When people find out I write YA novels, they sometimes ask, “How do you remember what it was like to be that age?” I want to respond, “How do you forget?” I’m still—many years past my own adolescence and after 25 years of teaching teenagers—trying to figure out how high school works. I’m pretty sure I won’t find a satisfying answer, but I hope that, if I keep asking the question (actually, I can’t help asking it), I’ll write some YA books that make kids feel a little less alone. Who am I? Clearly, a person who hopes it’s never too late to be popular in high school.
This book tells the dead-on truth about what it feels like to be a kid who can’t find a single place in the world where he feels like he belongs. I love, love, loveJames Sveck’s smart, funny, cynical voice and how it made me laugh andcry—sometimes simultaneously. I love how this book shows that even young people with every advantage can be lonely, unhappy, and unseen, too, and that, like everyone else, they have to make themselves vulnerable to change that is going to be painful. But that sounds so—ugh, what adults are always saying to kids. The truth is, I love this book because it’s honest and hilarious and I came to the end feeling like I knew James and had a real stake in his getting his act together.
Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You is the story of James Sveck, a sophisticated, vulnerable young man with a deep appreciation for the world and no idea how to live in it. James is eighteen, the child of divorced parents living in Manhattan. Articulate, sensitive, and cynical, he rejects all of the assumptions that govern the adult world around him–including the expectation that he will go to college in the fall. He would prefer to move to an old house in a small town somewhere in the Midwest. Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You takes place…
Over the course of two years, Frankie grows from a girl who gets lost in the background to one who gets so frustrated by being dismissed and underestimated by the boys at her school that she takes matters into her own hands, wreaking mischievous havoc to create change. I love how this book showcases the stubborn gender inequities of high school in hilarious yet profound ways. It’s got a little bit of everything: friendship, romance, rebellion, heartache—and excellent pranks. Grrrl Power!
The hilarious and razor-sharp story of how one girl went from geek to patriarchy-smashing criminal mastermind in two short years, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of We Were Liars and Genuine Fraud.
* National Book Award finalist * * Printz Honor *
Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14:
Debate Club. Her father's "bunny rabbit." A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.
Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15: A knockout figure. A sharp tongue. A chip on her shoulder. And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.
The Lost Episodes of Revie Bryson is another book that will make you laugh andcry. What I love most about it is its wondering tone which makes me feel like I’m trying to figure out twelve-year-old Revie Bryson’s world right along with him. Why did his mother make up lost episodes of the Bible that made him feel like he just might be the second coming, why did she leave him and his dad in Paris, Indiana to pursue her dreams of Hollywood—and where is God, anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be able to count on Him to make things right?
A Chinese American teenager living in San Francisco’s China Town in the mid-fifties, Lily Hu has just begun to realize that she is a lesbian. She must struggle to keep this secret from her family, who want her to date a nice Chinese boy, and her childhood friend Shirley, who expects her to head the support group for her campaign for Miss China Town. But when a classmate introduces her to the Telegraph Club, she becomes enamored of Tommy Andrews, a “male impersonator,” and the secret becomes more and more difficult to keep.
This honest, evocative novel brings a time and place to life, reminding us that life for those with the courage to be who they really are has never been easy.
"That book. It was about two women, and they fell in love with each other." And then Lily asked the question that had taken root in her, that was even now unfurling its leaves and demanding to be shown the sun: "Have you ever heard of such a thing?"
Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club.
America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall…
The intense, sometimes obsessive nature of teenage friendship is brought vividly to life when Jamaica (Jam) Gallahue is sent to a therapeutic boarding school because she is unable to get over the death of her boyfriend. Along with four other students, she’s assigned to a special English class that will only study the work of Sylvia Plath. They are expected to read, keep a journal, and “look out for one another.” The five quickly become close, meeting to talk about their traumatic experiences in a safe, imaginary space they call Belzhar. As their stories unfold, the book barrels toward an ending that is shocking, heartbreaking, and absolutely right on. If there’s such a thing as an emotional thriller, Belzhar fills the bill.
"Expect depth and razor sharp wit in this YA novel from the author of The Interestings." - Entertainment Weekly
"A prep school tale with a supernatural-romance touch, from genius adult novelist Meg Wolitzer." -Glamour
"Basically everything Meg Wolitzer writes is worth reading, usually over and over again, and her YA debut . . . is no exception." -TeenVogue.com
If life were fair, Jam Gallahue would still be at home in New Jersey with her sweet British boyfriend, Reeve Maxfield. She'd be watching old comedy sketches with him. She'd be kissing him in the library stacks. She certainly wouldn't be at…
In 1964, Paul Carpetti discovers Jack Kerouac’s On the Road while on a school trip to New York; upon returning home, he learns his mother is seriously ill. Both rock his world and make him begin to question his long-term relationship with his girlfriend, Kathy, and what he wants his life after high school to be. The summer after graduation, he meets Duke Walczak, a volatile, charismatic Kerouac fan, who convinces him to take off on a road trip to St. Petersburg, Florida to look for Jack—and Paul’s life is forever changed when they find him.
I once saw a play at the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Theatre. A play about Sor Juana. It was a good play, but it felt like something was missing like jalapenos left out of enchiladas. The play kept nudging me to look further to find Sor Juana, and so for the next five years, I did so. I read and read more. I listened for her voice, and that is where I heard her life come alive. This isn’t the only possibility for Sor Juana’s life; it is just the one I heard.
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, this brilliant 17th century nun flew through Mexico City on the breeze of poetry and philosophy. She met with princes of the Church, and with the royalty of Spain and Mexico. Then she met a stunning, powerful woman with lavender eyes, la Vicereine Maria Louisa, and her life changed forever. As her fame grew, she dared to challenge the diabolical Archbishop once too often, and he threw her in front of the Inquisition, where she stood, alone.
Sor Juana's work is studied still today, and justifiably so. Scholars study her months on end; mystics…
This astonishingly brilliant 17th century poet and dramatist, this nun, flew through Mexico City on wings of inspiration. Having no dowry, she chose the life of a nun so that she might learn, so that she might write, so that she might meet the most fascinating people of the western world. She accomplished all of that, and more.
One day a woman with violet eyes, eyes the color of passion flowers, entered her life. It was the new Vicereine, Maria Luisa. As the two most powerful women in Mexico City, the bond between them crossed politics and wound them in…
