Our Lady of Syntax

Well, by the time I was in Sixth Grade, I was reading Stephen King. Yeah, I had no taste.

YA was always a hard category because, in school, they teach books that one would consider adult: Frankenstein, The Time Machine, The Scarlet Letter, etc. And, I pretty much skipped straight from the 9-12 age bracket to Stephen King.

Nonetheless, there are a few classics, in my estimation.

Lois Lowry's The Giver.
R.L. Stine's The Babysitter. (His early stuff had some really good horror)
Stephen King's Rage (well, it should be considered Y.A.).
Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time trilogy (never read Many Waters).
Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha (again, should be Y.A. though it probably isn't).
Louis Sachar's There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom (about 5th grade for 5th graders that seems older than it reads...my favorite of his, just re-read it last month actually).

From:

pharminatrix.livejournal.com

Araki icon?

From:

Yup, from The Doom Generation.

From:

pharminatrix.livejournal.com

Thought it looked familiar. Giggle at the movie, love the boy.

From:

Its one of my favorite bits of irony. :-)

From:

P.S. Rage is out of print in all formats. It may be available in libraries still, though. I have a couple copies myself, and always make sure to pick one up whenever I see it for sale used.

It was originally released under Richard Bachman, and later as part of The Bachman Books. Its about high school from a high schooler's perspective.

It has the same Y.A.-esque qualities that The Catcher in the Rye does (and in fact seems like a riff on the book).

And, also, its short and it moves fast. When I read it, I think I read it in 3 nights, which means most people can read it in 6 hours.

From:

How about a bunch of Judy Blume books for that age group? Oh, MAN, please do "Deanie" that one about the girl with a back brace and the stage mother who wanted her to be a model! Crazytown.

I am not ashamed to admit that I liked Megan McCafferty's "Sloppy Firsts" and I think there are three books in that series.

How about Cynthia Rylant? The main character in "A Kindness" is a 16 year old boy whose single mom gets pregnant, and I read it ages ago (like when I was 9 or 10, but I think I would have gotten more out of it at 12) but now I must re-read it! According to Amazon, she's pretty prolific, too.

For historical fiction, Betty Smith is most famous for "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" (which is in my top 10 books OF ALL TIME) but "Joy in the Morning" is also excellent and she wrote 5 books total I think. The others might be harder to track down since they're out of print, but the NYCPL system has them if anyone does. And they must, becuse I checked them out of somewhere when I was in early high school.

Norma Fox Mazer wrote some really good ones that I loved in middle school: "Silver" dealt with some heavy stuff like class and child abuse and is definitely YA rather than children's lit.

I remember a lot of girls being into the Weetzie Bat books in 8th grade or so.

There were several books by one author about four brothers and sisters whose mother abandoned them in a car and they go to live with their grandmother? I am blanking on the titles and author, but I read them in late middle school and they were great. I'll keep thinking.

misanthropicsob is right, though ... in high school, I read quote adult unquote books.

From:

It's the Tillerman series by Cynthia Voigt -- at least three books--Homecoming, Dicey's Song, and 17 Against the Dealer. She wrote a lot of other great books, too, like Come a Stranger and A Solitary Blue.

I am so jealous of your class. I hope this makes up for the crappy floppy disk (wtf?) one.

From:

Oooh, these are really good suggestions.

The sad thing is, I'm not even really looking forward to this class. I mean, having an excuse to read... something like 30 YA books over the course of the semester will be nice, but I had this professor last year and, while she clearly knows her stuff, she can be really rigid and unwilling to consider differing opinions/interpretations, which can be frustrating. Plus, she has this really inflexible aversion to the use of first person and contractions, in any context, ever, even when she's explicitly asking for opinions or when eschewing contractions would mess up the flow of my writing, which makes me fucking insane.

Oh well. At least the books will be good.

From:

Ew, I hate professors who consider stylistic writing choices to be GRAMMATICAL ERRORS. I hope she mellows out a little and that you can enjoy your reading assignments. And now, I return to "Evidence: Cases and Materials" ... and weeping quietly in my carrel.

From:

pharminatrix.livejournal.com

Paul Zindel?

From:

harlequinfetus.livejournal.com

walter dean myers! obviously.

From:

There are already two Walter Dean Myers books on the reading list for the class (The Chocolate War and... something else)... I'm looking for stuff a little more off the beaten path, I think

From:

Oops, check that. Robert Corimer wrote The Chocolate War, not Walter Dean Myers. We're reading Autobiography of My Dead Brother and At Her Majesty's Request in class.

From:

Cormier! Argh!

From:

greekdaph.livejournal.com

I love(d) historical fiction by Karen Hesse and Ann Rinaldi. Also, for a(nother) contemporary riff on Catcher in the Rye, there's The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (sp?).

From:

Oh hey, I didn't know you even still read this journal! I've already read Perks, but thanks for the historical fiction suggestions.

From:

I was OBSESSED with Ann Rinaldi. That's all.

From:

mariness.livejournal.com

These are pretty standard young adult favorites, I think:

Ursula Le Guin: The Earthsea Trilogy, Tehanu, and one of my favorites of her books: Very Far Away From Anywhere Else.

Katherine Paterson: Jacob Have I Loved.

Diana Wynne Jones can be a bit of a hit or a miss for me, but she's very prolific, so if you need 5 books by someone, she might be someone to look at.

Elizabeth Speare (spelling? I think I have that wrong): The Witch of Blackbird Pond.

Paul Zindel.

Garth Nix.

Charles De Lint has also done a lot of young adult stuff.

From:

Oooh, The Earthsea Trilogy might be fun to do. It'd be kind of cheating because I've already read the first one, but it was years ago so I wouldn't feel too bad. Though I've never even heard of Very Far Away..., so maybe that would be even better. What kind of stuff does Garth Nix write? The name doesn't ring a bell.

From:

mariness.livejournal.com

Garth Nix does young adult fantasy, mainly. He's from New Zealand (I think? Um. That might be wrong) and his publishers strongly push him as the writer to read while waiting for the next Harry Potter book, which is unfair since he really doesn't do humour at all. His books are all pretty serious.

From:

minsies.livejournal.com

Seconding the Garth Nix.

Also, Philip Pullman? That may be overdone, but His Dark Materials makes me happy.

From:

mariness.livejournal.com

I really liked the first book of His Dark Materials -- I wasn't as crazy about the rest of the series, but I do recall reading them and thinking, people are squawking about Harry Potter and not about this?

Ooh, and while I'm on the fantasy kick, pretty much anything by Patricia Wrede will be amusing.

From:

beingblueagain.livejournal.com

the foretelling, by alice hoffman (little brown just published it and i'm really proud of it).
incantation, by alice hoffman comes out in october, and it's even better.
ooh, and death be not proud, by john gunther, and a separate peace, by john knowles!

From:

I am so. fucking. jealous of your job.

From:

beingblueagain.livejournal.com

it is my dream job, and i honestly have no idea how i landed it. i know you're back in school, but i get forwards asking for recommendations for editing positions all the time, and if in the future you want me to send those along, let me know. and, when you're a librarian, we can join forces and i can send you advance reading copies.

From: