Young Adult Novels
Between Dr. Sturm's Young Adult Literature class last spring and my field experience in the McDougle Middle School Media Center this fall, I'm reading a lot of teen lit. Here are the highlights!
** Graphic Novels ** Problem Novels ** Fantasy Novels **
** Science Fiction/Dystopia Novels ** Young Adult Book Awards and Reading Lists **
Graphic Novels
Blankets: An Illustrated Novel
By Craig Thompson (Marietta, Ga.: Top Shelf, 2003)
Thompson tells the story of his senior year of high school, his first love,
and a crisis of faith. Not so much a YA novel as a novel
for adults who were once teens, this book taps into some deep emotions.
Beware of reading it in public if you don't like crying in
front of others. The artistic style is evocative and creative too.
Really, really good book this one is, all around.
Good-bye, Chunky Rice
By Craig Thompson (Marietta, Ga.: Top Shelf, 1999)
Thompson's first book is about a turtle named Chunky Rice and his
best friend, a mouse named Dandel, and is uber-cutely drawn.
Chunky decides he needs to travel, to see the world, but he
finds himself aboard a rough ship, missing Dandel a lot.
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
By Marjane Satrapi. (New York: Pantheon Books, 2003)
I'm in the middle of this, the first installment of Satrapi's
graphic memoir of growing up in Revolutionary Iran.
Wow, it's powerful. In this one, she's ten, and it's 1980.
Persepolis 2: The Story of A Return
By Marjane Satrapi. (New York: Pantheon Books, 2004)
At the end of the first book, Marjane leaves Iran for school in Vienna.
We catch up with her there, and as she returns to Iran after graduation.
Problem Novels
Homecoming
By Cynthia Voigt (New York: Atheneum, 1981)
Only 50¢ at the PTA thrift store! I can't help but wonder if I might
have read this in junior high--I did like this sort of book.
Dicey is thirteen, and her mother has deserted her and her three younger
siblings in a mall parking lot. Dicey somehow manages to get
them to family, with almost no money and even less knowledge of who this
family is. A saga—a bit drawn out perhaps—and awfully
dated for today's teens, but gripping nonetheless.
Dicey's Song
By Cynthia Voigt (New York: Atheneum, 1982)
A Newbery Medal Winner.
The Tillermans have made it to their feisty Gram's house in Maryland, but
their battles aren't over.
This one won the award, and for good reason. The story's tighter, and their
struggles are more psychological than physical.
Tenderness
By Robert Cormier (New York: Delacorte Press, 1997)
From the author of The Chocolate War and I Am the
Cheese, so you know it will be suspenseful and will feature
twisted, angsty teens. Here he's a serial killer, in search of
"tenderness," and a runaway girl in love with him. I loved his
earlier novels when I was in junior high, and this one didn't
disappoint.
Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!
By M.E. Kerr (New York: Harper & Row, 1972)
Tucker has to give away his cat, and the only taker is the odd,
overweight girl Dinky Hocker. Together, they find new ways to rebel
against their parents and the Brooklyn neighborhood they live in.
Fantasy Novels
The Sea of Trolls
By Nancy Farmer (New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2004)
Oh my god, I can't wait to read this. From the author of The House of
the Scorpion, a fantasy novel using NORSE MYTHOLOGY!!
The Golden Compass
By Philip Pullman (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996)
NC Battle of the Books 2004-05 selection.
Also on my list of books to read soon, this one features Lyra
Belacqua and her daemon, trying to save children from strange
experiments in the Far North.
Science Fiction and Dystopia Novels
The
City of Ember
By Jeanne DuPrau. (New York: Random House Children's Books, 2003)
NC Battle of the Books 2004-05 selection.
Whew, I read this in two sittings. Its quick pace and slow revelations
about what is really going on in the city of Ember make it hard
to put down. The city has no natural light, and supplies are running
out. Will Lina and Doon decode the cryptic note they found locked
in an old box soon enough to avoid the city's doom? And what is with
this city, anyway?
The Giver
By Lois Lowry. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993)
A Newbery Medal Winner.
Another page-turner! Jonas is about to turn 12, that anticipated age
where the young learn their lifelong role in the community. Jonas,
however, is assigned a peculiar job: the Receiver of Memory. What he
learns about his community and its history, and the things no one
there knows— like what pain and suffering and passion and
yearning are—is hard for him to take, and his reaction
could have consequences beyond his imagination.
The House of the Scorpion
By Nancy Farmer (New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2002)
This blew me away when our YA Lit class read it last spring. It's set
in a future where clones are used as mindless drone workers in
the opium fields between Mexico and the U.S. Young Matteo, a clone
of the powerful drug lord El Patron, comes to understand who he
is and why he wasn't sent out to the opium fields. A very well-
written coming-of-age story set in a harrowing future not too
distant from today.
Young Adult Book Awards and Reading Lists
National Awards:
- Newbery Medal and Honor Books, awarded since 1922 for the most excellent literature for children and teens.
- Printz Award, the most prestigious literary award for YA novels only. 2000-present.
- Best Books for Young Adults, a yearly list of literary YA books, chosen by YA librarians.
Other Recommended Reading Lists:
- North Carolina Battle of the Books (2004-05), a quiz-bowl-type, extra-curricular activity where teens show what they know about books.
- Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools Middle Schools Summer Reading List (2004), organized by genre.
- Teens' Top Ten Books, a list compiled and voted on by teens themselves (how novel!).