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Kristina Parro is a long-time Taylor Swift fan who dove deep into the stories and lyrics of folkloreto help her overcome the tumultuous period she spent as a front-line healthcare worker during the pandemic. She discovered layers of deep meaning and surprising connections in the album, as well as throughout Taylor’s entire collection, that led her down a rabbit hole of her own. A quest that brought her to a more enlightened state of being. Lucky is Parro’s first novel. She's currently working on another adult-fiction manuscript. You can also find her hosting a live, weekly show on Instagram, during which she has insightful conversations with authors, artists, thinkers, creatives, and Taylor Swift fans!
My long-time favorite writer, John Green, is another Swiftie! In 2014, after he posted on social media about her 1989 album, Taylor Swift took to Tumblr to proclaim that John Green was (also) her favorite author. While John is most well-known forThe Fault in Our Stars (or more recently, his TikTok),Looking for Alaska, his debut, is always my recommendation. Looking For Alaskais packed with teenage nostalgia that hits you like a gut punch. "Sad, Beautiful, Tragic" for bookworms. I read it early on in high school and it sparked a literary awakening within me. I realized that books can hold deeper, philosophical meaning; that by diving deep and soaking it all in, I could learn more about myself and this crazy thing we call reality.
The award-winning, genre-defining debut from John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and The Fault in Our Stars
Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award • A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist • A New York Times Bestseller • A USA Today Bestseller • NPR’s Top Ten Best-Ever Teen Novels • TIME magazine’s 100 Best Young Adult Novels of All Time • A PBS Great American Read Selection • Millions of copies sold!
First drink. First prank. First friend. First love.
Last words.
Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words—and tired of his safe life…
I grew up in white South Africa, a racist, philistine, authoritarian, and puritanical society. The first four books I have chosen appeared in the 1950s, and I read them in my teens. Catch-22 was published in the ‘60s, but all five heroes–or anti-heroes–of these novels were of the same generation, about ten years my senior, so they were perfectly placed to be role models. They were rebels and mavericks, and except for Yossarian, they were all would-be writers. I recognised a kinship with them and took them as my guides into adulthood. And so I left for Paris and became a writer and an anthropologist. No regrets.
This is a compulsive first-person account of the plight of Holden Caulfield, an awkward adolescent, just expelled from his private boarding school, who is shyly trying to find sex and love while pursuing a personal crusade against adult hypocrisy. (His favourite put-down is “phony”).
I read it first as a teenager in South Africa and felt an immediate kinship with Holden, a Tom Sawyer for our times, who was standing up for himself against the idiocies of the grown-ups.
I am the author ofThe Best of Iggy, which is the first in a series of middle-grade books about nine-year-old Iggy Frangi, who never met an impulse he didn’t like, and therefore is often in trouble with cold, calculating types like, for instance, grownups. In Iggy’s opinion—and mine—he is creative, brave, resourceful, hardworking, and absolutely full to the brim of good intentions. He’s also really really sorry about the thing he did to his teacher. He thought it would be funny. But it wasn’t. He knows that now, and he’ll never do it again. Though he’ll probably do something else. Oh well. At least he has the following heroes for company.
Unlike the sensitive, bullied, internally or externally wounded protagonist common in today’s mid-grade novels, Harriet the Spy is tenacious and smart and fights fire with fire. What a hero!
She sneaks into buildings to spy on unsuspecting grownups; she keeps a notebook to record her uncomfortably truth-filled observations of her schoolmates; and when she is ostracized because of it, she first retaliates with ferocity and then lies through her teeth, which effectively rehabilitates her.
Harriet the Spyis a refreshingly honest look at social hypocrisy, with an admirable hero who won’t back down and won’t stop being herself. If it were published now, it would probably be banned.
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.
I am a forty-five-year career educator, sharing my classrooms with students from primary school through graduate programs in creative writing. What I love most in every classroom I enter is sharing the books and stories and poems I love with my students. The best days: when I’m reading one of my favorite parts of the book out loud to the group and I look up and they laugh or gasp, or I look up and see their eyes full of joy. If it’s my own work I’m reading from, all the better!
Arnold, known as Junior, is a fourteen-year-old aspiring artist from the Spokane Indian Reservation, who tells us his story in a combination of hilarious cartoons and acerbic narration. Junior’s intimate self-revelations shocked me with their brutal honesty; this kid holds nothing back! Which is why younger readers are so in love with this character and this book: he tells all the things about being a teenager that most young people are too afraid to see. In the end, this is the most honest examination of identity that I know of. What does it mean to be Indian? American? Human and alive?
Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he…
I have been teaching English for 25 years, both at the high school and middle school levels. And one thing I have seen in the lives of thousands of teenagers is that our days are filled with the most beautiful, amazing things, as well as the most devastating, tragic things. My own childhood was equal parts unconditional love and chaotic dysfunction. In fact, if life were a book, it would be on this list!
I love everything A.S. King. She is my absolute favorite YA author. Her books are weird and thoughtful, and they stick in my head forever. Her award-winning Please Ignore Very Dietz is no different. Vera’s (former!) best friend Charlie has died. While she’s struggling with family stuff, and drinking stuff, and working at pizza place stuff, she’s being haunted by Charlie’s ghost who insists she tells the police what she knows. The story itself is quirky, and Vera’s narration is clever. And, then, of course, there’s a twist at the end!
Vera’s spent her whole life secretly in love with her best friend, Charlie Kahn. And over the years she’s kept a lot of his secrets. Even after he betrayed her. Even after he ruined everything.
So when Charlie dies in dark circumstances, Vera knows a lot more than anyone—the kids at school, his family, even the police. But will she emerge to clear his name? Does she even want to?
Edgy and gripping, Please Ignore Vera Dietz is an unforgettable novel: smart, funny, dramatic, and always surprising.
I am the author ofThe Best of Iggy, which is the first in a series of middle-grade books about nine-year-old Iggy Frangi, who never met an impulse he didn’t like, and therefore is often in trouble with cold, calculating types like, for instance, grownups. In Iggy’s opinion—and mine—he is creative, brave, resourceful, hardworking, and absolutely full to the brim of good intentions. He’s also really really sorry about the thing he did to his teacher. He thought it would be funny. But it wasn’t. He knows that now, and he’ll never do it again. Though he’ll probably do something else. Oh well. At least he has the following heroes for company.
Everyone should spend 30 minutes each day admiring Calvin and Hobbes, the best comic strip ever made.
Calvin is one of the truly magnificent heroes of children’s literature, an embodiment of all the imaginative and moral power that kids have and grownups don’t.
His best friend, Hobbes, is a profound thinker as well as an intermittently alive stuffed tiger, and together they live, squabbling and happy, in their own crazed world, triumphing over parents, teachers, and other authorities with dazzling illogic and hairbreadth escapes to other realities, much more interesting than this one, where you can evade chores by traveling into a future when they’ve already been done or mysteriously shrink to the size of an insect and wreak revenge on bullies.
The award-winning cartoonist details the further adventures of Calvin, a mischievous young boy with boundless energy and imagination, and his lovable stuffed tiger.
I am the author ofThe Best of Iggy, which is the first in a series of middle-grade books about nine-year-old Iggy Frangi, who never met an impulse he didn’t like, and therefore is often in trouble with cold, calculating types like, for instance, grownups. In Iggy’s opinion—and mine—he is creative, brave, resourceful, hardworking, and absolutely full to the brim of good intentions. He’s also really really sorry about the thing he did to his teacher. He thought it would be funny. But it wasn’t. He knows that now, and he’ll never do it again. Though he’ll probably do something else. Oh well. At least he has the following heroes for company.
Obviously, the Cat in the Hat is the King of Mayhem. But is he a hero?
I have to admit, The Cat in the Hat made me nervous as a kid—the Cat’s a force of chaos; the house is ruined; Mom will be mad! Even the happy ending seemed too precarious to enjoy and also involved lying to Mom, which, in my experience, never turned out well.
But when the Cat returns in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back,he seems, after a spate of insanity, to become sympathetic to the protagonists’ fears (they are awfully law-abiding, those kids), and he reforms to the extent of providing a solution to the problem he’s created: VOOM, which in my opinion is a metaphor for nuclear power, is a great cleaning agent and soon everything returns to its original tranquility, proving that the while the Cat in the Hat is…
The riotously funny follow-up to The Cat in the Hat!
The Cat is back-along with some surpise friends-in this beloved Beginner Book by Dr. Seuss. Dick and Sally have no time to play. It's winter and they have mountains of snow to shovel. So when the Cat comes to visit, he decides to go inside and to take a bath. No problem, right? Wrong! The pink ring he leaves in the tub creates is a very BIG pink problem when he transfers the stubborn stain from the bath onto Mother's white dress, Dad's shoes, the floors, the walls, and ultimately,…
I am the author ofThe Best of Iggy, which is the first in a series of middle-grade books about nine-year-old Iggy Frangi, who never met an impulse he didn’t like, and therefore is often in trouble with cold, calculating types like, for instance, grownups. In Iggy’s opinion—and mine—he is creative, brave, resourceful, hardworking, and absolutely full to the brim of good intentions. He’s also really really sorry about the thing he did to his teacher. He thought it would be funny. But it wasn’t. He knows that now, and he’ll never do it again. Though he’ll probably do something else. Oh well. At least he has the following heroes for company.
Departing from the surreal is Ramona, the antihero-turned-hero of Beverly Cleary’s Beezus and Ramona series.
Ramona is an entirely realistic child who is filled with passionate desires and intense feelings, all of which she acts on, even when she knows better. The interesting thing about these books is that Ramona was introduced as a foil and annoyance to her long-suffering older sister, Beezus.
But anyone with blood in their veins would find Ramona preferable to Beezus, and so, clearly, did Beverly Cleary, who switched her focus from color-inside-the-lines Beezus to wild Ramona with her varying confusions and longings—such as her insurmountable urge to boing the ringlets of another little girl in her class, which earns her a suspension, and her equally irresistible yearning to kiss little Davy—and in doing so, created a hero beloved for over fifty years.
Newbery Medal–winning author Beverly Cleary expertly depicts the trials and triumphs of growing up through a relatable heroine who isn't afraid to be exactly who she is.
Ramona Quimby is excited to start kindergarten. No longer does she have to watch her older sister, Beezus, ride the bus to school with all the big kids. She's finally old enough to do it too!
Then she gets into trouble for pulling her classmate's boingy curls during recess. Even worse, her crush rejects her in front of everyone. Beezus says Ramona needs to quit being a pest, but how can she stop…
As a creative nonfiction writer, I’m interested in exploring how the environments of our early years shape us. I read many different childhood memoirs while writing my own. Many of us have stories worth telling if we dig into our memories and let our creative juices flow. But it helps to have had an antagonist. The chemical stinks and pressure to conform in my hometown provided that, allowing me to use the humorous theme of escape. Everyone has had challenges to overcome, rivals, opponents, supporters, and friends, and that is the stuff of good stories. The feedback I have received indicates that, as I hoped, my memoir strikes a chord with many.
This was one of the first of many childhood and youth memoirs I read while writing my book. The author, Paul Hertneky, had a similar experience to mine in a larger immigrant-filled steel mill town, Ambridge, Pennsylvania. It’s an entertaining story of how he almost became a permanent resident, working in the mill like his father, but finally escaped this industrially-polluted environment, as I did. My hometown also had many newly-arrived immigrants and, at one time, I was also thinking of following in my father’s footsteps. The big difference is that my hometown never became part of the rust belt, although its deep water wells had to be closed down. It grew in size and the chemical factory, which once produced DDT and Agent Orange, remains in place today, very close to houses, but with more environmental controls. Still, the parallels between our two stories are interesting.
These stories are specific to one legendary riverfront plateau and one boy's journey, but are emblematic of immigrant life and blue-collar aspirations during the heyday of American industry and its crash, foreshadowing one of the largest internal migrations in U.S. history. Approximately six million baby boomers, like the narrator, fled the Rust Belt. Another six million remained and stories of their youth, struggles, and aspirations echo throughout this book. Pittsburgh alone attracts die-hard affinity with its scattered natives.
I’m passionate about young adult sapphic romance books because this is something I wished I would have read in high school. If I had novels similar to these when I was growing up I might have realized that I identify as queer sooner and it could have helped me understand more about myself. Because of this, I’ve been an avid reader, and writer, of sapphic young adult romances. If it’s sapphic, send it my way. I hope you enjoy these sapphic novels as much as I have!
She Gets the Girl was such a cute sapphic romance, the kind of romance I wished I had experienced when I was younger.
I enjoyed that it was set freshman year of college, rather than high school like most young adult books, and the very distinct personalities of both main characters. It was a really fun read and I honestly wish it didn’t have to end. I also can totally see this being made into a movie.
Read the instant New York Times bestseller and TikTok sensation -- THE new swoon-worthy hate-to-love rom com from #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of Five Feet Apart Rachael Lippincott and debut writer Alyson Derrick. The perfect summer read for fans of Adam Silvera, Casey McQuiston, Becky Albertalli and Alice Oseman's HEARTSTOPPER series!
Alex and Molly are two girls who don't belong on the same planet, let alone the same college campus . . .
Alex Blackwood is a little bit headstrong, with a dash of chaos and a whole lot of flirt. She knows how to get the girl.…
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