Favorite YA books, 2014
9/12/14 17:26![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owlectomyBrown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson
A beautiful verse memoir of a complicated childhood -- you can see a lot of pain and sadness, much of it oblique, on the edges, but mostly it's stripped down to the basic units of poetry -- single moments, single memories.
The Children of the King, Sonya Hartnett
A ghost story, and a story of World War II. A well-off British family evacuates to the countryside, where they pick up an evacuee, and run into some ghosts ... whose story is also the story their uncle tells about the Princes in the Tower. Beautiful writing, and thoughtful things to say about courage and responsibility.
Egg and Spoon, Gregory Maguire
In which Baba Yaga shops at Bloomingdale's and filks from "Fiddler on the Roof" -- Baba Yaga is the best thing in a book full of great things, from the immortal hen of the tundra to giant matryoshka dolls to empathy and justice.
Gabi: A Girl in Pieces, Isabel Quintero
Serious without being dreary, timely without being an issue book, surprisingly sharp and funny despite its darkness, perhaps the most feminist YA book I've read this year.
How I Discovered Poetry, Marilyn Nelson
This year we have TWO great memoirs-in-poetry for children and young adults by African-American women! And I feel like this one got a little overshadowed by Brown Girl Dreaming -- which deservedly won the National Book Award -- but it's excellent in its own right; I particularly related to the author's descriptions of moving around so much in childhood.
I'll Give You the Sun, Jandy Nelson
Complicated feelings! And not an unequivocal recommendation! It's a story of twins, and artists, and family secrets, and people being terrible to each other. It's easy to overdose on Nelson's magical-realism-touched, exploding-with-metaphors prose, but when it works, it works.
The Story of Owen, Dragon-Slayer of Trondheim, E.K. Johnston
It's rare for a story to be so much fun and also so deeply rooted in values of pragmatism, community, responsibility, and not having a ton of needless romantic drama.
This One Summer, Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
Oh, but maybe THIS is the most feminist YA of the year? It's such an accurate description of those awkward and uncertain moments on the cusp of adolescence, on the cusp of entry into the terrifying worlds of sex and romance -- and also on the cusp of realizing that your parents are actual human beings. And it's brilliant to use horror movies as a metaphor for all this.
Through the Woods, Emily Carroll.
This is a good year for Canadians and people named Emily and Canadians named Emily, huh? (E.Lockhart, who is not Canadian, and E.K. Johnston, who is.) It's a genuinely spooky horror graphic novel with great artwork.
We Were Liars, E. Lockhart
I'm not a huge fan of twist endings and unreliable narrators, but I appreciated the clarity and minimalism of the prose, and the horrible inevitability of it all.
Why We Took the Car, Wolfgang Herrndorf
A road-trip novel with a strong voice, and pathos, and danger, and the realistic foolishness of young teenagers. There's something rough-around-the-edges about it, the kind of thing where you run out of ego and posturing and it's just people as they really are, a little bit shabby and a little bit pathetic but you still can't help liking them.
A beautiful verse memoir of a complicated childhood -- you can see a lot of pain and sadness, much of it oblique, on the edges, but mostly it's stripped down to the basic units of poetry -- single moments, single memories.
The Children of the King, Sonya Hartnett
A ghost story, and a story of World War II. A well-off British family evacuates to the countryside, where they pick up an evacuee, and run into some ghosts ... whose story is also the story their uncle tells about the Princes in the Tower. Beautiful writing, and thoughtful things to say about courage and responsibility.
Egg and Spoon, Gregory Maguire
In which Baba Yaga shops at Bloomingdale's and filks from "Fiddler on the Roof" -- Baba Yaga is the best thing in a book full of great things, from the immortal hen of the tundra to giant matryoshka dolls to empathy and justice.
Gabi: A Girl in Pieces, Isabel Quintero
Serious without being dreary, timely without being an issue book, surprisingly sharp and funny despite its darkness, perhaps the most feminist YA book I've read this year.
How I Discovered Poetry, Marilyn Nelson
This year we have TWO great memoirs-in-poetry for children and young adults by African-American women! And I feel like this one got a little overshadowed by Brown Girl Dreaming -- which deservedly won the National Book Award -- but it's excellent in its own right; I particularly related to the author's descriptions of moving around so much in childhood.
I'll Give You the Sun, Jandy Nelson
Complicated feelings! And not an unequivocal recommendation! It's a story of twins, and artists, and family secrets, and people being terrible to each other. It's easy to overdose on Nelson's magical-realism-touched, exploding-with-metaphors prose, but when it works, it works.
The Story of Owen, Dragon-Slayer of Trondheim, E.K. Johnston
It's rare for a story to be so much fun and also so deeply rooted in values of pragmatism, community, responsibility, and not having a ton of needless romantic drama.
This One Summer, Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
Oh, but maybe THIS is the most feminist YA of the year? It's such an accurate description of those awkward and uncertain moments on the cusp of adolescence, on the cusp of entry into the terrifying worlds of sex and romance -- and also on the cusp of realizing that your parents are actual human beings. And it's brilliant to use horror movies as a metaphor for all this.
Through the Woods, Emily Carroll.
This is a good year for Canadians and people named Emily and Canadians named Emily, huh? (E.Lockhart, who is not Canadian, and E.K. Johnston, who is.) It's a genuinely spooky horror graphic novel with great artwork.
We Were Liars, E. Lockhart
I'm not a huge fan of twist endings and unreliable narrators, but I appreciated the clarity and minimalism of the prose, and the horrible inevitability of it all.
Why We Took the Car, Wolfgang Herrndorf
A road-trip novel with a strong voice, and pathos, and danger, and the realistic foolishness of young teenagers. There's something rough-around-the-edges about it, the kind of thing where you run out of ego and posturing and it's just people as they really are, a little bit shabby and a little bit pathetic but you still can't help liking them.
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10/12/14 02:28 (UTC)