In the current Twilight thread, AuntiePam asked for some YA recommendations.
At 22, I am just outside the target market for YA Fiction, but I don’t see myself outgrowing it any time soon. I’m also a high school English teacher, so exposure to YA literature goes with the territory. I even wrote my undergraduate Honors thesis on YA literature.
When I look at good YA literature, I look at a few things. There’s YA literature I admire for some aspect of the writing, and there’s YA literature that I value for it’s entertainment value. Twilight is not well written, IMHO. The prose is kinda overdone and the characterization sucks (haha). And the entertainment I got from the books came from snarking, not from anything Meyer intended.
Anyway, on to the recs:
Armageddon Summer by Jane Yolen and Bruce Coville, both titans of the YA fantasy genre. This book is not fantasy: it’s a chilling look at religious fanaticism. It’s told from the alternating perspectives of two young teenagers whose parents get sucked into a millennial Christian doomsday cult and haul them to the top of a mountain to await the end of the world. The two protagonists are very well done; their musings on religion are interesting, and as far as just getting sucked into a story- wow. One of my all time favorite books ever.
Chasing Redbird by Sharon Creech, as well as its companion novels Bloomability, Walk Two Moons, and Absolutely Normal Chaos. They’re all funny and touching and feature strong female protagonists who come across as real girls- not the simpering Sue that Bella is.
Dizzy, by Cathy Cassidy. A good look at a teenager’s relationships with the less than responsible adults in her life.
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The Goose Girl, Enna Burning, and River Secrets **by Shannon Hale. The acknowledgments to the last Twilight book mention Hale as a friend of Meyer; but Hale can actually write. These books take their initial cue from a Grimm fairy tale (my favorite one, actually), but soon spin off into a bigger fantasy world. The second in the trilogy is probably the strongest.
And a recommendation on pure entertainment value: The Mediator Series, by Meg Cabot. The Mediator Series is an earlier take on the live girl/undead boyfriend thing, this time with a girl who sees dead people and the 150 year old ghost who haunts her bedroom. The ending to the series is too tidy, and Cabot is guilty of Sue-ism at times, but I like these better than the Twilight books; at least the main character isn’t as much of a twit, and the hero isn’t as stalkery. Funnily enough, one of the books in this series is also titled “Twilight.”
Please feel free to add your own recommendations! I may come back with more after I comb through my shelves and old notes, and after I talk to my little sister.