This Is Teen is once again promoting “I Read YA” week, and
as a YA author I salute and support their effort. YA is a vital and important
part of our literary landscape.
I do read YA. But not much. I’ve read maybe half a dozen YA
novels over the past year, mostly books written by friends of mine. The bulk of my
fiction reading lately has been adult or middle-grade novels.
You would think that as a YA writer, YA it would be my reading
of choice, but the truth is that I kind of avoid it these days. I blame it on
the year 2007, and the National Book Awards.
In 2007, I was a judge for the NBA Young People’s Literature
award. During one five month period I read more than two hundred books for
young readers. About two thirds of them were YA novels. A lot of them were
pretty good. Several of them were amazingly good. I read books that year that
changed the way I saw the world. Some of them might even have made me a better
person.
And because my job was to judge, I had to read a bunch of them
two and sometimes three times, and I had to think about them, and discuss them
at length with the other judges—four very smart and insightful and earnest
writers who made me feel simultaneously inadequate and proud.
At the end of that marathon I was left with an abiding
respect for our nation’s YA authors...and a fierce desire to read anything but
YA.
I still write for Young Adults. I still love and respect YA
literature and those who write and read it. I still tell people they should
read YA. But I kind of burned out on it back in 2007, so I’ve been reading
other stuff.
A couple weeks ago the Children’s Book Review asked
me to write a post about the “Best New Young Adult Books.” I had nuthin. I am
as ignorant as Ruth
Graham when it comes to what’s currently happening in the YA sphere. So I
wrote a post about some
of the best YA and middle-grade books of 2007 that didn’t make to the NBA final
slate. I bet there are some books there you never heard of.
Whew. I feel so much better now.
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