For the last two years, 20-year-old Shane Burcaw has shared his tales of life with spinal muscular atrophy on the wildly popular Tumblr called Laughing at My Nightmare. Now he's writing a memoir, which he just sold to Macmillan.
Thursday, April 18, is Support Teen Lit Day, a YALSA-declared holiday meant to raise awareness among the public that Y.A. is great. One way to participate is with Rock the Drop, a teen book drop initiative begun by literacy and social media project Readergirlz.
Following up on last week's adult spring book preview, here's the list of Y.A. novels I can't wait to read (or have already devoured) this spring.
Beth Reekles has a three-book deal with Random House, is working toward her physics degree, and is 17 years old. What have you done lately?
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and today marks the kickoff of a new program focused on Laurie Halse Anderson's classic Y.A. novel Speak, which tells the story of a high school girl coping in the aftermath of being raped.
Suddenly, it seems like gay characters are everywhere in young-adult literature. How well is Y.A. doing at reflecting the current state of teen culture with regard to LGBT issues, and how far need we still go?
In the New York Times today, Leslie Kaufman takes on the new proliferation of books about bullying in the Y.A. and children's markets. There are more, yes, but they are also different.
Gayle Forman's Just One Day is a love story mixed with a coming-of-age tale featuring the character of Allyson Healey. Allyson can be a little bit frustrating. What's a Y.A. author to do about that? We asked Gayle Forman, who created her.
If the act of rereading a book is partly about remembering the you who paged through it the first time, and comparing that version of yourself to the one who's reading the book again, the classics that we read in high school offer endless possibilities for rediscovery.
What do Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, the ladies of the Baby-Sitters Club, Nancy Drew, and R.L. Stine’s various goosebumps-inducing cohort have in common? They were art for your childhood bookshelves, and also, now, art for your grownup walls.
In 1990, The Face on the Milk Carton was published by Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers, introducing 15-year-old Janie Johnson to the world. This month, the final installment in the five-book series, Janie Face to Face, was released.
This week in Y.A. for Grownups we chart a course through history by way of books new, old, and upcoming. For your reading convenience, we've categorized the books by historical period or event.
2012 was an excellent year in Y.A. and middle grade across all boards — sales, growing acceptance for adults who love "cross-under" reads, and most importantly, content. 2013 is shaping up to be equally great. What can you expect, and what do you need to get your hands on now?
In this week's Y.A. for Grownups column I'm paying special homage to the oft under-applauded but always important art of the books; specifically, the cover art that's appeared on books published for teens and middle-grade audiences this year.
The final movie in the Twilight series is out this week, and the eldest of the four books is now going on 7 years old. My how they grow up fast! What has the equally maligned and adored—yet, either way, incredibly successful—series left us? And what might be next in hyper-popular Y.A.?
As weather gets weirder (yes, Sandy. Yes, a nor'easter in November), here are a few of the Y.A. and middle-grade books we've relied on in the past for guidance and clarity when our environment appears to go off the rails.
In the lead-up to that scariest of holidays (no, not Thanksgiving with the family), I canvassed some of our favorite authors and writers and book lovers for a trip down Memory OMG I AM SLEEPING WITH ALL THE LIGHTS ON Lane—to find out their favorites.
Speak, a Y.A. novel written by Laurie Halse Anderson and published by Farrar Straus Giroux in October of 1999, tells of the aftermath of the rape of Melinda Sordino, who, in her freshman year in high school, nearly stops speaking altogether in her struggle to deal with what's happened to her.
Just a handful of the Y.A. and middle-grade books I read while growing up in the '80s featured overweight or obese characters. Usually they weren't the protagonists. Since then, things have changed a bit, but Skinny, by debut Y.A. novelist Donna Cooner, promises to bring some new conversations to the category.
Writer Kate Milford and I sat down to talk with beloved children's author Lois Lowry upon the release of her latest novel, Son, the final book in The Giver quintet.
On this very Friday 25 years ago, The Princess Bride, a movie featuring the beautiful Robin pre-Penn Wright and the dashing Cary Elwes (whom hordes of teen girls would go on to have enormous crushes on), was released.
As Teen Lit Rocks' Sandie Angulo Chen puts it, "To be honest, some of the sexiest books -- to me -- don't necessarily go all the way."
That old aphorism, "You can't judge a book by its cover," it turns out, is completely and totally untrue. We took a look at a few of our most adored childhood reads and compared the covers we pored over then with earlier covers and some current ones, too.
One of the highly anticipated Y.A. novels this fall is by 22-year-old debut author Jessica Khoury. Out this week from Penguin's Razorbill imprint, it's called Origin, and, with the film rights acquired by Scott Steindorff, it's getting a lot of buzz. It may even be your Hunger Games replacement read of the season.
We've been reading review copies all summer, and with the help of some bookseller friends, have compiled this fall preview of teen-and-younger books you won't want to miss.
The Giver is one of the books you probably read as a kid, somewhere between late elementary or middle school and early high school, depending on your school and curriculum. Two of us hadn't, though, and finally did.
The Baby-sitters Club: Kristy Thomas, Mary Anne Spier, Claudia Kishi, Stacey McGill. They were the originals, the quintet of female friends who preceded the ladies of Sex and the City and came well before the foursome in Girls.
As predicted, there was some debate about which books made NPR's list of greatest teen novels of all time, and which shouldn't have. We rounded up a list of our own.
Before there was The Hunger Games trilogy, there was Suzanne Collins' middle-grade series, Gregor the Overlander. We pay some attention to the best B-sides from a few of our favorite Y.A. and children's authors.
What's the title of the greatest teen novel of all time? NPR Books hopes to reach a conclusion on a topic that's fodder for no shortage of passionate opinion.
If you're an adult of a certain age in America, of course you know the name R.L. Stine, you know it like a delicious shiver down your spine. His Goosebumps series, now celebrating its 20th anniversary, has crossed generations.
Y.A. author Nina LaCour is making a small-budget movie out of her novel, and the Y.A. community is helping her pay for it.
One key difference between a good book and a great book is that a great book is eternally transportive, no matter how times you return to the well. Here are the books we started reading as kids and haven't put down since.
The latest redhead in the headlines right now is Merida, the Titian-tressed heroine of the first Pixar movie to focus on the tale of a female protagonist, Brave. But what about her predecessors in Y.A. and children's fiction?
Kids are getting into the world of book reviews, offering up commentary and criticism on the Y.A. and children's books intended for them. Makes you wonder why this didn't happen sooner, right?
At Book Expo America, we got a sneak peek at the most-talked about new Y.A. and children's titles, and we referred to some publishing industry insiders for their takes on the books you don't want to miss.
We asked some of our favorite Y.A. book authors for the titles that would have been on their ideal summer reading lists, and why.
Who were the boy characters who formed our impressions of who guys were supposed to be, who set crushable standards, who we wanted to grow up and some day meet—or become—ourselves?
"BEWARE and WARNING!" begins R.A. Montgomery's The Abominable Snowman, book 1 in the recently repackaged Choose Your Own Adventure series you used to know and love.
There is a triumvirate of success in the annals of Y.A. book history: Potter, Twilight, Hunger. What comes next?
At some point in my early tweenhood, my mom ushered me into a room, just the two of us, away from my dad and younger brother, and presented me with a book.
In 1965, 11 years after the Supreme Court outlawed segregated schools, Nancy Larrick wrote an article titled "The All-White World of Children's Books" for the Saturday Review. Much has changed since then. Some has stayed the same.
What exactly is "Y.A."? What does it mean? Why did it begin in the first place, and when was that? What has it become since? We conferred with librarians, agents, publishing world executives, and the experts of the Internet to put together a primer of sorts.
The ironic and rather wonderful thing about banning books is that the act doesn't, actually, do much to keep the books from being read. If anything, it inspires further interest in them, and sometimes sales, too.
This kicks off our new series, Y.A. for Grownups, in which we talk about Y.A. literature—from the now nostalgia-infused stories we devoured as kids to more contemporary tomes being read by young people today. Despite what Joel Stein wants, grownups are reading Y.A. Let's embrace it.
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