I grew up reading everything I could get my hands on, but my main loves have always been fantasy and sci-fi. Not so much because of the strange worlds their doors open onto, but because of what they tell us about being human. Because humans are odd and strange and beautiful and full of magic, and it seems more important than ever that we remember that. And not just remember it, but celebrate it, especially as it relates to those of us that are a little different and out of the ordinary. So I hunt out books that remind me how special it is to simply be delightfully, weirdly human. I hope you enjoy them!
A mix of coming of age in the first half of the twentieth century, and Bradbury’s peculiar brand of very earthly oddness and sci-fi strangeness, Dandelion Wine is full of all sorts of magic. It reminds you of what it is to be a small human again, when everything seems possible, and aliens and monsters are as likely (and as important) as long summer days spent outside, barefoot and sunburnt and a little feral. Even when we don’t recognise the details of the childhood described, we remember the feeling, and it reawakens a sense of wonder that’s incredibly precious.
Dandelion Wine is a 1957 semi-autobiographical novel by Ray Bradbury, taking place in the summer of 1928 in the fictional town of Green Town, Illinois — a pseudonym for Bradbury's childhood home of Waukegan, Illinois. The novel developed from the short story "Dandelion Wine" which appeared in the June 1953 issue of Gourmet magazine.
Edisto (along with its sequel, Edisto Revisited) is a novel I reread
every couple years for the sheer pleasure of revisiting seriously underrated
southern writer Padgett Powell’s account of a pivotal summer for the twelve-year-old
Simon Manigault.
It’s the closest one can get to hitching a ride in a time
machine back to an Edisto Island before gentrification, a chance to get
yourself back to the garden. Take it. You won’t be sorry.
Finalist for the National Book Award: Through the eyes of a precocious twelve-year-old in a seaside South Carolina town, the world of love, sex, friendship, and betrayal blossoms Simons Everson Manigault is not a typical twelve-year-old boy in tiny Edisto, South Carolina, in the late 1960s. At the insistence of his challenging mother (known to local blacks as “the Duchess”), who believes her son to possess a capacity for genius, Simons immerses himself in great literature and becomes as literate and literary as any English professor. When Taurus, a soft-spoken African American stranger, moves into the cabin recently vacated by…
My family moved around a lot when I was younger, which may explain why I’m fascinated by the experience of being an outsider. To me, it’s not a bad thing; being on the outside can sometimes help a person to see things more clearly, to think more critically and creatively. The year I spent living in a country where English wasn’t the main language was one of the most stimulating periods of my life, because I was so attuned to all the tiny details that other people took for granted. Plus, as teenagers, everyone feels like they’re on the outside looking in – which is probably why all of my books have contained some coming-of-age element.
I stumbled across this coming-of-age story by one of my favourite South African writers in a second-hand bookshop in Oxford when I was an undergraduate. I hadn’t been able to lose myself in fiction for a couple of years because I was so immersed in academic reading (history, mostly) – but this novel got me back on the wagon. It was the first novel I’d read in a long time that really made me want to write, to tell a story that could move a reader in the same way. In it, a white, middle-class girl growing up in a small colonial town in 1940s South Africa starts to see the world around her as it really is. Definitely one of those books that deserves a much wider audience.
Nadine Gordimer's first novel, published in 1953, tells the story of Helen Shaw, daughter of white middle-class parents in a small gold-mining town in South Africa. As Helen comes of age, so does her awareness grow of the African life around her. Her involvement, as a bohemian student, with young blacks leads her into complex relationships of emotion and action in a culture of dissension.
Napolitano puts words together so beautifully that sometimes I had to pause the audiobook so I could take a minute to reflect on and admire her turns of phrase. Sometimes writing like that can get bogged down, but that isn’t the case with this book.
The variety of characters and voices and the toying with the timeline kept me intrigued and wanting more. Though the story is tragic, the themes of love, friendship, and hope resonate.
A transcendent coming-of-age story about the ways a broken heart learns to love again.
One summer morning, a flight takes off from New York to Los Angeles: there are 192 people aboard. When the plane suddenly crashes, twelve-year-old Edward Adler is the sole survivor.
In the aftermath, Edward struggles to make sense of his grief, sudden fame and find his place in a world without his family. But then Edward and his neighbour Shay make a startling discovery; hidden in his uncle's garage are letters from the relatives of other passengers - all addressed him.…
I stumbled upon an article about Zippy Chippy and knew, right out of the starting gate, that I needed to share his fascinating tale with young readers. I’m the author of a quintet of hilarious rhyming picture books, including the classic The Butt Book and my “number two” picture book, Poopendous! But this was a horse of a different color for me. It’s my first picture-book biography in prose. When I was a lad, my father would take me, on occasion, to Aqueduct Racetrack. I watched in awe as the horses would thunder by. These boyhood experiences surely planted the seeds. I fell in love with Zippy Chippy, and I know you will, too.
I wear two hats. In addition to being a children’s book writer, I’m also the executive copy editor at Random House Books for Young Readers. I had the good fortune recently to work on a new novel from R. J. Palacio, of Wonderfame. It’s a one-of-a-kind Western that seamlessly and skillfully melds the material and the supernatural worlds. And it’s beautifully written and filled with heart-stopping suspense and iconic characters. Pony, a mysterious horse, leads a boy, Silas, on an epic quest to rescue his father from desperadoes. This haunting, deeply moving coming-of-age tale stayed with me long past its completion.
2
authors picked
Pony
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
10,
11,
12, and
13.
What is this book about?
The highly anticipated, unforgettable new story from the internationally bestselling, multi-award-winning author of WONDER.
'Thrillingly told . . . Palacio is a fantastic writer' The Times
'Perfection . . . A beautiful, funny, heart-twisting wonder of a book . . . A brilliant story of love and courage' Wall Street Journal
When Silas Bird wakes in the dead of night, he watches powerlessly as three strangers take his father away. Silas is left shaken, scared and alone, except for the presence of his companion, Mittenwool . . . who happens to be a ghost. But then a mysterious pony shows…
I’m from North East England, an area of the UK under-represented in contemporary fiction. I love reading books from authors who grew up in the same area as me, and I enjoy stories that deal with issues relevant to our communities and capture the unique spirit of the people here. My writing is infused with social and political issues. I’m passionate about stories that explore the world around us and how it impacts people, and all these books do that in very different ways.
I love literary fiction and stunning prose, and this book is full of gorgeous sentences that shine off the page. It deals with class issues and finding your own place in the world.
I’m from a working-class, deprived town close to the one featured in this novel. I related to some of the character’s concerns and struggles, particularly regarding the lack of opportunity in North East England.
"Andrews’s writing is transportingly voluptuous, conjuring tastes and smells and sounds like her literary godmother, Edna O’Brien . . . What makes her novel sing is its universal themes: how a young woman tries to make sense of her world, and how she grows up." –Penelope Green, The New York Times Book Review
This “luminous” (The Observer) feminist coming-of-age novel captures in sensuous, blistering prose the richness and imperfection of the bond between a daughter and her mother
It begins with our bodies . . . Safe together in the violet dark…
My reading list
this year led me to discover that my favorite books blend science with fiction, and never has a book done it better for me than The Scent Keeper.
This is a
lyrical coming-of-age adventure married to an ode to the sense of smell. I was initially afraid to read this book because I didn’t want to find scientific
errors or to be preached at, but I discovered the exact opposite. This book captures the personal experience of scent more evocatively, accurately, and insightfully than anything I have ever read, either in science or fiction.
I was blown away by Bauermeister’s inherent understanding of the sense that I
have spent my career studying—in fact, I am quite jealous. This was the first of Bauermeister’s books that I have read, and now I cannot get enough.
Emmeline lives an enchanted childhood on a remote island with her father, who teaches her about the natural world through her senses. What he won't explain are the mysterious scents stored in the drawers that line the walls of their cabin, or the origin of the machine that creates them. As Emmeline grows, however, so too does her curiosity, until one day the unforeseen happens, and Emmeline is vaulted out into the real world - a place of love, betrayal, ambition, and revenge. To understand her past, Emmeline must unlock the clues to her identity, a quest that challenges the…
Like with my own writing (at least I hope), I always drift toward surprises, originality, and unbounded imagination. I want the books others only whisper about, books too unique and odd for the mainstream. I want outliers and rule breakers. Authors who challenge their readers and make us question the world and our roles in it. And in what better realm to do this than in fantasy? These are books to seek out, each one worth going the extra mile to track down. Happy hunting.
In this science fantasy novel, humans, like horses, are used as riding mounts by a race of weak-legged aliens who have taken over Earth centuries earlier. Charley is a mount and, like most other humans, content with his role, prideful even. However, when he meets his father, an escaped mount leading assaults on the human stables, he is forced to confront the slave/master relationship he has always relied upon. Unique and utterly fascinating, The Mount is guaranteed to keep readers entranced.
* Philip K. Dick Award Winner * Best of the Year: Locus, Village Voice, San Francisco Chronicle, Book Magazine * Nominated for the Impac Award Charley is an athlete. He wants to grow up to be the fastest runner in the world, like his father. He wants to be painted crossing the finishing line, in his racing silks, with a medal around his neck. Charley lives in a stable. He isn't a runner, he's a mount. He belongs to a Hoot: The Hoots are alien invaders. Charley hasn't seen his mother for years, and his father is hiding out in…
Besides having come of age while Black, I’ve published two coming-of-age novels about Black adolescents. Even before I became a writer, or an adult, I had had a particular interest in coming-of-age narratives. From Walter Dean Myers’ Harlem-located Young Adult novels to Toni Morrison’s Sula and James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, I’ve always been attracted to such stories. However, what the book list offered here does is map a reading series for what I see as an exciting intellectual formation for a Black reader.
“Peoples,” the protagonist of Jackson’s coming of age novel is apt to announce, an African-Americanized riff on Shakespeare’s “Friends, Romans, countrymen” which Jackson’s narrator voices from the recesses of his Mississippi, Portland neighborhood. Everything about this book is centered by the protagonist’s remarkable voice, a voice that very much inspired me to write my book. This is to say nothing of the deeply tragic, crack-era intergenerational family drama that The Residue Years tells.
'This novel is written with a breathtaking, exhilarating assurance and wit. Terrific' The Times
'A wrenchingly beautiful debut by a writer to be reckoned with' Jesmyn Ward
Mitchell S. Jackson grew up black in a neglected neighbourhood in America's whitest city, Portland, Oregon. In the '90s, those streets and beyond had fallen under the shadow of crack cocaine and its familiar mayhem. In his commanding autobiographical novel, Jackson writes what it was like to come of age in that time and place, with a breakout voice that's nothing less than extraordinary.
The Residue Years switches between the perspectives of a…
This is the perfect book group read because there is
so much to discuss (and like)!
In 1988 Karachi two fourteen-year-old schoolgirls
Zahra and Maryam share teenage kicks, secrets, and a love of George Michael.
When Pakistan’s dictator is assassinated, the girls’ idyllic world falls apart
in one dreadful, frightening evening.
Now in contemporary London the two are highly
successful women, still enjoying their friendship until one day the past
erupts.
I loved the novel’s many levels: political intrigue,
the brilliantly evoked worlds of Pakistan and London, the significance of
women’s friendship. I would love to have women friends like Zahra and Maryam.
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** SHORTLISTED FOR THE INDIE BOOK AWARDS 2023 ** CHOSEN AS A BEST BOOK OF 2022 BY THE GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, DAILY MAIL, FINANCIAL TIMES AND IRISH TIMES **
'A profound novel about friendship. I loved it to pieces' - Madeline Miller
'A shining tour de force' - Ali Smith, Guardian Summer Reading
'An intimate study of the ties that bind us' - Stylist
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A dazzling new novel of friendship, identity and the unknowability of other people - from the international bestselling author of Home Fire, winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction
Sometimes it was as though the…
