Category: Favorite YA Authors

Pulling Back the Covers

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You need to check out Kate Hart’s post about YA covers from 2011. Awesome graphics and information.

She also takes a good look at minority representation on covers. Not surprisingly, there’s barely any. Also:

“But hey! Only about 6.6% of our girls appear to be dead this year! Which is… still more than our POC representation! But only 1% are actively drowning! So… that’s… kind of a win?”

Curious to see if dead girls still dominate in 2012 and 2013. And can filigree maintain its hold as hottest cover design element?

Thanks to Kate for such an awesome resource!

Get Real

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At TLT, the YA trend watch includes:

Reality Bites
Finally, thanks in no small part to The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, contemporary fiction is returning in popularity.  Some of the hot titles include In Honor by Jessi Kirby, The Downside of Being Charlie by Jenny Torres Sanchez, Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson and Waiting by Carol Lynch Williams.  Dying, especially death by cancer, seems to be a prevalent theme in the current crop of titles that I have been reading.

So glad to hear that contemporary realism is making a comeback! I love fantasy and dystopian novels, but I think there’s a lot to be said for realism, and for a while the buzz in the YA community was that realistic novels just weren’t selling. I hope this move toward realistic teen experiences continues.

Hear the Monster’s Call

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When I did study abroad in England, I discovered Poems on the Underground, a project created to share poetry with Londoners on the Tube. One poem I came across was The Loch Ness Monster’s Song by Edwin Morgan. You can read and hear it here. Most poetry is meant to be heard, but The Loch Ness Monster’s Song practically demands it.

I think it would be a great poem to use in the classroom, since it shows how poetry doesn’t need to be stuffy and use impressive language. In fact, it doesn’t even need to use real language at all.

Also, it’s just the kind of poem I need on this gray, damp day.

(H/T bookshelves of doom)(image: Wikipedia)

Have Fun and Be Cool at Bookstore Events

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For most people, public speaking is scary. Everyone’s watching you and listening to you. If you’re giving a reading, you’re also sharing your creative work, which can be intensely personal (even if the story has nothing to do with your actual life). And you’re supposed to read for an hour and then answer questions about yourself? Who invented this kind of torture?

Fortunately, Jennifer Laughran looks at what makes a successful bookstore event. Hint: it’s not reading for an hour. One part I liked:

“Tip #6: Visual aids raise interest level. Kids especially love to see visual aids. I know one prolific author who has ALL his jackets taped together and unfurls them like a scroll and has kids hold it up – it stretches across the room! People think it is cool if you show off all the book jackets from around the world or early versions of book jackets that didn’t make it, or a funny story you wrote as a kid, or a writing notebook with a thousand cross-outs in it, or your own embarrassing childhood photo, the menu from the restaurant that inspired the book, or whatever. People love “behind the scenes” stuff and “making of” stuff, and kids love knowing that fancy published authors were just kids like them once upon a time.”

I love all the ideas here that aren’t related to you reading a selection of your book. That’s important, but I think these “behind the scenes” looks at the life of an author and the creation of the book. Once I attended a reading by Shannon Hale and for the most part, she talked about how she became a writer. She even showed us a giant roll of rejection letters she’d received from literary journals–a few of which I’d gotten myself. It was a huge relief to know that someone like Shannon had worked through rejection to get The Goose Girl published (and all her other amazing novels that followed). Thinking outside the standard reading box can be so much fun for your audience, who tend to expect the standard “reading followed by a Q&A.”

Jennifer gives a lot of info and suggestions, so make sure to check out the whole post. Have you attended any cool readings? Do you do anything to make your readings stand out?

The Joy in Writing

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I love this post by LimebirdKate (aka 4amWriter) about what to do when you’re in a writing funk. One part I like in particular:

“Writing is joyful – This must be the foremost reason I write. When I return to my writing, it can’t be because I have a deadline to meet, nor can it be about publication. It has to be because I love to create worlds. Once, when I spent about 5 years away from writing it was because I put too much pressure on myself. I didn’t think I was good enough. With that ridiculousness behind me, now I make sure that I write purely for myself—this is separate from any writing that I share with others. I never consider them for publication; I only write them for me. And I tend to them several times a week. Like cultivating a secret garden.”

I think “joyful” is the perfect word to use here. Even if writing involves work and focus, it should still raise your spirits in some way. When I’m having a hard time with a particular scene or story, I remind myself that, when I was younger, writing was something I did for fun. Of course I had ideas of being a famous published author at age 13, but for the most part I knew that these were stories I’d keep private. I wrote because I loved doing it; writing was like a game. Now, I try to remind myself that even though I consider writing a career, part of it should still be fun. Somehow that helps take the pressure off.

Make sure to click through for the rest of LimebirdKate’s fantastic suggestions. Do you have any particular tips or tricks to get back into the writing groove?

Friday Fifteen

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Welcome back to the Friday Fifteen, your favorite (only?) source of five fifteen-word reviews. Onto the books!

1. Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan
Bought it because I like Green’s work; ended up being particularly touched by Levithan’s Will.

2. The Piggy in the Puddle by Charlotte Pomerantz
Silly sounds and muddy fun in a cute picture book.

3. Help! My Apartment Has a Kitchen Cookbook: 100 + Great Recipes with Foolproof Instructions by Nancy Mills and Kevin Mills
My first cookbook. Perfect for new cooks, with useful “mom tips,” like what ovenproof means.

4. Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
My favorite Cinderella adaptation, full of charm. Don’t judge it by the movie.

5. The Prelude by William Wordsworth
Lesson from Oxford: If the question is Wordsworth, the answer is “The mind of God.”

Second Novels

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At NESCBWI, I went to a workshop about expectations for your writing career and your second book in particular. It was refreshing to hear Cynthia Lord and Linda Urban talk about their struggles writing their second books. Urban mentioned spending a lot of time working on one book in particular and how it was a huge, stressful project. Ultimately, she had to set it aside fro a while and move onto something else.

It’s hard enough to think about getting published and how your first book will do. Then you have to worry about the second one and if anyone will like that. It’s like the work and worry never ends! (Apparently it doesn’t.)

Still, Rachelle Gardner talks about how second book stress doesn’t mean the end of the world. If your agent/editor doesn’t love your next manuscript, that’s okay. Gardner says:

“It’s true, many writers’ subsequent novels fall short of the mark. The most common reason is that most authors work on that first novel, the one that sold, for far longer than the second one. They may have even agonized over it for years. The following novels, by contrast, are usually written much faster and under the pressure of a contract and a deadline, so they might not be as strong…If you wrote one great one, and your second one is not quite as good, the world’s not going to end. You just fix it. Presumably you’ll have the help of whoever told you it wasn’t good enough—your agent or editor. You’ll get notes for revision and you’ll get to work. Or you’ll be told to junk it and start over. (Hopefully not the latter, but it’s been known to happen.)”

I think it’s good to remember that a writing career isn’t all or nothing. Sometimes there are disappointments, but that doesn’t mean your career is over. It’s all a process and it never stops being work. But on the upside, just because you write something that might not be your next book doesn’t mean that your agent will leave your or your editor will hate you. Again, it’s more work, but it’s not the end of your writing career.