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.
Magnolia Merryweather, a horse breeder, is eager to celebrate Christmas for the first time after the Civil War ended even as she grows her business. She envisions a calm, prosperous life ahead after the terror of the past four years. Only, all of her plans are thrown into disarray when her secret lover returns and starts asking questions she can’t answer without disaster following.
Bryce Day comes home to Alabama after he’s discharged from the First Alabama Cavalry USA with guilt weighing on his heart. His neighbors won’t cotton to his Unionist bent, and the woman of his heart likely…
One terrible lie, a desperate measure to save her past, just might destroy her future…
Award-winning author of historical fiction presents a new novel of love and lies, secrets and sensuality, and the hands of fate weaving it all together.
The American Civil War is finally over and Christmas beckons. Magnolia Merryweather, backyard horse breeder, is eager to celebrate for the first time since the war began even as she continues to grow her business. She envisions a calm, prosperous life ahead after all the terror of the past four years. She’s preparing to follow in her mother’s matriarchal footsteps,…
