It’s been a long time. I’ve been trying to keep up with my YA reading, but I haven’t written a single solitary review in years. And the truth is, the market kind of got saturated awhile ago with vampires and werewolves and faeries, not to mention zombies and unicorns. I figure, once you’ve read a hundred vampire novels, you’ve read them all.

(It turns out when you don’t review books for several years, publishers stop sending you the good ones. So while I’m sure there are tons of non-vampy YA works still being published, I’m not seeing them. That’s okay, though.)

I still feel as passionately now as I did a few years ago that young adult literature is, above all, literature. I still adore the works of Libba Bray and E. Lockhart, two of the most talented writers I’ve ever had the honor of reading.

And I still think Meg Cabot is the bee’s knees. The cat’s pajamas. The Stephen King of chick lit. The High Priestess of YA.

These last few years, though, I’ve been struggling with chronic illness and other big bad Life Stuff, and somewhere in all of that I dropped the YA ball. I believe lots of other bloggers have kept that ball a-bouncing, though. (Oh my! Here’s a whole list of blogs just about YA.)

The registration on this domain expires in May, and the plan for now is to let it go. I’ll be back with other projects soon, though they may not be YA-focused. You can keep track of what I’m up to by following missbananabiker on Twitter, if you like.

For now, I’m going to leave you with a few simple recommendations, of books and writers who have stood the test of time:

Let’s start with Meg, shall we?

Once upon a time, in 2003 or 2004, I wrote an article I’ve come to regret. In it, I bashed The Princess Diaries for being too traditional and proper and cute. This was right around the time that Gossip Girl was turning into a big deal. I was committed to riding the GG train, mainly because everyone in those books misbehaved so very badly.

Thing is, I don’t know about you, but I was kind of a good girl in high school. And it’s clear from Meg’s writing that she was pretty much a good girl, too. But that’s okay. It’s more than okay. It’s normal.

Not to say it isn’t normal to be a Bad Girl, either. Just that even the most rebellious amongst us rarely smokes Gauloises at age fourteen.

In addition to which, there is no question but that Princess Mia’s exploits are far more daring and relevant than those of Elizabeth Wakefield or Claudia Kishi, staples of my 1980s girlhood. There’s a huge difference between the works of Meg Cabot and those of Francine Pascal or Ann M. Martin. (The biggest difference being that Meg Cabot writes her books all on her own. Which is pretty impressive, when you consider just how many novels she’s published.)

So. Meg Cabot. I’ve waxed poetic about her enough on this here weblog that you all know by now that I’m a fan. All I can say is, if you haven’t read any of her books, you are missing out. Personally, I’d tell you to start with some of her non-YA chick lit: The Boy Next Door is perfect bubble bath fodder, and probably my favorite of her works. You could also take a look at Meg’s leap into the world of vamp-lore, Insatiable. Again, it’s an adult novel, so younger readers beware. Oh! And if you haven’t yet read Abandon, Meg’s YA foray into the Persephone myth, you need to go out and grab a copy right this very instant.

Next on my list of the Most Awesome Writers in the World: Libba Bray.

Libba wrote Going Bovine, which I reviewed here when it came out. It’s exquisite. It’s absurd. It’s like the Community of YA novels: totally self-aware, completely insane, and absolutely hilarious. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It might be one of my top five favorite novels of all time. And I can say without reservations that it is definitely my favorite book ever written about a boy dying of mad cow disease.

Moving on: E. Lockhart’s The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks is also a top fiver. It’s one of those novels that sticks with you, that you recommend to every girl you meet. Or at least, I do. Because it’s about the panopticon, it’s about feminism and boys’ clubs and most of all, it’s about pranks. I have to say, I love me some good pranks. Honorary mention, in the E. Lockhart canon: Fly on the Wall. It’s a novella. You should read it alongside The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.

Then we have John Green, who I feel is sort of a male Libba. I can’t tell you which of his books is best, because he’s the sort of writer whose novels are all thoughtful and smart and hilarious and also, you know, tear-jerkers. I figure, if you’re at a book store or library, and you can’t decide which John Green book to read first, you can’t go wrong. An Abundance of Katherines is as lovely and page-turny as Looking for Alaska, which in turn is as wonderful as Paper Towns.

Okay, fine. You want to know where to start? This is just me, just my own personal opinion, but I think you start with the Katherines. Because of the math. There’s lots of math in the book, and it’s funny smart math. The thing is, I completely suck at math of all types. So if I love a book that is chock full of math, it must be really good.

Next up: David Levithan, who co-wrote Will Grayson, Will Grayson with John Green. Actually, David has done a bunch of writing and co-writing, and a bunch of editing, and a ton of organizing. He’s the person who created the NYC Teen Author Festival, and who has hosted dozens of teen reading nights at the NY Public Library. He has worked tirelessly on behalf on the YA community, and that in itself is enough to put him on the list of Important Awesome YA Folks.

But it was a short story of his that really made David’s work come alive for me: A Word From the Nearly Distant Past, which was published in an LGBT anthology, How Beautiful the Ordinary. Awhile ago David read this story aloud at Book Court, and by the end I had big fat tears rolling down my cheeks. David’s reading is the only one that has ever made me cry in public, which I think counts for a lot.

Onward: Scott Westerfeld. Uglies. I think Scott’s books gave rise to a lot of the dystopian teen lit out there today. There have been a bunch of wonderful dystopias published in the last few years, like Ship Breaker by the legendary Paolo Bacigalupi. Scott was one of The First, though, to bring dystopia to teen readers way back in 2005, and as far as I’m concerned he deserves to have his name up at the top of the dystopian writer’s list alongside Margaret Atwood, Kurt Vonnegut and the aforementioned Paolo.

Laurie Halse Anderson. What can I say about Laurie, other than that every teenager in America should read Speak? (Just in case I haven’t mentioned it before, Kristen Stewart of Twilight fame got her start in the TV movie version of Speak.) At this point, the novel is ancient, having been published in 1999. But it remains the most poignant and best-crafted work of teen literature I have read on the topic of surviving rape. It’s important, yes, a very important work on a very difficult topic. But its goodness is more important than its importance, and that’s why I’m putting it here on this list. It’s not just a book you ought to read, but a book you will want to read.

There are a hundred important authors I haven’t mentioned. Like, for instance, Lucy Maud Montgomery. (To be fair, she’s not exactly writing any new books these days. Although if you haven’t read The Blythes Are Quoted, which came out in 2009, you really should make a point of it.) But there are current authors, like Ned Vizzini (It’s Kind of a Funny Story) and Meg Rosoff (How I Live Now) and Marcus Zusak (The Book Thief), whose works are just plain stunning.

If there is one thing I will miss most about YA New York, it is the opportunity to read works like these early, and to tell you all about them so you’ll read them, too. Do me a favor, will you? If for some reason you’ve not yet read the works of any of the authors I posted above, go out and pick up one of their novels. And read it in the bathtub, for old time’s sake.

♥♥♥,
brina

There were jazz hands. And singing.

That’s what happens when you bring together four authors—Libba Bray, John Green, David Levithan and E. Lockhart—with a flair for the dramatic. The event, held last night at the packed South Court auditorium of the main branch of the New York Public Library, was aptly subtitled An Evening of Readers’ Theater. It showed the audience that if this whole writing thing doesn’t work out, all four of the authors could probably have new careers as readers—especially if they read together.

Each of the authors read a selection from their most recent work: Bray’s Going Bovine, Levithan and Green’s co-authored Will Grayson, Will Grayson and Lockhart’s The Treasure Map of Boys. The twist, however, was that they were each assigned parts and read the selection almost as if it were a play.

The Treasure Map of Boys was the first up, with Bray reading the part of the narrator and heroine Ruby Oliver, Green reading the part of Ruby’s semi-love interest, Noel, Levithan reading the part of Hutch, another student, and Lockhart reading Nora, who is a close friend of Ruby’s. The scene was an important one because it illustrates one of Ruby’s fatal flaws: being unable to keep herself from flirting with someone who is technically off limits.

The authors read together exceedingly well; it was clear that they not only rehearsed but also deeply understood each other’s work. I’ve read The Treasure Map of Boys but found the reading to be extremely vivid, almost to the point where it changed the way I perceived the scene. As a reader, I knew that Nora was seriously annoyed with Ruby. But hearing it out loud—particularly with Lockhart’s delivery and inflections as Nora—made what Ruby did seem even worse.

The authors proceeded onto a selection from Green’s Will Grayson, with Levithan reading the part of Tiny Cooper. His delivery got the biggest laughs from the audience and his pronunciation of the word “boobs” particularly amused Green, who commented on it afterward. The back and forth following this reading gave Bray a case of the giggles, which persisted into the next reading (a selection from Levithan’s Will Grayson) and eventually led Green to say, “Don’t make me take narrator! Because I’ll do it.” This helped Bray to recover and get through the rest of the selection without laughing.

The second part of the reading was vastly different. The authors, Levithan explained, would be reading from unpublished works in progress. As a result, he asked that no notes be taken or video or audio recorded. What was interesting was that all of the authors are working on something different from what they had published before. Green, for example, is working with a female narrator while Lockhart is working on a book for middle-grade readers.

Despite the changes in genre and perspectives, it was still possible to hear the authors’ distinctive voices. This part of the reading felt much different than the light-hearted first part. The authors read more slowly and seemed almost shy and tentative, possibly because of the unfinished nature of what they were reading.

Samantha Rowan is a journalist and aspiring YA novelist in New York City. Her favorite novel is Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

Look for The Star Shack in June.

Sarah Mlynowski followed Daphne, with a reading from her book Gimme a Call, which is out next month. As the topic was first drafts and revisions, she told us all that she absolutely hates writing first drafts and considers the process to be torture.

But she got lots of laughs — good, earnest, “we-love-you-Sarah” laughs — as she read from her first draft. This seemed to annoy Sarah.

“No laughing!” she said. “This is the bad draft!” Whatever, Sarah. Bad draft or not, you’re still way ahead of most of us.

She continued to tell us that, even if you’re trying to write about a character being absolutely miserable, you can’t make the reader miserable. This is a good point.

By the way, Sarah writes outlines for all of her books. Some of them are fifteen pages long!

In my next post later today, I’ll tell you about some more of the authors who spoke last night.

The authors on the panel are Nick Burd, Matt de la Pena, Gordon Korman, David Levithan, Barry Lyga, Michael Northrop, Jon Skavron and Jake Wizner.

I won’t be able to make it, but if you go, please do report back here and tell us how it went.

Also, tomorrow is the BIG DAY, on which the Most Famous Authors of Them All will speak. It’s going to be at the main branch of the NYPL on 42nd Street, and will feature Libba Bray, John Green, David Levithan and E. Lockhart. It all starts at 6 p.m. Be there! The authors will talk about Going Bovine, Will Grayson, Will Grayson, and more.

PS. I’ll be back later today with more about last night’s panel. There was too much awesomeness for just one post!

Eliot Shrefer, whom you may know as the author of the fantastic (and scary!) School for Dangerous Girls, read from his upcoming work, The Deadly Sister. To be honest, I didn’t settle in very well for his reading, because he gave these signs to David Levithan (author, editor, and event organizer extraordinaire). What I mean is … look for yourself:

Right. So as Eliot read from his first draft, David kept butting in with these signs. There was one with an X on it, meaning that David — in his editor hat — was cutting whatever Eliot was saying. There was one with a talky bubble, which David held up whenever he wanted to interject a thought of his own. And there was one, the one David holds here, that said “insert,” which usually meant David wanted to add a word that made the sentence more grammatical.

It was hilarious. Also? Scary. Because David was switching signs every few seconds, cutting and interjecting and inserting until Eliot’s work was whimpering on the floor. Here is what Eliot looked like as he read while David edited:

Eliot, by the way, is a fan of outines. “You’re actually driving a really large bus when you’re writing a novel,” he said, comparing an outline to a Pinto. (You have probably not seen a Pinto, but just think of it as a non-functional Smart Car from the 1970s.)

Next up was the lovely Gayle Forman, who read from her most recent novel, If I Stay. Gayle had some choice things to say about YA writing and editing. For example: “I kind of keep quiet to my friends in the adult publishing world about the amazing quality of the editors that I work with.” (This made me want to stand up and cheer, in a sort of nyah-nyah nyah-nyah way, for YA lit and authors and editors and fans.)

Gayle is not only a great writer, but she has awesome hair and the coolest black boots I’ve ever seen. Alas, the boots are not pictured, but I assure you that they had the best chunky silver hardware I’ve ever seen.

She talked about having something called a “nurse log,” which is a defunct, never-to-be-published book out of which many of her ideas grow. Oh, and she told us that she knows a novel is done when she can read it aloud without gagging. If only my gag reflex were so intelligent!

More TK — There were a ton of authors, and I will write about every one of them, but it may take a little while. Keep checking back!

Much love,
brina

I hope you haven’t forgotten that the NYC Teen Author Festival starts tomorrow. The first event will be a seminar called “First Draft to Final Draft – Talking About the Writing Process,” at 6 p.m. at the Tompkins Square Branch of the New York Public Library. Lots of cool writers will be there; full details are over at the FaceBook page, but here a few names jumped out at me: Daphne Grab, author of Alive and Well in Prague, New York — loved that book! — will be speaking. So will Natalie Standiford, whose recent book How to Say Goodbye in Robot is seriously awesome. Blake Nelson, one of my heroes, and the author of the 90s grunge rock masterpiece Girl, will also be on the panel. And so will a whole big bunch of other great authors.

I will be attempting to attend just about every event, and I’ll be taking photos and blogging about the events after the fact. So check back here late tomorrow night for an update.

And if you make it to the events, please do come over and introduce yourself! If anyone is interested in writing a guest post about the festival, please do e-mail me!

Much love,
brina

Libba Bray, Natalie Standiford, Barnabas Miller and Dan Ehrenraft will serenade us as their band, Tiger Beat, performs on March 18.

There will be workshops, and signings, and lots of YA wackiness. David Levithan, author and editor extraordinaire, has outdone himself. I scanned the list of events and almost passed out from the unbelievable awesomeness.

Everyone will be there. In addition to David and the members of Tiger Beat, you can expect to see John Green, E. Lockhart, Sarah Mlynowski, Barry Lyga, Diana Peterfreund, Melissa Walker, Sarah Dessen … and many, many others. More than I can list.

Suffice it to say, this will be the best YA week of the year. So book your flights and your hotel rooms, and check out the NYC Teen Author Festival Facebook page for detailed info on the who, what, when and where.

Hope to see you there!

Much love,
brina

Eric Luper is like the Nick Hornby of teen authors, I’ve decided. Are you familiar with Nick Hornby? Because if you’re not, you should be. He wrote High Fidelity, which was made into a movie with John Cusack. The movie is okay, but the novel is a vivid peek inside the mind (and heart) of a man who is suffering from some serious post-breakup insanity.

Why, you ask, am I bringing up some lad lit author named Nick Hornby when I’m supposed to be telling you about a book by Eric Luper? Well, it’s because I consider High Fidelity to be the gold standard of books about guys who are unhappy in love. And Seth Baumgartner’s Love Manifesto is, without a doubt, the gold standard of books about teen guys who are unhappy in love.

Our hero, Seth, has just been dumped by his girlfriend. To make things worse, he sees his father at Applebee’s with some woman who is not his mother. And he gets fired from his fourth job in a year. So he harnesses his angst and starts a podcast called The Love Manifesto, which is one of the most awesome things I’ve seen in print. Come June, readers will get to peruse partial transcripts from Seth’s show, which I’m happy to report are incorporated into this novel. (Rumor has it we’ll even be able to listen to The Love Manifesto, as Eric and Harper Collins are actually working on bringing the podcast to life. I can’t wait to listen in.)

Right. So what is it I adore so much about this book? It’s hilarious. It’s heart-wrenching. It’s insightful. It includes a list of things Seth Baumgartner loves about his ex-girlfriend, and the items on the list are brilliant in a way that is reminiscent of Harry Burns (from When Harry Met Sally, which I realize I harp on about all the time, but it is an excellent movie). I may be a bit too old for Seth, but even I know that when he grows up, I’m going to marry him, because he is one of the most fall-in-love-with-able characters in all of teen fiction.

Seriously, my friends. I don’t do this preview thing too often, just in case a pub date gets pushed back. But what I’m telling you is that you must go and pre-order this novel. You must read it the day it is released, which is supposed to be June 8. You must then report back here, where I’m sure we’ll be having a huge party for Seth Baumgartner and his creator, Eric Luper.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a bunch of other books to eat read this weekend.*

Much love,
brina

*I changed my mind. Am re-reading Love Manifesto. It’s that good.

Here is what you folks who may be reading this here blog should know about Scarlett Fever: It is the second installment of a series of novels about a 15-year-old girl (named Scarlett, natch) whose family owns a rundown NYC hotel. In the first book (Suite Scarlett), our heroine got a job working for a crazy lady (crazy awesome, that is) named Amy Amberson. Mrs. Amberson is very wealthy, very eccentric, and — I almost hate to admit this — very cool. She’s also a former actress who has just started her own talent agency, and in this second novel she has Scarlett running around town trying to keep the talent happy.

Meanwhile, our protagonist is starting a new school year, hoping maybe things will get back to normal now that her family’s hotel is no longer home to an off-Broadway production of Hamlet. But … the Martins don’t do normal. Their hotel is empty, and it’s looking more neglected with each passing day. Elder sister Lola and elder brother Spencer are both feeling poor and unsuccessful, which means they both do absolutely idiotic things to improve their lives. Younger sister and cancer survivor Marlene is being oddly nice; if you’ve read the first book you know that Marlene doesn’t do nice any more than the Martin family does normal. To top it all off, Scarlett’s BFF Dakota has had to resort to threats to keep our heroine from spending all her time looking at pictures and videos of her summer crush.

Maureen’s series is like The Hotel New Hampshire (a great novel by John Irving, which spawned a not-great movie with Jodie Foster and Rob Lowe) minus the death and sex. It’s like MoJo channeled Helen Fielding (Bridget Jones’s Diary), Nora Ephron (When Harry Met Sally) and John Irving all at once. In other words, it’s wonderful.

So what are you waiting for? Go! Get your read on. And when you’re all done, come back and tell me about your favorite part of MoJo’s latest. I personally am in love with the rat-dog known as Murray, but I won’t say more, because I don’t want to spoil anything for the uninitiated.

Much love,
brina

Anyway, my next pick for Best of the 2000s is obvious, so brace yourselves: It’s the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling.

Some of you are moaning. Others are cheering. Others are tired and want to take a nap.

I was one of those people who refused to read Harry Potter because it was popular. Indeed, up until about 2003 I had a pretty negative attitude towards teen fiction in general, in spite of the fact that I was already a Meg Cabot fan.

Then one day I realized that I should probably just get on with it. And I did. I gulped the first two books down in one sitting, and then went to the grocery store in the middle of the night to buy the next three. By the time I was done with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix a week later, I was well on my way to being Queen of Harry Potter Predictions.

I have to say, I love Rowling’s sense of whimsy, her world-building and her plot twists. What was most awesome about the HP days was the anticipation of the next book. We’d all of us work ourselves into a frenzy about which character would do what and why.

And the fan fic! In the days leading up to the release of the final book, I read one piece of fan fic that I think may (in some ways) be better than the real thing. There are authors out there who got their starts writing HP fan fic, and then went on to build their own fantasy worlds. It’s incredible, how inspired we all got — kids and adults alike. We talked about canon, timelines, themes, motives and all sorts of other things. We talked about it for hours. Nay, for days. Weeks. Months. Years.

I can’t think of any other series that was so universally exciting to me, mainly because I cared about what happened, and I thought Rowling had a methodology — a grand plan, if you will — for how it would all turn out. Other people cared even more than I did, and they had websites devoted to it all. Fandom has not been the same since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, mainly because all the fans have nothing left to do. Except maybe read other books.

Now, if you ask me, the best and most rewarding of the HP books was Half-Blood Prince. It gave us some backstory, but not too much backstory. We saw that Snape was maybe (but totally not really) evil. We also got to spend some time guessing what items would be horcruxes. And because it was the penultimate book, we were all in a super-frenzy afterwards. (Which is one of the reasons, if you ask me, that Deathly Hallows couldn’t have met anyone’s expectations.)

Fast forward to 2010: I’ve read all the books so many times I should probably have memorized them. I’ve got a boxed set that I keep in its original shrink wrap so that I’ll never drop any of the books into the bathtub, and I’ve had to recycle several copies of each novel because it really, seriously, has gotten dropped into the tub too many times.

Anyway, that’s my own personal Harry Potter story. I’m sure you must agree that the Potterverse belongs on any thorough Best of the 2000s list. If you don’t, I’ll bludgeon you with a quaffle or perhaps turn you into a bouncing ferret.