"We are right smack-dab in the new golden age of young adult literature," says Michael Cart, a leading authority of young adult literature. Thirty million Gen Yers, with a Harry Potter-bred passion for reading and disposable incomes are buying books. Publishers are courting this audience with new imprints and increased numbers of popular graphic novels, chick lit, and fantasy. But young adults also seek sophisticated books that accurately represent their high school world, reflect this potent period of their lives, and offer literary challenge.
Top-selling author Laurie Halse Anderson speaks to and for teens. She adopts a male perspective in her newest novel, Twisted (Viking, $16.99, ages 12 and up). High-school senior, Tyler Miller, is an ordinary nerd in a normal dysfunctional family who sees himself as "your average piece of drywall who spent too much time playing computer games". Then Tyler paints graffiti on a high school wall and spends his summer tarring roofs to pay for his crime. Tyler has viewed himself as "a zit on the butt of the student body" is transformed into a buff bad boy who grabs the attention of "alpha female", Bethany Milbury, who also happens to be his father's boss' daughter. Life becomes more and more twisted as Tyler is redefined and struggles to maintain his true sense of self as he faces sex, drugs, teachers who damn him, Bethany's bullying brother, and peers who think he's a pervert.
Anderson's dialogue is teen-perfect and her first person voice accurate. She describes cliques eloquently, and inserts sarcastic humor that embodies the teen view and lets readers know that Tyler is a survivor who will pull himself out of anguish.
Other books with Teen Perspective:
An Abundance of Katherines (Dutton, $16.99) by John Green
King Dork (Delacorte Press, $20.50) by Frank Portman
Just Listen (Viking, $17.99) by Sarah Dessen
Serious themes are so prevalent in the literature, there's a whole body of "problem novels". These issue-oriented books can be formulaic books and find their primary audience in middle school readers. High schoolers crave complex feelings, deeper characterizations, sophisticated situations, and more intensity.
This is certainly the case in Erin Vincent's memoir, Grief Girl: My True Story (Delacorte, $15.99). Erin was fourteen when her parents were hit by a car as they were crossing a highway. Her mother died instantly, her father a month later, leaving Erin and her older sister to care for their toddler brother, Trent. Erin tracks her thoughts, feelings, and deeds for four long years.
Vincent's writing is frank, raw, and non-apologetic. When she returns to school after her mother's funeral people stare at her as if "death sticks to you" and when she finds out that everyone's been told about her situation, she's furious. "Keeping it to myself was the one thing I thought I had control over. The one thing I thought was mine."
Erin tries to draw on her family's tradition of joking to get her through the horror. Visiting her father in the hospital she intends to laugh about "Dad Kebabs, Roasted Ron, Fondue Father, Pierced Parent, Barbecued Big Daddy". Then decides "maybe now's not the time to try and cheer him up the old faithful way." For her the situation turns humor black, but it relieves intensity for her readers.
Erin's perceptions are both fresh and universal. As she dresses for her mother's funeral, she realizes "it's almost like dressing for a party. Then you notice the silence all around you. There's no laughing. Then you remember what you're really dressing for." When a journalist offers sympathy for her loss, Erin thinks "I love how people say that, like we've just misplaced our parents and we'll find them when we clean out our closets."
What shines beyond the wit is Erin's honest truths and her determination to help keep the family together as they circumvent small tragedies like scraping together money so her brother can have Christmas and the huge assaults like discovering her uncle has spent the monies their parents left to them.
Find other mature high intensity reads try:
Copper Sun (Atheneum, $16.95) by Sharon Draper
Cures for Hearbreak (Delacorte, $15.99) by Margo Rabb
The Rules of Survival (Dial, $16.99) by Nancy Werlin
Stay With Me (Houghton Mifflin, $16.00) by Garret Freymann-Weyr
High school students bored by assigned existential novels like Virgina Wolf's "To the Lighthouse", want meaty literary books that involve them. They'll find satisfaction in Mal Peet's Carnegie-winning, Tamar:A Novel of Espionage, Passion and Betrayal (Candlewick, $17.99).
The book is two intertwined stories from different time periods led by characters named Tamar. Present-time Tamar is a fifteen-year-old girl who wants to understand the suicide of her grandfather. Historical Tamar is the code name of a British undercover agent sent to Nazi-controlled Holland during WWII to organize pockets of sabateurs. The latter Tamar is killed in the war and remembered by his fellow officer, Dart, who suggested the name Tamar for his granddaughter.
The story draws on historical events that capture readers with image-laden writing. German General Rauter is ambushed by Dutch resistance fighters whose guns "hammered into the night like typewriters writing the same brilliant white word over and over again." Rauter, pulled from the car with a heart beat as "faint as a hatching butterfly", recovers, orders the bullets counted, and executes over a hundred Dutch citizens.
Characters and settings of long ago become immediate and dramatic with Peet's cinematic detailing. Tamar returns to live with his secret love Marijke at a remote farm that "clung to the landscape by its fingertips" in a wilderness of "harsh grassland, bog, gorse and flinching trees." Dart, posing as a doctor is in charge of a transmission center hidden in a mental asylum where one inmate believes herself a "stranded angel" and another tries to "trap the shadows of clouds as they moved across the leaf strewn lawn."
Feelings are portrayed as strongly. Dart, hopped up on Benzadrine waiting for late-night messages, angers when he learns that Marijke is Tamar's lover. Tamar worries about Marijke's cold, hunger, pregnancy and to how to control rogue sabateurs. Present-day Tamar is confused by the actions of her beloved grandfather. Add suspense, mystery and the theme of finding self and it's no wonder this is a winning novel for young adults.
More Literary Novels:
The Book Thief (Knopf, $16.95) by Markus Zusak
Your Own Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath (Knopf, $15.99) by Stephanie Hemphill
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing (Candlewick, $17.99) by M.T. Anderson
Street Love by Walter Dean Myers (Harper Collins, $15.99)