in reading YA for many, many years, I don’t see the push toward political correctness, nor do I see the push for diversity (a phrase I loathe!) as a means of checking some boxes. In order to have YA that explores the vastness of teenhood and teen experiences, there needs to be YA that explores topics that are, for the lack of a better phrase, “politically correct.” But “political correctness,” is a bs term. It means not being an asshole and/or embracing the idea that other people’s lives and choices are valid and worth listening to. I think what this piece is trying to get at is that we should consider the idea that YA could benefit from more conservative characters and situations. And if that’s the case, I’ll still argue that those books are there. What’s not there, and what never should be there, are books which are offensive, degrading, and hurtful to entire classes of people. We have a long way to go, though, considering how frequently we’re still seeing books where characters “play Indian.”

 

• This piece at School Library Journal with YA author Stephanie Kuehn about mental illness and unreliable narrators is fantastic.  

 

• Here are this year’s Eisner Award winners, including Jillian Tamaki and John Lewis for their teen-friendly graphic novels.

 

Here’s the latest in YA adaptation news to know about:

 

• Lauren Oliver fans: Before I Fall will hit the big screen on April 7, 2017. That would be the same day that the middle grade bestseller Wonder will also hit theaters.  

 

• The final film in the “Divergent” franchise won’t be hitting theaters. It will instead go to television and have the option for a miniseries to go along with it. This article at Salon is interesting, though I don’t think it necessarily conveys some of the other issues I’ve seen mentioned in this changeup. Namely, the second and third films in the series didn’t pull in a lot of money (see the YA newsletter from May on this), breaking up a trilogy into four parts has a lot of challenges to it (including the fact that a “hot” franchise in 2012 is going to look different in 2017…and teenagers who might have been 14 when the books hit are no longer 14 later on), and, perhaps on a shallower level, a lot of critics have gotten tired of white girls on the big screen (and, perhaps, tired of Woodley playing so many of the roles in these films). The Salon piece does talk about the challenges this change presents in terms of seeing powerful female leads on the big screen, which is worth considering. Though, if you keep an eye on rights acquisition news, it looks like there’s going to be more of them coming….more of them written by female authors….and a wider range of genres represented.

 

• For example, we just got news Amandla Stenberg will be starring in the film adaptation of Nicola Yoon’s Everything Everything.

 

• And then there is the news about the adaptation of Sara Zarr’s Story of a Girl.

 

• As well as the news about Bella Throne starring in Break My Heart 1000 Times.

 

• Then there’s the news about a director being attached to the adaptation of Alexandra Bracken’s The Darkest Minds.

 

• And Victoria Schwab’s This Savage Song has been acquired for an adaptation.

 

• Jonathan Maberry’s forthcoming YA novel Mars One has been acquired for television. The book isn’t out yet, but I’ll be really curious to see Maberry take on science fiction without zombies.  

 

• Terry Pratchett’s Wee Free Men will be getting the big screen treatment.

 

And here are a few pieces from Book Riot the last couple of weeks to check out:

 

• I pulled together a list of 65 YA horror books all written by women. What was great about this list was how many I had to leave off because women in YA are really doing a lot of great horror and have been for a long time.

 

• Alison talks about 3 great podcasts for fans of YA literature.

 

• A guide to get you started with Meg Medina’s work . . . and if you didn’t know already, she’ll be a guest at this year’s Book Riot Live.

 

• From the archives: a look at the Amelia Bloomer Project, which highlights feminist books for young readers.

 

• Eric talks about the books mentioned in the debut YA novel Mirror in the Sky.

 

Thanks for reading. As always, if you’ve seen something about YA lately that’s interested you or you want to say something about what I’ve shared here, you can always hit the reply button. “What’s Up in YA?” will hit your inbox in another two weeks, with a bit of a focus on what we’ve been reading and raving about this year so far.

If you want to, click here to share your favorite YA reads this year. I’ll use what you share here, as well as what was shared with me a couple of weeks ago, to compile your recommendations.