YA books

I think it was Toni Morrison who said if there's a book you want to read but you can't find it, write it yourself.

Jeez, you should see the books on sale here. "Johnny Fartpants eats bogeys" or "Sally Jizzwhore removes her underpants."

I despair for the youth of today, I really do.

(Yeah but no but, there are actually books on sale with titles like "The day my bum ran away" and something about Captain Underpants).

Big chain bookstores tend to carry a lot of bubble-gum books and bestsellers, IMO. If you have a good independent bookseller where you live, support them instead. Independent bookstores rock and the large chains are putting the independent bookstores out of business, which will seriously narrow the range of books you can find. I make lists of books I want to read (from book reviews, awards and friend's recommendations) and either get them out of the library or buy (order if necessary) from independent book stores. There is a lot of really good quality YA literature out there.

Have you read Meg Rosoff's "How I live Now?" Or Carrie Mac's "The Beckoners?" John Green's "Looking for Alaska" or "An Abundance of Katherines?"

Sorry, I know you weren't asking for suggestions but I thought you might like some anyway-- I know I'm always looking for new books myself!

^I LOVe Looking for Alaska.

Now, I'm certainly not against supporting independents (I'm getting published by one, so obviously) but you CAN find great stuff at Barnes and Noble/Borders/all that crap. It's there. You've got to dig a little bit, but it's there.

You want some terribly sexist advice?

Look for stuff written by guys.

Seriously.

I don't read female writers anymore.
I know it's awful....

The serious ones are out there! I swear! I think I honed my trick for ignoring the Bubble Gum Books back when chick lit became popular. I got so sick of seeing pink cartoony covers on the front tables of bookstores that I started glossing over them altogether.

I got started on YA books through the Internet. I started thinking that the novels I was writing were more YA than adult fiction, and so I decided to check out the YA section for the first time since I was 14 or so. Back then (early '90s), everything was either horror, romance, or "issue books." But there were so few issue books that a fast reader could tear through them all in a summer. The genre started changing a lot in the late '90s / early '00s, and there started to be more room for comic novels, satire, sci-fi, and just plain old contemporary novels without some Big Teenage Problem lurking within them. Anyway, I started reading YA writers' and readers' blogs, and some of the same book titles and authors' names kept coming up as being really good. Everybody was raving about Laurie Halse Anderson, John Green, Markus Zusak, M.T. Anderson, Meg Rosoff, E. Lockhart, and others. So I started checking those out.

To this day, I don't think there's a YA book I've read that I've just picked up off the shelf. Everything's been an Internet recommendation. I go into the bookstore or library with a TBR list and grab what I can find. I ignore the fluff. There's a lot of fluff, sometimes.

My library has a really good YA section, with new books coming in all the time. My local bookstores can be hit or miss. Borders and B&N have been hawking the series books lately -- Gossip Girl and its many clones. Sometimes I hear about a great new YA novel, and it'll be nowhere to be found at the bookstore. If you have an independent children's bookstore nearby, they might be of help, though some may not carry some of the edgier YA titles.

I'm glad my mom read me Ringworld while I was growing up, expecially if bubble gum books were all I could look forward too.

Dancre! Write dark YA books for my children, please!

Not that I have children...yet.

I think they are there, but the bubblegum books are the ones placed face-up, so you have to read the spines to find the good stuff. Bubblegum sells well, and rather like TV, the majority of people want to be entertained rather than educated a lot of the time (see success of Big Brother and daytime soaps/chat shows). So it's only natural that the bubblegum books should be made visible. However, I spend a lot of time reading all the spines and pulling books out to read the blurb. I also rifle through the Waterstones 3 for 2 a lot of the time, because there is always a handful of really strong issue/realism books there. You just have to spend time looking for them!

My daughter (15) and her friends hate the "bubblegum" books. They like dark. Suicide, mental breakdowns, cutting, drug abuse, abusive parents/teachers are some of what she likes.

Dark is good.

Well, I second what everyone else has been saying; at the big chain stores, the books with substance are definitely there, but the staff doesn't highlight them, because they're not bright and pink and glossy You just have to poke around a little and you'll run across them. Also, if there's a good library in your area, that's actually an excellent place to look for quality YA. Librarians tend to know the good stuff, and they often set out the Printz finalists and the Newberry Award winners in highly visible locations, hoping to entice adolescent readers away from all the Bubblegum.

Not to discount female YA authors at all, but Shady is dead-on about looking for male writers. There are some really amazing ones being published right now. Along with John Green, I'd particularly recommend Adam Rapp (I suspect I may be in love with him). If you haven't read Laurie Halse Anderson or E.R. Frank, those women aren't afraid to tackle anything, and the prose? Stellar. Okay, this could easily devolve into a My Favorite Books list, so I'm going to exercise some restraint and stop now. Good luck with the search--I hope you find something amazing.

Oh, and Chris Crutcher, he's super-cool too. I'll stop now.

Some GREAT YA books that aren't bubble gum;

Looking for Alaska (John Green)
An Abundance of Katherines (also John Green)

Uglies trilogy (Scott Westerfeld)

The Truth About Forever (Sarah Dessen)
Dreamland (Sarah Dessen)

I have others, but they're probably on the verge of bubble-gumness. I'm not much for dark books.

Following in JordyGirl's footsteps:

My favorite YAs (and I don't read bubblegum...)

Looking for Alaska (She mentioned it already, but it's fantastic.)

Stoner and Spaz by Ron Koertege

Under the Wolf, Under the Dog by Adam Rapp

It's Kind of A Funny Story by Ned Vizzini

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (obviously incredible) by Stephen Chbosky

Smack by Melvin Burgess

Martyn Pig by Kevin Brooks

Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

Center Line by Joyce Sweeney (one of the only girls I read)

Free Fall by Joyce Sweeney

Sins of the Fathers by Chris Lynch (possibly my favorite book, though I hate everything else Chris Lynch has written.)

Second Perks of being a Wallflower and third Looking for Alaska.

The Perks of being a Wallflower, I was surprised I liked it so much because everyone had been telling me to read it for years and I finally did recently, and it really affected me...there were some annoying things to me like the narrator will put certain words or slang in quotes, and that took me out of the story, but overall I really loved it.

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray is one of my favorite books ever, and I may be a little biased because it led me to my best friend, but I would definitely not call it bubble-gum reading; that seems to be the very thing Libba Bray sets out NOT to write.

The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman is freaking fantastic, I could write a million word post declaring how incredibly awesome it is, but I won't. It's just so cool.

Not a big fan of Looking for Alaska. Something about his writing felt smug. I don't know. But I do like the theme and plot. I started Katherines, but again, his writing style is a big turn-off. I didn't like Frank Portman's King Dork, either.

However, I really, really loved Marcus Zuzak's I am the Messenger. Fantastic book. Oh, and I just met Laurie Anderson at a conference! Speak is amazing, of course, and Catalyst was good. I'm just about to begin Fever 1793.

Anyway, I was in a B&N the other day, and was able to find serious YA fiction; it's just not front and center.

Finally, I agree that I am more drawn to male authors, though there aren't as many out there as female authors in the YA realm. I guess I'll just have to go about changing that.

I adore Meg Rossof's How I Live Now. I can't recommend it highly enough.

However, I really, really loved Marcus Zuzak's I am the Messenger.

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One of my sister's favorites, though she prefers Book Theif.

She's eighteen.

gem1122 said:

I didn't like Frank Portman's King Dork, either.

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I tried really, really hard to like King Dork, but I just couldn't make it happen. I flipped through it and found a lot of funny lines and paragraphs, and I loved the "dictionary" and the band names at the back of the book, but the story itself left a lot to be desired. It seemed right up my alley, too.

I checked up on its Amazon reviews a couple months ago and found that a lot of the people who were praising the book were much older than YA-age. People in their 30s and 40s seem to get into that book a lot more than people in their teens and 20s. Sometimes it's a mystery why certain novels become YA books and others become adult books. That "YA crossover" area gets fuzzy.

gem1122, I'm also one of those people trying to add more quality YA to the bookshelf. Oh, and I love your sig link! I watch that clip far too often.

black bubblegum

Working on one that is a dark story disguised as a bubblegum book. Oh, my poor little protagonist...if only she knew. Also try Powells, great selection.
>~

Turkey--definitely sounds like something I would read.

scarletpeaches said:

(Yeah but no but, there are actually books on sale with titles like "The day my bum ran away" and something about Captain Underpants).

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Oi, those title are the very ones that got my 10 year old reading. Bums, snot, poo and undies are in! (for reluctant readers) Now he's attempting to read a Bridge to Terabithia.

Also guys. Try some Australian authors too:

The Tomorrow series by John Marsden is excellent
Lockie Leonard--Tim Winton