Topic: YA

For National Read a Book Day: Some Reading Recommendations Based on Childhood Favorites

For National Read a Book Day: Some Reading Recommendations Based on Childhood Favorites
If You Like 'Matilda'...
Try 'An Adundance of Katherines'
If You Liked 'The Babysitters Club'...
Try 'The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants'
If You Liked 'Junie B. Joans'...

Do you know that today is National Read A Book Day? Have you been ferociously reading to help celebrate? Well don’t worry. Even if you haven’t picked up a book since elementary school, we have some recommendations for you, based on your favorite books from childhood. Now if only Eric Carle could break into the YA market. Wouldn’t The Hunger Games look incredible with collage illustrations? More »

‘Law and Order: SVU’ Meets YA Lit

'Law and Order: SVU' Meets YA Lit

Law and Order marathons have to be the number one thing standing between me and a productive life. It’s gone from a passive form of entertainment to an interactive party game- from guessing the season by Olivia’s hair style to estimating how old an episode is by how freaked out everyone seems about the internet-thingy all the kids are talking about.

This May Rachel Dewoskin‘s book Big Girl Small comes out, adding to the already booming collection of young adult novels with SVU-esque plots. More »

5 Things You Need to Know About ‘Animorphs’

5 Things You Need to Know About 'Animorphs'

In news that just made my day, Scholastic recently announced that it would reprint K.A. Applegate‘s Animorphs book series. If you grew up in the ’90s, chances are you had at least heard of this YA series, in which teenagers Jake, Rachel, Marco Cassie, Tobias, and Ax have the power to morph into animals. Using their animal forms, they fought aliens called Yeerks, slugs who crawled into humans’ brains and controlled them to take over Earth. And they couldn’t tell anyone who they were. Not even you.

I know, it sounds incredibly inane; and in lesser hands, it would have been a schlocky, directionless collection of books. But Applegate’s series didn’t shy away from handling darker themes that her flesh-and-blood characters had to puzzle out without any help from authority figures. So, even though the new books have those cheesy high-tech lenticular covers, you’ll want to commit to the series. (Or at the very least, buy it for a younger sibling.) More »