Does the constant visual bombardment of Twilight paraphernalia cause you to sigh heavily and mutter about the cultural detritus that is youth culture shit-lit? And have you also maybe kinda sorta but wouldn’t swear to it read the entire series? Either way, we know how you feel. They aren’t the worst books in the world but they sure aren’t the greatest (Edward has a “perfect, alabaster” face – we know! We’ve heard this about his face a million times already!). Not to worry: even vampires have a life cycle and it won’t take forever for this phenomenon to give up the ghost.
There are scores of fantastically brave, edgy, sophisticated, racy, intricate, achingly poignant young adult novels out there that have nothing to do with suburban romances among the undead. We’d like you to know about some of our favorites. Consider this your hall pass to the best of teen literature… - Stacey Pavlick
Speak
by Laurie Halse Anderson
Farrar Strauss Giroux, 1999
High school has long been a preferred setting for scores of writers, and for good reason: ready-made drama. However, despite all of the attention it receives, high school is seldom portrayed in an accurate light (news flash: most of us don’t find eternal love at age 16). This is the beauty of Laurie Halse Anderson’s award-winning novel Speak- it perfectly captures the awkward, painful, confusing reality of high school without sugarcoating it in the slightest, but still manages to inspire the reader.
Melinda Sordino is entering 9th grade at Merryweather High School, hated by ex-friends and strangers alike for calling the cops at a party over the summer. What only Melinda knows, though, is that she called the cops not to break up the party, but because she was sexually assaulted by a senior boy that night. She shuts out the hostile world around her and barely speaks to anyone, peers, teachers and parents combined. Throughout the year, with the help of an extraordinary art teacher and her own inner strength Melinda gradually finds her voice again, even standing up to her attacker.
Anderson truly understands the mind of a teenager, and this is what makes Speak so fascinating and poignant. Rather than transporting the reader to a fantasy world, Anderson’s writing captivates because it is raw and real, even humorous at times. Anderson shows us that even our most painful, humiliating experiences will make us stronger if we stay true to ourselves, and that is a lesson that both teenagers and adults can actually apply. - Jessica Bari
Th1rteen R3asons Why
by Jay Asher
Penguin Books, 2007
Books about suicide, geared for a young adult audience or otherwise, typically tug at threads in the hopes of answering the unanswerable: Why? Jay Asher’s debut teen novel, Th1rteen R3asons Why, turns this premise inside-out as Hannah Baker records on a series of cassette tapes not one but 13 reasons that led her to take her own life. It’s a fucked up post-mortem chain letter of sorts; as each of the 13 people named on the tapes finishes listening to the collection, they must then box them up and send them along to the next classmate in line.
Clay Jensen – number nine on the list – listens with sick anticipation for his entry on the tapes. The world stops but for Hannah’s voice. As the cassettes roll on he realizes how much of her disillusionment has to do with the power of unintended consequences. Hannah’s indictments are pedestrian enough at the start but readers soon trace the connections and witness the internal collapse as bad outcomes pile up on one another and intensify. Most of all Hannah blames herself, both for her own poor judgment and moral paralysis in times of crisis.
Unlike most mysteries where the living excavate answers from the dead, in this novel the dead summon the living to acknowledge their flaws and culpability. It makes for compelling reading: Clay’s aggrieved panic is palpable as he asks himself, “What did I do to help kill this girl?” Far from the therapist-friendly reassurance that suicide is no one’s fault, Th1rteen R3asons Why challenges readers to recognize the consequences of thoughtlessness, cowardice and petty betrayal. - Stacey Pavlick
Rule of the Bone
by Russell Banks
HarperCollins, 1995
For every copy of Catcher in the Rye in the school library there is probably another coming of age story — or “Bildungsroman” — worthy of attention for the ways it challenges the conventions of J.D. Salinger’s classic text. Russell Banks’ Rule of the Bone is one of those books. It’s not as widely popular or well-regarded, but strikes similar emotional chords with such creativity it’s a shame more people don’t pick up a copy. It also happens to be Banks’ most expert use of diverse settings, places that allow him to take the reader beyond America and its conventions that we often take for granted.
Rule of the Bone is a particularly racy look at youth and a character’s quest to find his place in life — rife with everything from rampant drug use to dealing, mature sexuality to harmful pedophilia. The book’s protagonist, Bone, encounters all these things as part of a larger-than-life adolescence that traverses the United States and eventually Jamaica, the two locales marking very different challenges and Bone’s realizations about the world around him. However, what makes Banks’ story truly compelling is not the bizarre situations he crafts for Bone to sort out, but how Bone culls truly resonant meanings — both beautiful and abyssal — from those equally extreme moments in life. Some of them may stretch reality a bit, but they stretch the conventions of the typical adolescent characterization so much it’s worth looking past that frequently entertaining flaw. - Michael Merline
Ender’s Game
by Orson Scott Card
Tor Books, 1985
Andrew “Ender” Wiggins is a “third” – one of the rare third children allowed to be born into the vastly overpopulated future that is the setting for Ender’s Game, the first (and by far the best) in a series of science fiction novels by the writer Orson Scott Card.
Ender is needed, you see. His brilliance is needed, and his strength. He is needed by the military to fight in their war, and so he is taken away, away from his parents and from his school and from his loving sister, Valentine. He is taken from his brother Peter, too, but maybe that’s a good thing, because Peter is cruel. He is taken and he is trained and he is used by adults who oversee and manipulate, controlling and forging and crafting him into a tool of war and death.
Alone and scared and far from home, never once does he give up. Never once does he give in. Because it all seems like a game to Ender, and Ender is very, very good at games. He wins them all, and along the way he wins some friends, too, the first of his young life. And he’s going to need them, because there comes a time when the games become real and millions of lives teeter on the brink. And all of it depends on this boy. This shining, slender, quiet boy. Poor Ender.
A book that acknowledges the sometimes brutal nature of children, that treats childhood as the painful and merciless condition it can sometimes be, Ender’s Game speaks volumes to the alienated loner in all of us, young or old. It teaches children to trust in themselves, to stand tall and survive. And never give up. - Shannon Gramas
Hard Love
by Ellen Wittlinger
Simon and Schuster, 1999
Ahhh, teen romance. Such devotion, so theatrical, desperately urgent. Gag, right? In Ellen Wittlinger’s Hard Love, romantic ballast is replaced with an introspective articulation of uber-conscious teen awkwardness above love, sexuality and what happens when all of the boy-girl pieces come together but ultimately just don’t fit. John and Marisol’s lives intersect deeply; as Marisol mentors John in the mechanics of zine production (hey kids, a “zine” is like a blog on paper plus art), she reluctantly comes to depend on the intimate friendship that develops. And friendship it must remain, since Marisol proclaims herself a “Puerto Rican Cuban Yankee Lesbian” from the get-go. John’s cool with all of that at first, since he’s not sure if he likes girls or guys or just maybe, just possibly… neither.
Winner of the Lambda Literary Award, this frustrated love story between a lesbian and a misanthrope does not sensationalize the theme of homosexuality nor does it make this novel “a story about a gay kid.” Perhaps more insightful is the description of John’s perceived asexuality; having become his mother’s unwilling confidant after a fractious divorce, John prides himself in having an “immunity to emotion” and struggles with an absence of desire at a time when everyone else’s hormones are crackling. Part J.D. Salinger and part John Hughes, the narrator’s meta-moments recall bouts of sudden exposure that accompany the bland panic of teenagedom. For John and Marisol, it’s a balance of possibilities and limitations that challenges readers to consider whether a loving friendship between the sexes can ever be considered a disappointment. - Stacey Pavlick
Haroun and the Sea of Stories
by Salman Rushdie
Viking Books, 1990
What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true? ponders the main character in Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories, and thus begins an amazing journey- in the author’s words- from sadness to joy.
Haroun began as a series of bedtime stories for Rushdie’s young son who urged his father to write a book that young people would like. It is also no coincidence that Rushdie started to pen this homage to imagination and free speech only months after the fatwa was issued against him.
The tale opens in a sad city, “the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name.” In this city lives Haroun, an adolescent boy, his father- a professional storyteller- and his malcontent mother. When Haroun’s mom runs off with the boring, no-nonsense accountant from upstairs, he blames his father for living in a world of fantasy. Soon thereafter, Haroun’s dad loses his gift for storytelling and a voyage to a fantastical, yet parallel world ensues to recapture his voice.
Rushdie demonstrates that not only does good storytelling have power over people, but it is essential to how humans create meaning. He does this by displaying all the tricks and traits of spinning a fine yarn: curious characters, tantalizing cliff-hangers, a hero’s journey. Most notable is the text itself- especially thick with metaphor and alliteration. The themes are classic- good vs. evil, light vs. dark- but he also spends time exploring those in-between places where the landscape is grey twilight. Readers will quickly recognize the influences of the Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland, Arabian Nights and even the Beatles (one character is named the Walrus and his minions, the eggmen). Just as Haroun dipped his cupped hands into the Ocean of the Streams of Story to learn that all tales are living, evolving beings, Rushdie draws from several tropes to craft this tribute to the art of storytelling and teaches us that humans must tell stories, especially if they are not true. - Sarah Anderson
His Dark Materials Trilogy
by Philip Pullman
Scholastic, 1995-2000
His Dark Materials, the brilliant trio of novels written by British author Philip Pullman (consisting of the volumes The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass), just might be the most subversive piece of literature ever written for an adolescent audience. Like all great works aimed at children, the books are active on many levels simultaneously. The first and most obvious being the level of story, and here we have one the greatest ever told – a tale of sweeping scope and breathtaking dimension, whose main protagonist, Lyra Belacqua, is a heroine for the ages. Fierce, intelligent and loyal, we follow Lyra as she journeys from her home in an alternate universe London (a world in which every human being has a physical, visible, externalized soul in the form of shape-shifting animal daemons) to the far northern lands of talking polar bears and Northern Lights, on through magical rifts in the fabric between worlds and finally into Hell itself.
Along the way she makes friends, overcomes enemies and learns about love, life, sin and salvation. For the youngest readers, the adventure aspect is surely enough. But like an anarchist’s bomb planted in the subconscious, the story is sure to grow and change and finally explode in the mind as its readers grow older, rendering much of what they thought they knew about such handed-down verities as God and Country and Authority vague and slippery and insubstantial. Pullman’s beautiful prose is a delight to read, and especially to be read aloud. (The audio version, read by the author with a full cast, is a must-have.) The series ends with one of the most devastatingly heart-rending scenes I have ever encountered, one whose mere recollection makes my throat tighten. His Dark Materials is a landmark in the history of children’s literature and in fantastical literature in general. Every free-thinking child and child-like adult should read it. - Shannon Gramas
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal
by Christopher Moore
William Morrow, 2002
It can be taken for granted that it’s hard to get young people interested in religion. The Bible is dense and full of long, bewildering tracts (and to be fair, a lot of sex and guts), the convoluted tales of the Upanishads require study just to read and as a society, we’re all so inundated with the solemnity of the divine that, well, it can get kinda boring. So young adults of inquiring mind should be grateful that a book like Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal exists.
Christopher Moore’s lighthearted, irreverent biography of Jesus Christ opens with an unusual framing device- it’s the story of Jesus through the eyes of his faithful companion, childhood buddy and forgotten apostle, Biff (also known as “Levi bar Alphaeus”). Biff, a brash, worldly, horny and utterly human character, travels with Jesus (or “Josh” as he claims his appropriate name is) as the messiah struggles with his destiny, travels the world and ultimately embraces his destiny. Changing little of the established Gospels but filling in a story of the missing 20 years of Jesus’ life, Moore takes readers on a journey that manages to tie together elements of Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and even the Kama Sutra. Through Biff’s narration, young adults can learn about religious and historical syncretism, new aspects of Christian dogma and laugh their asses off at the same time.
And Lamb is a deeply heartfelt novel. It’s not a story of Jesus as an aspect of some distant deity; instead, it manages to skewer that image while still remaining fully convincing. It’s funny, tragic, action-filled and educational in all measures. Kinda like religion… but y’know, for kids. - Nathan Kamal
The Giver
by Lois Lowry
Bantam Books, 1993
Growing up, the most exciting thing about fiction is reading about darker, yet-to-be-taught subject matter. Other books on this list deal with drugs and rape, and when it comes to adult content, The Giver is certainly no exception, having been banned and challenged as much as it’s been assigned in schools. Often taught even to elementary school children, The Giver gives youth of all ages a taste for questioning authority.
Winner of a 1994 Newbery Medal, The Giver follows Jonas during his twelfth year in his nameless, futuristic utopian community. The community has achieved Sameness: Pre-selected family units may apply for two children (one male, one female), pills are taken to suppress emotional Stirrings, and the old live separately until their Release. Twelve is the year Jonas and his peers graduate into adulthood, and at the ceremony where the Elders give the children their Assignments, Jonas is selected for a particularly special honor. While his peers will happily be Birthmothers, Laborers or Nurturers, Jonas will train to be the Receiver of Memory. Along with Jonas, the reader learns that a community free of poverty, war and pain is also a community without color, music and love. After a particularly painful viewing of his father, a Nurturer, carelessly euthanizing an unnecessary infant, Jonas and his trainer, the Giver, decide that they must spread the burden of knowledge.
The Giver has some gaps in logic: characters have cultural points of reference that wouldn’t necessarily exist in such an isolated community, and the book doesn’t do too great of a job drawing a line between which emotions can and cannot be felt by community members. However, small inconsistencies are trumped by an important message delivered concisely to a wide age group. The Giver deals with the struggle of right and wrong in a world where people don’t know better. - Melissa Muenz
Neverwhere
by Neil Gaiman
BBC Books, 1996
Coming of age novels are a standard for young adults. From The Catcher in the Rye to Freckle Juice, the story of growing from youth and doubt to maturity and strength has an obvious appeal for those in the same boat. But whereas many stories deal with that change metaphorically, some choose to go all in and become a fantasy. Neverwhere is one of these.
Neil Gaiman’s novel (adapted from a 1996 BBC miniseries) concerns a young Scotsman living in London who suddenly becomes aware of the existence of “London Below,” the strange, inverted version of his adopted city. Thrust from his safe, ordinary life to a world of angels, assassins, monsters and lost girls, Richard Mayhew learns how to navigate a world that seems strangely familiar and alien at the same. All the landmarks are the same, but suddenly full of new meaning and dangers. Just like growing up.
Neverwhere serves as both a tale of coming to one’s own and a rich, eccentric guide to London; it’s both a journey and a look at the bewilderment of sudden new worlds. It’s what a young adult likes to read, and what they’re experiencing. Except with magic doors and vampires. - Nathan Kamal
The Perks of Being A Wallflower
by Stephen Chbosky
MTV Books/Pocket Books, 1999
The Perks of Being A Wallflower might be described as part High Fidelity and part To Kill A Mockingbird; the former for the way it encapsulates a particular experience – that of being a music-loving, emotionally fragile adolescent – and the latter because, like Harper Lee, Stephen Chbosky seemed to come out of nowhere with a book that unexpectedly registered on an emotional level for a wide audience…and then he never wrote anything else.
Chbosky’s coming-of-age tale – structured as a series of letters from Charlie, a fragile high-school freshman in a Pittsburgh suburb circa 1991 – captures the angst and confusion that goes along with early adolescence in much the same manner as did “Freaks & Geeks” (which, coincidentally, premiered around the same time as Wallflower was published). Charlie is an introvert and the book follows him through experiments with drugs, sexual confusion, relationship trauma and more, on top of the excitement that comes with discovering literature and music (you could get more than a decent mix tape out of Wallflower, including tunes from The Smiths, Procol Harum, Simon & Garfunkel, Nick Drake and more).
Early in the book Charlie writes “I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be,” and that sense of confusion is present throughout. It would be easy to call the whole thing trite or overdone – and maybe in some respects it is – but calling it that disregards the real place the story comes from; the very reason it’s resonated with readers as a sleeper must-read for the last decade. - Aaron Passman
