Yeah, Write

Justine threw down the gauntlet for the "Golden Age of YASF" with this statement "The most exciting books being written in SF/F today are in the YA genre. Full stop."

YA is cross-genre. YA is more experimental and risk-taking, because teenagers are more willing to experiment than their parents are. YA publishers are more willing to take a chance, allowing a wild confluence of styles to exist in a relatively concentrated section of the bookstore. In fact, Scott believes one of YA's strongest points is that its readers don't restrict themselves to genre. You never run across teenagers who say "I only read Dan Brown."

For decades, what used to be called the "teen" section was limited to what Scott refers to as "problem" books: thinly-disguised lessons on how to live your life. The Harry Potter books broke that dam open and alerted publishers that teenagers loved story as much or more than their parents, and they'd buy books of pure story by the truckload. Justine also pointed out that YA can contain both sex and swearing, it's just marketed to ages 14-17 instead of 12-17 and Scholastic Books¹ won't stock you.

They also enlightened us to the power brokers of the new century: young, heavily-networked librarians. These are usually the ones staffing the YA section of the larger libraries and they pride themselves on keeping current on everything that's going on in their genre, so they can "sell" effectively to their YA clientele. Forget promoting yourself to bookstores, Scott said, promote yourself to librarians. He and Justine have been guests of both the TLA² and the ALA³ and been welcomed with open arms. One thing the Internet has made clear is that people trust their friends recommendations a lot more than advertising and these young, hip librarians⁴ are a lot more credible than parents or teachers.

Most of the panel was devoted to reminiscing about the panelists' favorite YASF/F, so we got a flood of suggestions from the people who should know. So many, in fact, that several of us had to compare notes afterward to make sure we'd gotten them all.

And here it is... Your "to-do" list for 2008, organized by whichever panelist suggested them first:

Scott Westerfeld

• SWEETBLOOD - Pete Hautman
• SKIN HUNGER - Kathleen Duey
• FLORA SEGUNDA - Ysabeau S. Wilce
• EMMA JEAN LAZARUS FELL OUT OF A TREE - Lauren Tarshis

Suzanne Church

• THE GIVER - Lois Lowry
• BUD, NOT BUDDY - Christopher Paul Curtis
• DRAGON KEEPER - Carole Wilkinson
• PENDRAGON series - D.J. MacHale

Justine Larbalestier

• BUCKING THE SARGE - Christopher Paul Curtis
• DISREPUTABLE HISTORY OF FRANKIE LANDAU-BANKS - E. Lockhart
• THE ASTONISHING LIFE OF OCTAVIA NOTHING - M.T. Anderson
• GOSSIP GIRL series - Cecily Von Ziegesar
• Anything by Garth Nix
• A GREAT AND TERRIBLE BEAUTY / THE SWEET FAR THING - Libba Bray
• Anything by Sonya Hartnett
• HELLSING (graphic novel) - hirano/johnson/lacuna
• NARUTO (graphic novel) - Masashi Kishimoto

Peter Halasz

• HIS DARK MATERIALS (THE GOLDEN COMPASS, etc) - Philip Pullman
• DARKWING - Kenneth Oppel

Of course, Scott and Justine's books all come highly recommended. I just finished Justine's MAGIC OR MADNESS for the second time. My favorite of Scott's books is PEEPS, immediately followed by the MIDNIGHTERS series, but the UGLIES series is the most popular. Go into any YA section in the country and you'll find it staring you in the face. Lucky you.

Next up, beer with your heroes and high school as totalitarian dystopia.

1. A publishing powerhouse that sells in the schools themselves [↩]
2. Texas Library Association [↩]
3. American Library Association [↩]
4. Not an oxymoron [↩]

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 9:26 pm and is filed under ConFusion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.