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“Best of 2013” YA List Breakdown, Part 2

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This is part two of this year’s “best of YA” list breakdown. Make sure you read yesterday’s post, or at least the introduction of it, to understand why and how this works. To summarize the key points and to make sense of today’s data, I’ll repeat some of the important details: none of the data presented here is meant to “prove” anything. It’s presented in order to offer some discussion points, to explore trends and themes within the books deemed as the “best” of this year’s YA fiction, and any errors in data tabulation are mine and mine alone (and hopefully, there are few, if none!).

All data is based on 55 book titles, 55 authors, and in situations where discussion turns to main characters in a book, there are 62 identified main characters. All of the data is pulled from five “best of” lists: School Library Journal, Kirkus, Horn Book, Library Journal’s “YA for Adults,” and Publishers Weekly. 
I thought it would be interesting to break down the lists into less “big picture” stuff and into smaller picture stuff. Where yesterday looked at things like presence of books featuring POC or LGBTQ characters, as well as gender breakdowns of both authors and main characters, today I wanted to look at more granular list data. All of my raw data can be accessed here. It’s not necessarily pretty, but I’m happy if people want to use it to draw additional connections between and among “best of” titles. Some of the information I included on the chart did not make my blog posts (there was too little to talk about in terms of print run, genre, and gender, especially compared to last year) and some of it will appear in tomorrow’s comparison post between 2012 “best of” lists and this year’s “best of” lists. 
So with that, let’s dig in.
Month of Publication



Were books published earlier in the year more likely than those published later in the year to make the “best of” lists? Or, because their newness and shininess wore off prior to decision-making time, were they less likely to make the lists?
When it came to books published in the first half of the year (January – June) against those which published in the second half of the year (July – December), here’s the breakdown:

“Best of” books published between January and June came to 25 total titles, while those published between July and December equalled 30. There’s not a major difference between representation of titles in the first half of the year and those in the second half. 
What about breaking it down more? Is there a month where more “best of” books were published? The answer to this one is yes.
The leader of the pack this year is September — thirteen of the books on this year’s “best of” lists were published that month. March had the second highest number of books on the lists, with 7, followed by October and April with six each.
Worth noting in this data is something I’m trying to better understand. On Kirkus’s list, one of the books listed (Nowhere to Run by Claire Griffin) appeared to have numerous publication dates, according to Amazon’s various listings. It was difficult to parse out whether this book was actually published this year or was published last year, since I saw a November 2012 date, as well as a March 2013 date. Kirkus made a handful of choices this year which didn’t make perfect sense to me, and I can’t help wonder if maybe that 2012 publication date was accurate. Either way, I operated as though the book was published in March of this year. 
What about the month of publication for those debut authors? Was there a better month to be a debut author and end up on the “best of” lists? 
There were four debut novels on the “best of” list published in March, followed by two in July and September. April, June, and October had one each. 
Publication Format

I’m always curious whether hardcovers or paperback originals do better on the “best of” lists. There seem to be fewer paperback originals published in YA than hardcovers, but it’s a category I still like looking at. If there is data on this at all, I would love to know about it. 
One thing I wanted to point out in this data was something that interested me with the Kirkus list. One of their titles, Outcast Oracle, appears not to be for sale in a non-e-book format in the general market. I checked both Amazon and Barnes and Noble and it’s only available for purchase as a Kindle or Nook book. I went to the publisher’s website to see if there was indeed a print run at all, and it appears you can buy a paperback copy from the publisher directly. I also hopped onto Baker & Taylor, which is where my library purchases its books (and where a large percentage of public libraries make their purchases) and the book is not available on there in any format. 
Which makes me wonder a little bit about how valuable that title being on the list is, since getting access to it is such a hurdle. You either need an ereader OR you need to purchase direct from the publisher. Will having it on this list give it a bump in sales or encourage an easy way to purchase it? I’ll talk a little bit more about this tomorrow, since it’s fascinating to me what including this particular title might suggest. 
But back to the category at hand: I looked at hardcover books, paperback originals (which is where I stuck the title above), and those books which feature a split run, where both a hardcover and a paperback are published simultaneously. 
There’s no question that hardcover format dominated the “best of” lists, with 52 of the titles published as hardcover. Two books were published as paperback originals, which included both the title noted above, as well as Kelsey Sutton’s Some Quiet Place. One book appeared to be a split run, which was the previously noted Nowhere to Run by Claire Griffin. 
Were there fewer paperback originals published this year? Fewer split runs? Of course, some publishers only do paperback originals (like Flux) and some publishers make it clear their “bigger” titles are hardcover. I’ve yet to figure out what it means when a book is published as split, if anything (this year, a few books that were published split run but weren’t on the “best of” lists include Jody Casella’s The Thin Space, Sarah McCarry’s All Our Pretty Songs, and Hannah Moskowitz’s Teeth). 
Publisher Representation on the “Best Of” Lists

Are there publishers which tend to do better on the “best of” lists? I’ve always had it in my mind that some publishers work on books that are less mainstream, a little riskier, and that those books do tend to be noticed on the end-of-year lists for those things. Candlewick is perhaps the one which stands out most in my mind for this, as well as Lerner/Carolrhoda LAB. 
I’ve flattened all of the imprints into their respective publishers for simplicity’s sake (so, St. Martin’s titles are under Macmillan), and because I wanted it to be readable, I broke it into two charts. Here’s a look at how the various publishers did on the “best of” lists:


I purposefully didn’t do it in a decline since that would mess up the scaling on the charts themselves and I wanted these to be as close to the same scale as possible. But as you can see, Candlewick led the publishers with the most books on the “best of” lists, with a total of 7 titles. Penguin had 6, with 5 titles from Scholastic, 4 from Little, Brown, and 3 each from Harper, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, and Houghton Mifflin. 
As should be clear, there are a lot of titles on the “best of” list not published by a Big 6/5 publisher (so, not a book published by Harper, Little, Brown, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Penguin/Random House). Comparatively, mid/small/indie presses had more titles on these lists: 33 of the books on the “best of” list came from non-Big 6/5 publishers, while 22 did. 
I think this is pretty impressive, especially with Candlewick’s large presence. Carolrhoda LAB had two titles, which is also impressive given how small their seasonal lists are. 
“Best of” Lists and Starred Reviews Earned

Since we know the “best of” books now, is it fair to assume that books which appeared more frequently on the lists tended to have more starred reviews in the six major review journals? 
I pulled the starred reviews from ShelfTalker’s round up of “The Stars So Far” in November. I looked at stars earned from the following publications: BCCB, Booklist, Kirkus, SLJ, PW, and Horn Book. Of course, there’s a lot of leeway and error that can happen here. Not all journals will review all books. Not all journals review the books in a timely fashion, and so there’s a possibility that some of these books will earn stars later. 
Not a single one of the YA novels I looked at had earned stars from all six of those publications, either. 

Among the “best of” books, here’s how the starred reviews broke down:
  • Seven books earned 5 starred reviews
  • Four Books earned 4 starred reviews
  • Thirteen books earned 3 starred reviews
  • Fourteen books earned 2 starred reviews
  • Sixteen books earned 1 starred review 
The breakdown doesn’t surprise me a whole lot, especially because the majority of the books on the “best of” lists came from Kirkus’s list, and they tended to have earned a star from Kirkus. In other words, a lot of single-starred books were the books Kirkus selected as “best” (though certainly not all). 

So what about starred review frequency against the frequency to which books appeared on “best of” lists? Here’s the chart:
List Appearances vs. Star Earnings 5 lists 4 lists 3 lists 2 lists 1 list
6 stars 0 0 0 0 0
5 stars 0 1 2 3 1
4 stars 0 0 1 4 0
3 stars 0 0 1 2 10
2 stars 0 0 1 2 11
1 star 0 0 0 0 16
Again, no books made all five lists, and the bulk of the books fell into the category of landing on one list and earning one, two, or three stars. 


Eleanor & Park, the book with the most placements on the “best of” lists this year, earned five starred reviews.

Series vs. Stand Alone Titles on the “Best of” Lists

To wrap up the data, let’s look at a simple but worthwhile aspect: do series books do better or worse than stand alone titles on the “best of” lists? This is, I think, impacted pretty significantly by genre of the “best of” books this year, since realistic fiction tends to produce fewer series books than other genres. 
In this data, I included companion and prequels as “series” books (so Rose Under Fire and Invasion were rolled into that data).

Roughly one quarter of the “best of” lists were series books, while three-quarters were stand alone titles. Of those books which were part of a series, there were:
  • two prequels
  • one companion
  • six were the first in a series
  • three were the second book in a series
  • two that were third books. 


Some Concluding Thoughts on the 2013 Data

While I’ve commented throughout on what I think the takeaways or questions are about the data and “best of” lists this year, I did have a couple of other thoughts to share, and I would love if anyone wanted to weigh in on what they’ve seen. I have one final post coming tomorrow that will compare this year’s data with last year’s, which I think will spark some interesting conversation. 
First, it’s worth noting that Kirkus’s list is the lengthiest again this year, and it’s also the most strange. I’m confused by their inclusion of a novel that has been categorized in numerous places, including the publisher’s own catalog, as “middle grade.” That’s Fireborn by Toby Forward. Because Amazon listed the age range as 12 and older, I did include it all of the data, but since it’s a book not published until after the “best of” appeared, I’ll be curious what readers and other critics say is the true age range. To me, it even looks middle grade.
Likewise, Kirkus included more indie press titles (note self-published, but actual indie press) than other publications did. This led me to some of the questions above about Outcast Oracle and it makes me question who their list might be intended for. Any reader who spent time with their list likewise probably noticed it was difficult to parse out their picks from the paid-for advertising of books between their selections, too. If there are more and more titles being selected as “best of” that are difficult to acquire for, say, purchasers at institutions, it makes me wonder how much value the list itself has for users like myself, a librarian who does sometimes supplement collections with titles I may have missed. If it’s a book I cannot get without jumping through hoops, though, why bother? 
On the other hand, the more esoteric choices make me wonder how many gems slip through the cracks each year because they are from smaller presses. Right now, I think we might have a dark horse for YALSA awards, as well as an under-sung gem Chris L. Terry’s Zero Fade.  
Overall, this year’s list had a much smaller range of titles than I thought. Is it because this is a weaker year for YA overall or do the lists have an unintentional (or intentional) impact on one another? Horn Book, for example, only had 5 YA titles included in their “best of,” and LJ’s “YA for Adults” only had three by the criteria I used.

There’s nothing that can be said conclusively, of course. But what makes “best of” lists interesting to look at as data, rather than as something more subjective, is that it lets you consider the year in a snapshot. This might have been a weaker YA year. It may have been the year that male main characters were stronger than female. It may have continued a trend of featuring a small number of LGBTQ characters. It’s also interesting to consider what this “best of” snapshot will indicate in the future, too. Will we have more books of a certain ilk because they’re more likely to perform better?

Stick around for tomorrow’s thoughts and comparisons between this year’s list and last year’s. Although again it won’t make any hard conclusions, it can shed some insight into some of these questions. 

“Best of 2013 YA” List Breakdown, Part 1

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Welcome to the third annual “Best of YA” list break down. Since 2011, I’ve gone through the “best of” lists developed by the biggest trade review journals and pulled together some statistics about those books. Which ones have repeat appearances? Is there a gender representation difference in the books deemed the best? What do we see in terms of POC, LGBTQ representation, and lots more.

This year, I wanted to look at a number of factors like I did last year, and it requires more than one post to do so. Because I still had all of my data from last year pulled into a single space (I did not in 2011, where all of my information was posted in another forum), I’ve written third post as well, comparing the data from last year against this year’s. They will publish today, tomorrow, and on Thursday.

The “best of” lists I looked at this year are the same ones I analyzed last year: School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Horn Book, and the Library Journal list of Best YA for Adults. I like to look at that last one, the YA for Adults, because I think it’s worth keeping an eye on and comparing with the lists that are geared less toward adults — are there crossover titles? Are there different titles completely? It adds another flavor to the data.

Because they come out a little bit later, I have not looked at the best of lists from Booklist nor BCCB, though it’s possible I may look at them comparatively in the new year (BCCB’s list comes out in January and Booklist’s should be out this week, either prior to this post or after it). I limited what I looked at to YA fiction only. This means no graphic novels (though if you’re curious, the graphic novels which made this combination of lists include Boxers and Saints, on all five of the lists; Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant on two of the lists; Will & Whit on one of the lists; Romeo & Juliet on one of the lists; and March on one of the lists) and I did not include non-fiction titles (of which there were very few).

I made my determination on whether a book was a YA book or not based on the criteria that Amazon listed it as a book for those age 12 and older. This meant some books which have been debated as being “for YA readers or not,” like Tom McNeal’s Far, Far Away, were indeed included in my count. I did not include illustrators for books that feature graphic or illustrative elements in my author counts or breakdowns.

Though more relevant to tomorrow’s post than today’s, I pulled my information about starred reviews from ShelfTalker’s last updated “The Stars So Far” post; since this was last updated in mid-November, it’s possible some of these titles may have earned additional stars since then. Information about LGBTQ representation in these books was pulled from Malinda Lo’s tallying, along with notes I’ve made to myself on the books I have read.

Before diving in, some caveats: none of this data means anything. I’m not trying to draw conclusions nor suggest certain things about the books that popped up on the “best of” lists. Errors here in terms of counts, in my decision to list a book as featuring a POC, in my tallying of MCs by gender, and so forth, are all my own. I have not read all of these books, so sometimes, I had to make an educated guess based on reviews I read. Tomorrow, I’ll link to all of my raw data in the introduction.

There were a total of 55 books on these lists, 55 authors, and a total of 62 main characters, as some books were told through more than one point of view.

With that, let’s see what there is to see in this year’s “Best of YA” lists.



Gender Representation in the “Best of” Lists


First, let’s look at gender and the “best of” lists. Do we have more male authors represented or do we have more female authors?

There were a total of 55 authors represented on all of the “best of lists,” with 14 being male and 41 being female. In other words, roughly three-quarters of the authors this year were female, while one-quarter were male. This is a really interesting breakdown, considering that the breakdown by author gender on the New York Times Lists (in this post and this post) showed something different.

One of the comments I received on my New York Times post breakdowns was that it would be interesting to look at the main character genders in the books listed. Since I didn’t look at that element in those posts, I thought I’d give it a shot with the “best of” lists this year.

As noted, there are more main characters than there are authors, so this is out of a total of 62 characters. Again, not having read all of the books, this is based on my best guesses having read through many reviews of the titles listed. I counted main characters as those who have a voice in the story. I did not include the Marcus Sedgwick book, since it is a collection of short stories and not having read it, making a call was impossible.

This chart tells quite a bit of a different story than the one above. Of the 62 main characters, 29 were male, and 33 were female. The percentages are much closer to even when we look at main character gender rather than look at the author’s gender alone.

There are a couple of questions to think about with this: Did we have much better male-led stories this year? Or do we tend to take male-led stories as “better” than those led by female? This is a question I’ve been thinking about a lot, as it’s something impossible not to think about. Female-led stories tend to have more romance in them, and it’s possible we have a bias against romance. Worthwhile readings on this topic are this post and this post over at Crossreferencing.

Again, I’m making no conclusions here, but I think these are questions worth thinking about. It does make me want to revisit my NYT analysis now and look at the gender of the main character, especially as some people took problem with the fact there was more male representation when it came to author appearance on the list. I have a suspicion that looking at the gender of the main characters of those books wouldn’t actually change my findings very much.

Debut Authors vs. More Seasoned Authors


What kind of break down is there between new authors and those who are on their second, fifth, or twentieth book? Are there more books by authors who’ve done their time on the “best of” lists or more by debut authors?

I am a purist when defining “debut.” These are first books. They are not first YA books. I did not hold published short stories or poems against debut status, as long as the book on the “best of” list was the author’s first novel. In other words, Alaya Dawn Johnson is not a debut author, despite The Summer Prince being her first YA book.

There were a total of 11 debut novels on the lists, making up 20% of the total. The other 44 novels were by authors who had previously published a novel.

What about gender of the debut author?

Of the 11 debut authors, nine were female and two were male.

Continuing to talk a bit about the debut novelists who made the list, how do the Morris Shortlist authors compare? Of the five books on the Morris list, three of those books saw themselves on any of the five “best of” lists: Carrie Mesrobian’s Sex & Violence, which made both Kirkus and PW’s “best of” list, In The Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat Winters made SLJ’s list, and Evan Roskos’s Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets, which made the Kirkus list. That’s more than half.

“Best Of” by Genre


It’s tough to decide what book belongs in what genre. There are some which could go more than one way (especially when it comes to historical and fantasy, as some could go either way easily). Again, since I haven’t read all of the books on this list, I had to pull some of my decisions from reviews, as well as from talking with those who have read the book. In short: decisions are subjective, but they’re based on research.

I broke down my categories as broadly as possible. Thus, “realistic” is a category and not contemporary, for the sake of putting books like Eleanor & Park into what might be the best place for it to fit. I considered Far, Far Away to be fantasy, rather than paranormal, as I determined paranormal a category best suited for a story featuring a creature, rather than a spirit. I know it’s a bit arbitrary.

Did one genre do better than another this year when it came to best of lists? Let’s take a look.

Turns out that realistic fiction led other genres in “best of” lists this year. Out of a total of 55 books, 24 were realistic fiction. Historical had 13, with fantasy 10, science fiction 5, paranormal 2, and short stories 1.

Perhaps there’s something to the suggestion there has been a growth in realistic fiction this year. This is something I may try to tackle in a series of posts next week about trends in 2014 fiction because I think it’s better said there might be a rise in a certain type of realistic fiction coming up.

Books by “Best of” List Frequency


How many books saw themselves on more than one “best of” list this year? Even though the staff of the journals choose their titles by vote (usually), it’s always curious to be to see what trends emerge in titles that appear more than once. Do those very early lists like School Library Journal’s in November influence those which appear later? Or more realistically, do awards like the National Book Award or the Horn Book/Boston Globe Book Award put titles onto radars as possible “best of” picks? What influences what, if anything?

It’s worth noting here — and I’ll repeat it again in the next posts — that the journals each choose a different number of “best of” titles. And with my criteria listed in the beginning of this post to define “YA Fiction,” the number of titles eligible shifted, too. Kirkus had 42 titles, School Library Journal had 13, LJ’s “YA for Adults” had 3, Horn Book had 5, and Publishers Weekly had 16. Again, I’ll come back to these totals in future posts.

Within the five lists, there were no books which appeared on all five. Only one book saw itself on four of the lists, and that was Eleanor & Park. It did not make the “Best YA for Adults” list by SLJ, though Rowell’s other book, Fangirl, did make that list.

There were five books which appeared on three lists, eleven books which appeared on two lists, and a total of thirty-eight books which appeared on one list.

The bulk of this year’s “best of” titles only showed up on one list.

“Best of” Titles by Book Format


This year seemed to be the year of novels with a twist to their format, and I think that some of the data on the “best of” list reflects that. Though this, too, is interesting to compare to last year’s list. Were there any verse novels this year? What about books told with a graphic-hybridization? What about sketches or illustrations that weren’t quite at graphic novel style or what about those mixed media projects?

It’s not surprising that standard novels made up the majority of format for storytelling. Forty-nine of the books on this list were your average novel (which isn’t a means of degrading novels as “average,” but rather suggesting they aren’t doing anything noteworthy in format). There were three novels this year that included some kind of illustrative element to them that stood out, including Maggot Moon, Winger, and The War Within These Walls. There was on graphic novel hybrid with Chasing Shadows, one mixed media novel with In The Shadow of Blackbirds, and one short story collection, Midwinterblood.

There were no novels in verse represented this year.

Diversity and “Best Of” Lists


Two topics I wanted to look at within the “best of” lists included representation of LGBTQ and POC. Again, standard disclaimers that I haven’t read all of these books, and I pulled data from my own research (as well as the linked-to blog post above from Malinda Lo).

First, let’s talk about LGBTQ and the “best of” lists. How many stories featured characters whose sexuality was discussed or a major part of the book? I’m looking strictly at the books and stories, rather than authors, because it’s challenging to make that determination and, I think, unfair to make it, too.

Five Books featured characters who identified as LGBTQ. These books were:

  • More Than This by Patrick Ness
  • The Sin-Eater’s Confession by Ilsa J. Bick
  • Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan
  • Winger by Andrew Smith (minor character)
  • Zero Fade by Chris L. Terry

What about books written by or featuring people of color? This one is easier to make a determination of when it comes to author, so I’m breaking this town into two data sets: by author and by character in a book. Remember there are 55 authors and 62 main characters represented.

Authors who are POC on the “Best of” lists: 8. I did include Myers twice in the count, since he had two different books on the list.

Main characters who are POC on the “Best of” lists: 10, with one story featuring a secondary character who is a POC.

Those authors and books (some of which are written by a POC about a POC) are:

  • Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell 
  • Zero Fade by Chris L. Terry
  • Invasion by Walter Dean Myers 
  • Golden Boy by Tara Sullivan
  • Death, Dickinson, and the Demented Life of Frencie Garcia by Jenny Torres-Sanchez
  • Darius & Twig by Walter Dean Myers 
  • Champion by Marie Lu
  • The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson
  • The Counterfeit Family of Vee Crawford-Wong by L Tam Howard
  • A Moment Comes by Jennifer Bradbury
  • Chasing Shadows by Swati Avasthi
  • Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina

Country of Origin and “Best of” Lists

I wanted to round up today’s post and data by looking at something I did not look at last year, which is the country of origin of the author. Do authors who aren’t from the US fair well on our “best of” lists? Do they tend to do better than US authors?

I’ve got three categories for this data: US born and still living in the US; foreign born and foreign living; and I have a small number of US ex-pats. Here’s the breakdown:

Of the 55 authors represented on the “best of” lists, 40 were from and still living in the US. A total of 12 were foreign born and foreign living, and three were born in the US and now living in a foreign country. 
There’s not anything to conclude with this information, but it’s interesting to see there is a fair representation of non-US authors on the list. The bulk were located in the UK, Canada, and Australia. 
***
Any thoughts on the data so far? Surprises? Non-surprises? 
Tomorrow there will be another post, this time looking at a number of other factors, including date of publication for the books on the lists, the spread of publishers represented on the list, and more. I’ll talk about the way this year’s “best of” lists compare to last year’s on Thursday, since there are some interesting trends in the books on these lists. 
Even if no conclusions can be made, it is always fascinating to see what a year in books looks like and what it is we define as “the best” in a year (and it’s equally or more fascinating to see what’s not included).

Editing to add that Malinda Lo has some really great observation and commentary about LGBTQ as represented on this year’s “Best of” lists. Go check it out.

“Best of” 2012 Lists Revisited: How Do YALSA’s “Best of” Lists Compare?

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Back in December, I did a huge post looking at the annual trade review journal “best of” lists, looking at a number of different elements of those books. After looking at those numbers, I was curious to see what and how there were any worthwhile comparisons to make against YALSA’s annual award and selection lists, including the 2013 Printz, Morris, Best Fiction for Young Adults (BFYA) and Quick Picks (QP). So I did some more comparisons.

A few caveats before diving in: there were 89 titles on the “best of” lists. Those “best of” lists came from Horn Book, School Library Journal, Library Journal (which is not “best of” YA fiction, but best YA fiction for adult readers), Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly. I did not go back into those numbers and add the books that made an appearance on the Bulletin’s “best of,” which came out on January 1. You can read that list here.
I’ve stuck to looking at only the books on those “best of” looks when comparing to YALSA lists for a few reasons. The first is that it’s a small sample and it’s broad, especially in light of Kirkus choosing to name so many titles on their best of list (though note that their editor was a member of the Morris committee). The second is that both the BFYA list and the QP list allow for titles to appear that came out in part of the year prior — for BFYA, titles published September – December 2011 were eligible for this year’s list, and for QP, titles published July – December 2011 were eligible for this year’s list. By sticking to the “best of” 2012 lists, I know I’ve got just the 2012 titles. I’ve also only looked at fiction titles. 
Like in the prior post, information about starred reviews comes from Horn Book, SLJ, Booklist, PW, BCCB, and Kirkus. I’ve pulled that information from Whitney’s amazing roundup of starred reviews. This means that only books with two or more stars have those stars noted, though in the case of my first data set on BFYA/QP crossover titles, I looked up the books that had one starred review via Publishers Weekly’s roundup of starred reviews. 
This post is full of a lot of numbers and a lot of information. It isn’t meant to convey anything but that information. If you see any glaring mathematical errors, feel free to let me know, but I think it’s fairly solid.
So first and foremost, let’s talk just about the YALSA BFYA list and the QP list. I really like to think about those titles which make both the BFYA and the QP list because there’s something to be said about them — these are books that are not only highly appealing to teens, but these are books that are well-written and among the best of the best of fiction in that given year. 
There were a total of nine books that made both lists this year:
  • Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews (Abrams)*
  • Croak by Gina Damico (Houghton Mifflin)
  • Something Like Normal by Trish Doller (Bloomsbury)
  • Bad Boy by Dream Jordan (St Martins Griffin)
  • Island of Thieves by Josh Lacey (Houghton Mifflin)
  • I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga (Little Brown)**
  • This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers (St Martins Griffin)** 
  • The Final Four by Paul Volponi (Penguin/Viking)
  • Beneath a Meth Moon by Jacqueline Woodson (Penguin/Nancy Paulson)**
* indicates the title made the BFYA Top Ten
** indicates the title made the QP Top Ten
Of those ten titles, three were included among this year’s “best of” titles in the trade journals. Those were Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews (on Kirkus’s list) and Beneath a Meth Moon by Jacqueline Woodson (also on Kirkus’s list).  
In terms of starred reviews among these nine titles, here’s a handy chart:

Worth noting is that Andrews’s book (2 stars) and Woodson’s book (3 stars), as mentioned above, were included on “best of” trade journal lists. But, there were two titles earning more than one star and spots on both the BFYA and QP lists which were absent from any of the best of lists: This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers (2 stars and a Top Ten QP) and Final Four by Paul Volponi (3 stars and earned some discussion over at the Someday My Printz blog, which notes it had 4 stars — I’m assuming they’re talking about a VOYA “star” as the 4th).


I Hunt Killers got one starred review and earned a QP Top Ten spot.
I talked about format — hardcover vs paperback original — in my first post. Looking at these nine titles, I was curious whether there were any noteworthy things about that to tease out. And indeed!

This is obviously a very small sample size, but a full 1/3 of those overlapping titles were published as paperback originals. In the original data set, of the 89 “best of” titles, only 3 were paperback originals and 2 were split-runs. Taking them together, that would be 5 of the 89 books were paperback prints, amounting to roughly 6% of the total. Could there be something appealing about the paperback format for teen readers? Maybe.

The paperback originals, for anyone interested, were Croak, Bad Boy, and This is Not a Test.

Just for fun, here are debut novels making both BFYA and QP lists:

So again, 1/3 of those overlapping titles were debut novels. In the “best of” data, roughly 20% of the titles were debut novels. 
For the data nerds, why not also look at the release dates of these overlapping BFYA/QP titles, too? I did it in the original “best of” analysis. Note, as stated above, that because BFYA and QP allow for titles in the prior year to be considered for their current year’s list, these tend to weight more favorably toward earlier publication dates. In other words, books published between July and December for QP and those published between September and December for BFYA are less likely to appear than those published earlier in the year because they are eligible in the following year, as well.

Only four months were represented here: February (2), March (3), April (1), and June (3). Again, it’s a tiny sample but interesting to look at, especially in light of how the “best of” lists played out in the trade journals, where the books published in June actually represented the some of the FEWEST spots on the lists.

How about a little breakdown of what the BFYA list is itself composed of? There are a total of 112 titles by my math (the list says 102 titles, but I counted differently). I looked at both the titles published in the latter half of 2011 and those in 2012 — this data is inclusive of the entire list. Of those titles, what’s the breakdown of author gender?

Of the 115 authors — there are three books written by duos — here’s what it looks like:

That breaks down to 86 female authors and 29 male authors. 25% of the authors were male.

I also looked at the breakdown of series and stand alone novels. Caveat here: I did not include Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Drowned Cities nor Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity in the series count; Bacigalupi’s is a companion and Wein’s companion was named after the original title published, so I didn’t think it technically counted.

There were 86 stand alone titles and 26 titles that were part of a series in the BFYA list.

What about the breakdown of debut and more seasoned authors?

There were a total of 93 non-debut authors and a total of 29 debut authors on the BFYA list. The debut authors accounted for about 25% of the total list.

And data nerds looking for paperback original publications against hardcovers?

There were a total of 5 paperback originals — Beautiful Music for Ugly Children, Croak, Bad Boy, Speechless, and This is Not a Test.

When I originally did the paperback/hardcover/split run data for the “best of” list data, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe was a split run title. I found the paperback edition on Barnes and Noble (and hardcover on Amazon). Now I can only find the paperback as unavailable (without a date) on Barnes and Noble. It did have a date in Amazon as April availability and one in Target as a February availability for paperback. I have a feeling the paperback release date for April will be of a reprint edition of the original paperback, but this time with the awards on the cover — in other words, they will do a more formalized paperback run this go around than when they did the split run. I’ve included it as the single split run title in this data for consistency’s sake.

There were a total of 106 hardcovers.

The last data I looked at for the BFYA was what publishers were represented. This chart is harder to read, so I’ll pull out the interesting bits below.

I compressed all of the imprints into their respective houses in this data, so Tor/St Martins Press/FSG and so forth are all beneath Macmillan. Note that Hachette refers to Little Brown Books for Young Readers. Random House had the most BFYA titles, with 14 represented. Following Random House was Macmillan, with 12 titles, then Penguin and Harper with 11 each. Candlewick held its own with 8 titles.

Since looking at the overlapping BFYA/QP titles and then the BFYA titles alone wasn’t enough, I decided to dive into the QP titles individually. There are a few important caveats: I did not look at the non-fiction titles on QP. I also did not include books that were on the list as a series — so, the Chris Lynch books, the Megan Atwood books, and the “Travel Team” series were off limits. This was done to save sanity and level the playing field in terms of data. All told, I looked at 46 QP titles.

Of those 46 QP titles, how did gender play out? There were 47 authors total, due to a writing duo.*

There were 18 male authors and 29 female. This breaks down into 38% of the authors being male. Compare that to the 25% ratio for BFYA books.

Another interest data set for the QP titles was the paperback and hardcover breakdown.

There were 12 paperback originals of the 46 total. That’s a much larger percentage than BFYA, and I would think much due in part to the Orca books represented on the list (more on that in a second).

How about the debut authors and the more seasoned writers?

There were 38 non-debut authors and 9 debuts. 19% of the authors were debut for the QP list. This is a smaller percentage than those on the BFYA list. Part might be in due to the Morris award titles on BFYA, which will be discussed further below.

And because now I’ve set the bar high, here’s how those QP titles break down by publisher. Note that Hachette refers to Little Brown Books for Young Readers. Again, imprints have been collapsed into their bigger houses.

It’s hard to read, but far and away, Macmillan had the most titles on the QP list, with 9 titles. The next closest was Penguin, with 5 titles total. Orca, which specializes in high appeal titles, made a good showing here as well. Most of their titles are paperback originals, as noted above. They had 4 titles on the QP list.

***
Now that I’ve looked at the data for those BFYA/QP overlapping titles, as well as those lists individually, let’s look at some other numbers. In this round, I only looked at the books which were among the 89 titles represented in the trade journal “best of” lists. All of the caveats and notes regarding where that information came from is at the top of this post. 
First, the Morris Finalists — Wonder Show, After the Snow, Love and Other Perishable Items, The Miseducation of Cameron Post and Award winner Seraphina.
  • These titles earned a combined total of 15 starred reviews. Seraphina earned 6, followed by 4 for Cameron Post, 3 for After the Snow, and one star each for Wonder Show and Love and Other Perishable Items. 
  • These titles earned a total of 8 “best of” list placements. Again, Seraphina took the lead with three, followed by Cameron Post with 2, and one place each for the remaining titles.
  • Seraphina was named a BFYA top ten book. 
  • Two of the titles did not make the BFYA list at all: After the Snow and Love and Other Perishable Items. Worth noting, though, that Love is eligible for next year. After the Snow is not. 
  • None of these books were on the QP list. Only one is eligible next year. 
How about the Printz honors and winner? Those titles earning honors were Dodger, Code Name Verity, The White Bicycle, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, and the winner was In Darkness. 
  • These titles earned a combined total of 16 starred reviews. Dodger and Code Name Verity each earned 6 starred reviews. Both Aristotle and Dante and In Darkness earned two starred reviews each. White Bicycle is no where to be found, except for a single review written for Booklist by the Booklist consultant to the Printz committee. 
  • These titles earned a total of 12 “best of” list placements. Code Name Verity took top honors with 5, followed by Dodger on three, and two “best of” placements each for Aristotle and Dante and In Darkness. Again, no White Bicycle to be found. 
  • Code Name Verity, Dodger, and Aristotle and Dante were all named BFYA Top Ten titles. In Darkness earned a spot on the BFYA, as well. There is no White Bicycle to be found on the BFYA list, but it is eligible for next year’s list.
  • White Bicycle is the only paperback original. It’s the third book in a series of stand alone titles. It’s from a small Canadian press. 
  • None of these books were on the QP list. Only one is eligible next year: The White Bicycle. 
Let’s look broader now at the 89 “best of” titles and how they did when it came to earning spots on this year’s BFYA list. First, every single one of the BFYA Top Ten titles was on at least one “best of” list. I wanted to make a nice chart for this, but I can’t get it to work out like I want to, so more bullet points ahead.

  • Of the 89 total “best of” titles, 48 went on to earn a spot on BFYA. Now again, some will be eligible next year. Of the books that did not earn a spot on BFYA this year, 15 are eligible next year. Those are Son, Summer of the Mariposas, Love and Other Perishable Items, The Crimson Crown, Assassin’s Curse, Reached, The FitzOsbornes at War, Vessel, Pinned, Stormdancer, Be My Enemy, Broken Lands, This is Not Forgiveness, Passenger, and Passion Blue.
  • Of the titles on the “best of” lists and on BFYA, a combined 36 starred reviews were earned and a total of 36 starred reviews were earned and a total of 24 “best of” list spots were earned. Code Name Verity, The Raven Boys, and Seraphina earned six starred reviews each, followed by 4 starred reviews for Never Fall Down, 3 each for The Diviners and Every Day, and 2 starred reviews for the remaining titles, Aristotle and Dante, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Enchanted, and Boy21. In terms of appearances on “best of” lists, Code Name Verity earned 5 spots, followed by four for The Diviners, 3 each for The Raven Boys, Seraphina, and Every Day, 2 for Aristotle and Dante, and one list spot for each of the remaining titles.
  • Of the “best of” titles, only three of the 89 made the QP list. Those were Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Beneath a Meth Moon, and Girl of Nightmares (which was absent from BFYA all together). 
Another interesting note in terms of the BFYA/QP lists I wanted to point out: at the teen feedback session for BFYA that I sat in on, the teens talked a lot about how much they loved Jennifer E. Smith’s book The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight. It is absent from both the BFYA list and the QP list. It’s not eligible next year. 
I’m sure there are a million other ways to slice and dice this data. I could look at release dates and list making. I could look at genre or debut status across “best of” lists and the BFYA/QP lists. It’d be interesting to see what the starred reviews looked like for all of the BFYA/QP titles. But I think with what’s up here, there’s plenty to think about and chew on. And I’ll bring it all back to this: different “best of” lists look at entirely different things. It’s fascinating to me how titles which make both the BFYA and QP list and earn starred reviews can be missing entirely from the “best of” trade journal lists. Likewise, it’s fascinating that titles that were Morris honors can be absent from BFYA entirely, too. 
Were there any surprises here? Any additional thoughts? I’d love to hear.

* Worth noting — Andrew Karre pointed out to me a couple additional things worth noting here. Some of the QP authors may be using pseudonyms, so my numbers here on debuts and gender are based on my looking up the names as they are and my most educated guessing in some instances. Likewise, Orca, Darby Creek, and Saddleback titles come out as “simos,” meaning in paperback and library hardcover editions. I left the data as it is in terms of hardcover and paperback, since library hardcovers aren’t generally sold to the general public (whereas you can more readily purchase the paperback at an online retailer). 

“Best of 2012 YA” List Breakdown, Part 2

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Last year on The Hub, I broke down the “best of” lists into a number of different factors. Yesterday, I revisited that post with this year’s “Best of” lists.* I looked at the following: authors by gender, debut authors vs. non-debut authors, gender of debut authors, genres representation in the “best of” lists, as well as the frequency by which books appeared on “best of” lists. But because I am an overachiever and love looking at data, I didn’t stop with what I posted there. I looked at several additional factors within the “best of” lists. I’ve again included a graphs for your viewing pleasure. 
I documented the titles appearing on Horn Book, School Library Journal, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly‘s “best of” lists. Last year, I did not include information from Library Journal, but I have decided to include it this year (though note that Library Journal’s “best of” list for YA titles is called Best Young Adult Literature for Adults).
There are a number of important comments to make before showing off the data. First, I limited myself to fiction titles only. They’re easier to track information about. I did not include graphic novels nor short story collections — this disqualified only 5 titles from my list. Likewise, I ensured all titles were marketed for young adults, age 12 and older. I verified all information through Edelweiss, and in the small number of titles unavailable to find on Edelweiss, I relied on Amazon and/or trade journal reviews. All genre categorizations are based on my own knowledge/reading of a title, or they’re based upon the most common terms in Edelweiss. I collapsed many genres together for simplicity. This is the most subjective portion of the breakdown, and it is further explained beneath that data set.
There are a total of 89 titles and 90 authors being considered in the data. 
All starred ratings come from six sources: The Horn Book, Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books (BCCB). I verified starred ratings through Youth Services Corner’s very current and accurate list. BCCB does not produce their “best of” list until January 1, so it will be interesting to see where their picks line up. Worth noting, too, is that Kirkus’s “best of” list this year included 100 teen titles, up from 42 last year. At the time of posting, there is yet a “best of” list from Booklist.

Fair warning: this post is long, but it is graphic-filled. Because I think these “best” lists are a nice slice of a year in the book world, looking at them numerically is fascinating — but note that nothing here is conclusive or proof of anything. These are all my thoughts and musings on the data. Also worth noting is this is my math and while I am confident in my statistical skills, I’m also human. There is a chance there are errors, and I accept responsibility for that. I’m hopeful there are not though. 

The first thing I wanted to look at was whether books that published in the first half of the year — January through June — were represented on “best of” lists with more or less frequency than those that published in the second half of the year — July through December. This is of interest just in terms of access to titles, as well as the lasting impact of titles. If a book was good in January, is it still good compared to everything else published in the year? Or do books that were published in December get overlooked inadvertently? Last year, there was a slight preference toward books published in the second half of the year. What about this year?

There isn’t a huge difference in release dates and appearance on the “best of” lists, though this year’s numbers show a preference for titles published in the first half of the year. There were a total of 48 titles on these lists published January through July and 41 published between July and December. 

For kicks, I broke it down even further. Here’s when books on the “best of” lists were published this year:

Though they’re fairly evenly distributed, books published in the summer and in the late fall/early winter saw fewer titles on the “best of” lists. September had the most books published that ended up on “best of” lists.

I looked at debut novelists yesterday in the post at The Hub, but I thought it would be interesting to see whether or not there was a better month to be a debut novelist. So, here are when the 18 debut novels that ended up on “best of” lists were published:



March and August had the highest showing of debut novel publications that then went onto “best of” lists. There were no debut novels published in May or November that went on to “best” lists, despite May being a bigger month for non-debut novels which ended up on a list. It’s pretty even in terms of first and second half of the year publication dates and appearance on a list.

I’m not done with debut novel analytics yet, though. I noted in my post yesterday a couple of important facts: first, the Kirkus “best of” list contained 100 titles (which were then judiciously weeded by me for the purposes of data gathering), which was a significant number. Second, and maybe more interesting to me, was the fact the editor of Kirkus’s “best of” list is a member of this year’s Morris Awards committee. All of the Morris finalists are on that list, as well as a number of other debut novels. I was curious if, seeing the length of the list and knowing some of the editor’s own reading over the year, there would be more debut novelists on one awards list, as opposed to others. 

Roughly 20% of all “best of” titles are debut novels.

For this data, I counted the number of “best of” titles from each list, then I counted up the number of those titles which were debuts. Enter some division, and I came up with the percentages of each list were made up of debut novels:

The blue bar is the total number of selected titles, with the yellow bar being the debut novels selected. I tried to make this graph interactive, but that didn’t work well with Blogger, so apologies! 

The raw numbers are as such: School Library Journal selected 4 debuts out of a total of 20 titles (20%); Kirkus selected 16 out of a possible 82 titles (19.5%); Library Journal selected 1 out of a possible 8 titles (12.5%); Publishers Weekly selected 1 out of 11 titles (9%); and finally, Horn Book did not pick any debuts for their “best of” list (0%). This was surprising — I expected the highest percentage to come from Kirkus but it did not. It was neat how Kirkus and School Library Journal, though, selected an almost identical percentage of debut novels for their “best of” lists as there were debut novels in all of the lists together. 

What was the distribution of books that were part of a series and those that were stand alone titles? Were there more series or stand alones?:



Personally, I’m thrilled to see so much stand alone love. There were a total of 53 stand alone titles and 36 series titles. In determining what was and was not a stand alone, I did not include Code Name Verity with the series category, despite there being a companion in the works — the book was originally a stand alone title. Books like The Drowned Cities, though, were includes in the series category. That choice was because it is labeled as “Shipbreaker #2.”

Which leads naturally to the next data set, which is where series books fell within a series. Were first in a series or last in a series more likely to make a “best of” list? Or were middle books the real winners here?

It wasn’t entirely surprising to see most of the “best of” series titles were either the start of a series or the conclusion to one. There were 6 middle titles — which I defined as anything between the first and last, regardless of the number of books in the series. Within the last in series category, I did include sequels when a series only included two books (like Such Wicked Intent and Girl of Nightmares, neither of which I could find definitive information about a future installment). There was one prequel to a series, and I marked The Drowned Cities as a companion title, rather than as a straight sequel or final in a series.

I’m always curious if earning starred reviews means that books have any more chance of appearing on a “best of” list. In other words, if a book earned 6 starred reviews, is it more likely to show up on multiple “best” lists? I don’t know if there is any connection or not, though there does tend to be a likelihood that titles on a “best of” list will have earned stars from that publication (many of the “best” titles on Kirkus’s list earned starred reviews from Kirkus — and in many cases, those titles only earned stars from Kirkus).

Before that, let’s look at the distribution of starred titles. In other words, how many of the 89 books earned 6 stars vs. no stars at all:



The bulk of books earned only one starred review, followed by books earning either two or three stars. There was a good chunk of books that didn’t earn any starred reviews at all. 

Does this translate, then, to frequency of a book’s appearance on a “best of” list? In other words, do books with more stars show up more often? Maybe. 



The chart should be fairly self-explanatory, but just in case: the bottom labels indicate how many books earned that number of starred reviews (so there were six books that each earned 6 starred reviews). Stacked above are then the number of lists those books appeared on. So of the books with 6 starred reviews, only 1 fell on all 5 “best of” lists — that’s Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity. There were then 2 books with six starred reviews that fell on four “best of” lists and 3 books with six starred reviews each that fell on three “best of” lists. 

The heavy majority of books earned placement on one “best” list, and they all happened to be one starred titles (and also Kirkus picks — though not always). Kirkus was the only journal to put all of the books without a single starred review on their “best” list. 

Here’s the raw data on that chart (you can blow this up to see it better):

Before delving into a couple other very data-heavy topics, I wanted to look at an easier one to graph (but one that’s so interesting to me, nonetheless). That’s publication type. In other words, are books that come out in hardcover more likely to appear on a list than books that come out as paperback originals? And what about split runs? Split runs have started becoming a thing at Simon and Schuster specifically, as Hannah Moskowitz talks about here. If you don’t click over, a split run is when a book comes out both in paperback and hardcover at the same time.



Here’s where visual data isn’t always the best. There were 84 books on the “best” lists published in hardcover. There were three paperback originals — A Breath of Eyre, Street Dreams, and The Assassin’s Curse. All three earned one star from Kirkus and all three only appeared on Kirkus’s “best” list. There were two split run titles — Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe and The Chaos. The first appeared on two “best of” lists and earned two starred reviews, while the second appeared on one “best of” list and earned three starred reviews.

Worth noting, both titles are from Simon and Schuster. Also of interest is that the first title features an LBGTQ storyline and the second features a POC as the main character. Simon and Schuster’s split run on Hannah Moskowitz’s Gone Gone Gone comes from an LGBTQ story line and the other title of theirs I know has a split run is Mindi Scott’s Live Through This, a solid contemporary title. If there are others, please let me know. There is something interesting in their choices for what will be split, what goes straight hardcover and what is straight to paperback.

This data shows that hardcovers are, by far, the most frequent types of books to appear on “best of” lists.

I blogged earlier this year about how there are far more publishers out there than just the Big 6 (well, the soon to be Big 5). So I thought I’d take a look at the individual publishers represented on “best” lists, and I’ll follow it up with a breakdown of the publishers represented by their being either a Big 6 or a non-Big 6. I’ve collapsed all imprints within their bigger house.

I put the Big 6 up first, and it’s clear they take up much of the list space, but there are plenty of mid- to small- publishers represented, too. Here’s an actual breakdown of the Big 6 against every other publisher on the lists:


I think it is neat that non-Big 6 publishers are taking up more than 1/3 of the lists, actually. I love, too, how Candlewick has four books represented — for what it’s worth, I think Candlewick is consistently putting out some of the best stuff. I won’t list those titles here because they will all be searchable in the spreadsheet linked at the end of the post.

There’s not a pretty graph for this next data set, which is something I was simply curious about. I’ll include the spreadsheet screen cap, though. I was interested in seeing what information I could find on print runs of titles that appeared on “best of” lists. This information, I should warn, isn’t always accurate or true (for a number of reasons) but I was able to track down quite a few print runs on titles appearing on the list. I then looked at the genre of the books those runs were associated with, as well as the gender of the author. I wanted to know if there was anything between size of print run, gender, genre, and appearances on “best of” lists and earned starred reviews. I think the data sample is too small to make correlations, and the accuracy is speculative, but it’s interesting nonetheless. I’m not going to interpret this information.

Because of space issues and screen capping, I could not get the column labels in with all 26 titles I was able to look at this information for. So, the columns, left to right, are PRINT RUN, LIST APPEARANCES, STARS EARNED, GENDER OF AUTHOR, and GENRE (as defined in my post at The Hub yesterday).

You’re not misreading this. There were books with 500,000 first printings and 200,000 first printings. If you look at my spreadsheet, you can see what they were. But just looking at the additional information in this image should allow you to ferret it out pretty well.

Are you still with me here? This post is never ending because there are a million ways to look at data. But this is the last big thing I wanted to look at, and it’s one in which I admit up front is subjective, that will be riddled with arguments, and in which I show my own ignorance because of my reading this year.

That is representation of POC. I looked at the books that feature POC either as main characters or supporting characters, as well as books written by authors who were of color. I haven’t read all of these, and I am not intimately familiar with all of these authors. I asked for help in some of these. So what I am about to say in terms of numbers is possibly understating it. I do not think I am overstating it, though. But to be fair, I was loose in applying “supporting” characters. Basically, if a book described a supporting character’s race or ethnicity with some detail, it was fair game. Again, I collapsed book characters in with authors, so this number is the combination of the two; I did not double dip and count instances where the author was of color AND their character was, too.

Of 89 books, with 90 authors, I found instances of POC in 22 books/authors. Let’s take the bigger number of authors (90) and do a little math (22 total books/authors): 24%. Almost a quarter of the books on this list. I won’t say whether that’s great or whether it’s not great because I speak from a place of privilege as a white woman. But I am thrilled to see these books getting recognition because these authors and characters? They represent the teens I work with.

One more thing about this particular stat I wanted to note. But before I do that, go read this post on YALSA’s The Hub about whitewashing of book covers and then follow it up with this thoughtful response from Diana Peterfreund.

I’d love to do a breakdown of covers on these award lists and see what is and is not trending. But I simply can’t after looking at all of these numbers. So I did the next best thing. I created two Pinterest boards with just the covers. You can look at them here and here. Looking through those quickly, I found a total of 14 covers featuring a POC pretty obviously (I include Vaunda Nelson’s No Crystal Stair in that count, if you’re wondering). That’s roughly 16% of the total covers.

Again, all of the data above comes from my breaking down of “best of” lists, especially with the context this represents a year of published YA books. You better believe I’ll be revisiting this list when the Printz awards are announced. If you want to see my raw data — and I warn you it is messy and at times, inconsistent in how it’s spelled out, though it is very thorough — you can look at my spread sheets here. I do hope someone goes through those covers I shared on Pinterest and does a post on them. Some suggested interesting things to look at: body parts on covers (eyes and hands especially), girls and guys on covers, and original art vs the use of stock images.

I think there are some interesting title trends worth noting, too, but I’ll be brief because this post has a lot of information in it and it’s getting excessively long.

Three Word Titles: There are 25, if you consider Catch & Release a three word title. Here’s the list, if you’re curious.

  • Code Name Verity 
  • Ask the Passengers
  • No Crystal Stair
  • The Raven Boys
  • The Drowned Cities
  • Keeping the Castle
  • A Certain October
  • The Good Braider
  • Never Fall Down
  • Second Chance Summer
  • Girl of Nightmares
  • Call the Shots
  • The Crimson Crown
  • The Assassin’s Curse
  • After the Snow
  • Don’t Turn Around
  • A World Away
  • The Obsidian Blade
  • Throne of Glass
  • Be My Guest
  • The Broken Lands
  • Such Wicked Intent
  • A Million Suns
  • A Troublesome Boy
  • Catch & Release

Titles That Sound Like Band Names (*And One Is): There is The List, The Disenchantments (which is the name of the band in the book), The Chaos and The Diviners.

Single Word Titles: There are 15 this year. Here’s a list!

  • Double
  • Passenger
  • Boy21
  • Pandemonium
  • Shadowfell
  • Stormdancer
  • Enchanted
  • Pinned
  • Seraphina
  • Vessel
  • Reached
  • Above
  • Cinder
  • Son
  • Bitterblue
  • Dodger

Easily Confused Titles: Let’s meditate on Between You & Me and The Difference Between You and Me for a second.

Negative Connotations: There are a ton of titles that give a negative connotation this year. I’m being very liberal in use, simply because I’ve been reading and rereading the same 89 titles for weeks now. But take a look at The FAULT in Our Stars, The MISEDUCATION of Cameron Post, In DARKNESS, Such WICKED Intent, Love and Other PERISHABLE Items, and so forth.

Gendered Titles: It’s interesting when you see gendered terms in titles and when you read them together the impression you get. So, for the female side, there’s Dust Girl, The Girl with Borrowed Wings, The Girl is Trouble, Mister Death’s Blue-Eyed Girls, Girl in the Clockwork Collar, Girl of Nightmares, Me & Earl & The Dying Girl, and The Brides of Rollrock Island. For the male side, there’s The Troublesome Boy, Sons of 613, Boy21, Confusion of Princes, Son, and The Raven Boys.

Royal and Divinely Inspired Titles: There are quite a few of them (and how many covers feature castles on them!)

  • The Diviners (subjectively, of course — objectively, not so much)
  • Keeping the Castle
  • Devine Intervention
  • The Crimson Crown
  • Throne of Glass
  • Confusion of Princes

Day and Night: There are seven titles that talk about moon, sun, day, stars, and darkness.

  • Beneath a Meth Moon
  • A Million Suns
  • In Darkness
  • Radiant Days
  • Have a Nice Day
  • Every Day
  • The Fault in Our Stars

How’s the Weather?: There are a couple mentions of weather, too. 
  • After the Snow
  • Stormdancer

A Matter of Location: We know where these stories take place.

  • Under the Never Sky
  • Above
  • Between You & Me
  • A World Away
  • Beneath a Meth Moon
Seasons, Months, and Colors: Note that the most popular season is summer and most popular color is blue. 
  • Passion Blue
  • Mister Death’s Blue-Eyed Girls
  • The Crimson Crown
  • Black Heart
  • Bitterblue
  • Second Chance Summer
  • Summer of the Mariposas
  • A Certain October

Objects, not People: Okay, I lied. I looked at covers and noted, too, that 17 of the covers did not sport a single person on them.

If you’re as thoroughly exhausted as me, kudos. This is a lot of information. It’s a lot of information without a lot of context, too, which is why it’s tough to read through and digest. It’s interesting, nonetheless. Does it mean much? Maybe or maybe not.

I suspect people could look at the spreadsheet and find a million more ways to interpret the data. It could be interesting to look at gender and starred reviews, for example. I so wanted to look at gender of character, but it was simply too tough to do — I ultimately chose to delete that column from my list because, not having read all of the books, it was too difficult and I couldn’t easily decide whether to count multiple perspective stories individually or collectively, etc. Maybe someone else can look at this. It’s been done before (if you haven’t read this post before, do it).

All that said, there are books I am absolutely shocked saw no “best” representation. I won’t name them for many reasons, but I’m wondering if other people noticed some obviously missing titles. If you have, feel free to drop the title in the comments. I’m curious, of course, if any of those titles might see their time on YALSA lists at the start of next year.

Any thoughts? Any surprises in the data? Lay it on me!

* For some reason the links are not working on my preview page. They may when this post goes live, but in the event they do not, here is yesterday’s post at The Hub. From there, you can see the links to last year’s post, as well as each of the review journal “best of” lists.

Thank you so much to Liz Burns, Sarah Thompson, and everyone else who helped me out in looking at and calculating the data, as well as suggesting things worth looking at. Any mistakes here are mine and mine alone.

2011 in Review: Kimberly’s Picks

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This was a good year for science fiction. On the SFF scale, I’ve always leaned more towards fantasy. Lately though, the YA fantasy field has been overcrowded with paranormal books (which really aren’t my thing). There just haven’t been many well-written books along the lines of Graceling (where the magic doesn’t occur in our own world). Science fiction is a different story. It started with the dystopia movement and I’m pleased to say it’s progressed beyond that subgenre to some straight-up old school scifi goodness. The trend continues beyond this year. I am very much looking forward to it.
All of that is to say there were some real standouts in science fiction this year. In fact, despite my deep and abiding love for all things dystopian, the standout sci fi novels weren’t dystopias. Of course, my favorite book of the year was a fantasy, and a paranormal one at that…
Best book of 2011: Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
No need to recap why – I’ve said it at least half a dozen times already.
There are a smattering of runners-up, and here is where the sci fi shines: Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan, A Long Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan (which I didn’t review, but Kelly did), and Tankborn by Karen Sandler. Karen Healey’s moving fantasy The Shattering and A. S. King’s literary novel Everybody Sees the Ants round out my top picks of the year.
Even the almost-great science fiction offerings were better than usual: Variant by Robison Wells, Divergent by Veronica Roth, and Ashes by Ilsa Bick all exceeded my expectations. Keep it up, authors. The science fiction field is so fertile for new and genuinely innovative stuff. I except to see some of that in 2012.
Book I most look forward to sharing in 2012: Cinder by Marissa Meyer
If Cinder is any indication, my wish for 2012 will be granted. Look for a review of this very early next year. I know it’s been getting a lot of buzz. It’s deserved.
Most anticipated sequel of 2012: Spark by Amy Kathleen Ryan (July) and the sequel to Daughter of Smoke and Bone (September) are neck and neck here. Insurgent (May) is a solid third, but I don’t feel the itch to get my hands on it like I do the others.
Most disappointing: Chime by Franny Billingsley & Dust and Decay by Jonathan Maberry
These two share the dubious honor in this category, but for very different reasons. Chime was almost the polar opposite of what I enjoy in a book, whereas Dust and Decay was well-written and exciting but too much of a rehash of the first book in the series to be in satisfying.
Cutest: Long Tail Kitty by Lark Pien
By a long shot. Is there anything cuter than this book? No, there is not. Dare I say it – it might be even cuter than some of your children. (This is a 2009 book, but I read it this year, so I’m including it.)
Best surprise: Clarity by Kim Harrington
I was so surprised – and pleased – by how much I enjoyed this mystery with a paranormal twist. Clare’s voice is among the best I read all year.
Book most in need of some judicious editing: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin
It had potential. When I’m at my most grandiose, I like to think I could have whipped this book into shape. And then I remember that writing and editing are always harder than they seem.