YA New York

Matthue Roth is the author of Losers, a fantastic novel about a dorky Russian boy named Jupiter, who somehow goes from being smashed into lockers to crashing parties to hanging at the hippest Philadelphia cafes, all in a few chapters. It’s a fascinating book, which I highly recommended not too long ago.

Matthue has also written several other novels, a memoir, poetry and music, much of which is about his Jewish heritage and religion. Which means we had a ton to talk about. Without further ado …

Question One

Me: Can you tell us a little bit about Losers, the book, not the people?

Matthue: Basically, my first book, Nevermind the Goldbergs, was my kind of idealized fantasy of the person that I’d like to be, if the person I’d like to be was a seventeen-year-old girl. … Jupiter is everything that I was at seventeen, although more so: He’s totally socially awkward, has relationships that exist entirely in his head, and he lives in a factory.
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I’m pleased to present an interview with Robin Wasserman, whose new book Skinned is getting rave reviews from pretty much everyone. You may recognize her name, considering this is her eleventh book (and she’s only thirty!); Robin is the author of the Seven Deadly Sins series and a bunch of other good stuff.

Question One

Me: How did you come with the idea for Skinned?
Robin: In grad school I did a lot of work on automata, which are mechanical replicas of life, and so I’ve been thinking about those issues for a really long time and so it was exciting to get them into a teen novel exploring life and death and all of those issues. (more…)

Michael Grant, author of Gone, recently took the time to chat with me — he called me on the phone, all the way from Italy, which was incredibly kind on his part. Michael has written about a million books under various pseudonyms, so he has a lot of great insight on all things literary and on many that are not. (I must add that he was really super-fun to talk with, and if he didn’t live in Tuscany, I’d kidnap him for weekly interviews.) And now, for your reading pleasure, I present: Twenty Questions with Michael Grant … (more…)

Last week I had the honor of interviewing Kimberly Pauley, the founder of YA Books Central and the author of Sucks to Be Me: The All-True Confessions of Mina Hamilton, Teen Vampire (maybe), which will be released Aug. 26.

Though I’ll hold off a bit for a full review, I do want to rave about this novel a bit. It’s not your usual vampire book. Instead, it’s a really humorous story about a teen (almost) vampire who has to attend vamp classes in the evenings, classes that are something like driver’s ed.

On to the twenty questions! (more…)

Happy release day! Lauren Mechling’s new book, Dream Girl, is out today, and so we continue with part deux of the Lauren extravaganza.

Before I post part two of my interview with Lauren, though, I have to tell you all about her wonderful book.

Our heroine, Claire Voyante (Get it? Claire? Voyante?), has been having weird visions for a good long time. But just after she turns fifteen, her fabulous grandmother gives her a cameo necklace that changes everything. She starts to have strange dreams in black and white, and she’s not quite sure what to do with them. Meanwhile, she’s started attending a dreary but renowned NYC public school, and she’s having trouble making friends until she meets heiress Becca Shuttleworth and gets embroiled in the Shuttleworth family secrets.

Dream Girl is like Nancy Drew — with which I was obsessed for a good three years, until I turned ten and was told by my school librarian that Nancy Drew was not good reading for a girl my age (!?!) — but better. Lauren, who co-wrote The Rise and Fall of a 10th Grade Social Climber and two other Social Climber books, really shows her chops here. She’s witty, sarcastic in a good way, and her teen heroine couldn’t be more lovable. Besides which, YA has for some reason been suffering from a dearth of mystery books lately, so it’s great that Lauren has come along to fill that void.

Lauren expressed some concerns in part one of our interview about whether readers would be turned off by the lack of “sexytime antics.” Au contraire! There may not be any actual full-frontal, rated R, S-E-X, but there is plenty of sexual tension. And I for one am very, very psyched to see what happens in Claire’s love life in future books.

I’m a hundred percent serious when I say I’ve been waiting for months to review this book and give it all the gold stars I have. (Twenty-seven, to be precise.) Dream Girl is not to be missed. I read the book again for the third time last night, and it’s every bit as good as I remembered it.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled interview. (more…)

Mondays are for guest blogs, right? Well, not this Monday. Today and tomorrow are all about Lauren Mechling, whose new book Dream Girl debuts tomorrow.

Let me just tell you that I’ve been having little weird Freudian time-switcharoos about this book. First I thought it was coming out on June 22, but the publicist let me know that it was July 22. Repeatedly. THEN I thought it was coming out July 11, for some bizarre reason. It was only after a lot of head-poking that I forced myself to remember Dream Girl’s real publication date. Which is tomorrow!

In honor of this great event, I’ll be doing a two-part Twenty Questions with Lauren, rules suspended, and a review tomorrow on the release date. The twenty questions, they start now. (more…)

Today I am extremely pleased to present an interview with Suzanne Supplee, author of Artichoke’s Heart, recently reviewed here. She is also the author of When Irish Guys are Smiling, and she’s currently working on her next YA novel. Suzanne and I talked on the phone, since she lives in a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland, though of course I’m hoping to meet up with her in person one day when she comes to New York, YA Mecca of the world that it is. Without further ado, the interview is right after the jump. (more…)

Melissa Walker, author of Violet on the Runway, Violet by Design, and coming soon, Violet in Private met up for coffee (actually, she had mint lemonade and I had sparkling water) recently, and we decided to mix things up a bit when it came to the interview. So we played my version of Twenty Questions, in which each person gets to ask the other a random question, taking it in turns, until we reached twenty. All answers had to be one sentence long so I could scribble them down quickly in my terrible handwriting.

Ahem. Presenting … Ms. Melissa Walker in Twenty Questions:

Question one:

Sabrina: What made you decide to write the Violet books?
Melissa: I spent twenty-four hours in a male model apartment and I decided that I had to set a book in that world.

Question two:

Melissa: Why sparkling water?
Sabrina: I have had three cups of coffee today, and if I have any more I will go insane.

Question three:

Sabrina: Under what circumstances did you spend twenty-four hours in a MALE model apartment?
Melissa: I was writing a story for Elle Girl, which I pitched myself.

Question four:

Melissa: What is the last thing that you wrote?
Sabrina: That would be a chapter from my (hopefully) upcoming book, Letters to Bert.

Question five:

Sabrina: Why would you pitch a story that required you to spend twenty-four hours with male models?
Melissa: I felt it was important for teen girls to know that really hot guys can be really boring.

Question six:

Melissa: Who is Bert?
Sabrina: Bert is a fictional rock star.

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Sarah Beth Durst’s second book, Out of the Wild is out today, and in celebration of the event I’m proud to present an interview with Sarah herself. First, a bit about her novels:

Into the Wild, Sarah’s first book, was a hilarious and thrilling romp involving fairy tale characters who had escaped their endlessly repeating stories to live in the real world. Our heroine, Julie, is actually the daughter of Rapunzel and her prince, and the granddaughter of a reformed wicked witch. She’s also the adoptive sister of Puss in Boots. If that doesn’t reflect a nice sense of whimsy, I don’t know what does.

Sarah’s first novel explores what happens when “The Wild,” the magical forest that contains fairy tale characters, tries to take them back. Her second picks up where the first left off: with the ultimate cross-country road trip, taken by Julie and her princely father. It’s a fantastic read, and I heartily encourage you all to rush out and gobble it down. Preferably in a tub full of rose-scented bubble bath.

Now that explanations and exhortations are out of the way, we move onward, my friends, to the interview: (more…)

Hello, dearest readers. Sorry I’ve been away, but I’ve been trying to learn how to edit video. Actually, how to record video, and edit video, and upload it to the interwebs, and … well, you understand. It’s not as easy as it looks.

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of interviewing Cheryl Diamond, the gorgeous and very nice author of Model, a Memoir. We chatted for a very long time, and so this vlog entry will actually be in two parts. Because I still have to edit the other half of our interview so it is not seventeen hours long. Sorry for all the crazy cuts — I’m still learning!

PS. You’ll be able to hear this thing much better if you wear headphones. Or, like turn the sound on your computer allllll the way up. If you want to buy me an external microphone, I won’t stop you.

Cheryl Diamond with YA New York, Part I from Sabrina Banes on Vimeo.