I’ve always loved stories about young people struggling with conflicts beyond their years. I read three of the books below—Harriet, The Outsiders, and It—when I was a kid, and I identified with how the protagonists got themselves into trouble, rallied their resources, and tried to get themselves out. I’ve used that trope in my Freaks series. My characters find themselves living a comic-book life, but they also find that such a life isn’t easy or glamorous. Superpowers don’t make your problems go away. Peter Parker learned this back in the 60s. Like Harriet and Ponyboy and Stuttering Bill, my characters have to re-learn it.
Did you ever read the Harry Potter series and think, “This is really good, but man, I wish Harry and his friends were a bunch of incompetent delinquents?” If so, Rainbow Rowell’s Simon Snow trilogy may be for you. From the very first chapter of this first book, Rowell establishes Simon’s strong voice and his history of misdeeds and failures, reminding us that contemporary books need to jump right in and get moving. It also proves that your protagonists don’t have to be traditional heroes—or even really know what they’re doing. Plus, the novel is named after a Kansas song that also happens to be the theme of the TV show Supernatural.
#1 New York Times best seller! Booklist Editors’ Choice 2015 - Youth! Named a "Best Book of 2015" by Time Magazine, School Library Journal, Barnes & Noble, NPR, PopSugar, The Millions, and The News & Observer!
Simon Snow is the worst Chosen One who's ever been chosen.
That's what his roommate, Baz, says. And Baz might be evil and a vampire and a complete git, but he's probably right.
Half the time, Simon can't even make his wand work, and the other half, he starts something on fire. His mentor's avoiding him, his girlfriend broke up with him, and there's…
Not for the faint of heart, this book contains what is perhaps Stephen King’s most controversial scene, but if you can get past that section, you’ll find a decades-spanning story that explores the (literal) magic of childhood and how some of our best friends—and worst enemies—follow us into adulthood. All-too-human antagonists bully the Losers’ Club even as they investigate and battle a menace far beyond their understanding, a concept that echoes in my own series. In the adult sections of the book, we learn the cost of forgetting the past, even as we yearn for the vanished days of our youth. Plus, a killer clown!
This tie-in edition will be available from 16 July
TIE IN TO A NEW MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, IT: CHAPTER 2, ADAPTED FROM KING'S TERRIFYING CLASSIC
27 years later, the Losers Club have grown up and moved away, until a devastating phone call brings them back...
Derry, Maine was just an ordinary town: familiar, well-ordered for the most part, a good place to live.
It was a group of children who saw- and felt- what made Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, IT lurked, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each one's deepest dread. Sometimes…
Jen Hewitt, a quiet geology graduate student, doesn't actually believe in time travel. Were it possible, rocks from the age of dinosaurs should already be cluttered with artifacts from future time-tourists. Nevertheless, she proves with fellow geologist Jonathan Renner that a human skeleton encased in Pleistocene rock came from their…
I must have read this book twenty times when I was a kid. I can even remember using my school notebooks to scribble “spy notes” about my friends and teachers. Was I really that weird? Sure, but those activities were inspired by the (mis)adventures of Harriet M. Welsch, eleven-year-old agent of her own personal surveillance complex. In her own notebooks, Harriet records often-biting observations about everyone in her life, which is fine—until her notebook goes missing. With a surprisingly introspective protagonist who reaps the consequences of her own arrogance, this classic novel provides a compelling template for anyone writing about the ways that kids stumble while following their dreams.
First published in 1974, a title in which Harriet M. Welsch, aspiring author, keeps a secret journal in which she records her thoughts about strangers and friends alike, but when her friends find the notebook with all its revelations, Harriet becomes the victim of a hate campaign.
Winner of the National Book Award, this book is a searing indictment of how white America’s abuse of Indigenous People continues into the present day. When a white man attacks Geraldine Coutts on the reservation, the law can do nothing. The tribal police have no power over outsiders, and white law does not apply on the rez. Geraldine’s thirteen-year-old son, Joe, joins his friends to investigate the attack and seek justice. His ultimate decision feels both surprising and inevitable, as the best endings do. Erdrich is one of my favorite writers, and in this book, she is at the height of her powers, telling a story that delves into what happens when young boys have to grow up too fast.
Winner of the National Book Award • Washington Post Best Book of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book
From one of the most revered novelists of our time, an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family.
One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface because Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal…
This book is older than I am, but it never gets old. Focusing on Ponyboy, a kid from the poor section of town, The Outsiders chronicles the conflicts between Ponyboy’s Greasers and the Socs, a gang of rich brats who love to make life even more miserable for the economically challenged. As a kid, I loved how Hinton used different sections of town, what sort of car you drove, how you dressed, and more to illustrate a basic schism in American society. As a writer, I still marvel at Hinton’s mastery of her sprawling cast. If your book has an ensemble cast, you could do much worse than to return to this classic of American young adult fiction.
50 years of an iconic classic! This international bestseller and inspiration for a beloved movie is a heroic story of friendship and belonging.
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No one ever said life was easy. But Ponyboy is pretty sure that he's got things figured out. He knows that he can count on his brothers, Darry and Sodapop. And he knows that he can count on his friends-true friends who would do anything for him, like Johnny and Two-Bit. But not on much else besides trouble with the Socs, a vicious gang of rich kids whose idea of a good time is…
Four high-school friends suffer daily humiliation at the hands of three bullies. When the friends accidentally open a portal to another dimension, they unintentionally allow terrifying, other-worldly creatures to invade their small Arkansas town. Discovering that they are now endowed with strange superpowers, the four teens dub themselves “Freaks,” the very name their tormentors used to ridicule them. The Freaks must fight to save the lives of family and friends now in mortal peril and thwart a secret government task force that appears to be hunting them.
Mateo Taurasi and his family fled their island home when their people turned to sorcery. Mateo’s own magic is tame but it’s still banned in the Vaeringan Empire...and his family still use it every day in their cosy teahouse. The last thing they need is an Imperial barging in to…
Trapped in her enormous, devout Catholic family in 1963, Annie creates a hilarious campaign of lies when the pope dies and their family friend, Cardinal Stefanucci, is unexpectedly on the shortlist to be elected the first American pope.
Driven to elevate her family to the holiest of holy rollers in…