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So You Want to Read YA?: Guest Post by Heidi Zweifel (Middle School Librarian & blogger at YA Bibliophile)

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This week’s guest post comes from the blogger/librarian who actually inspired the first incarnation of this series, Heidi Zweifel. She’s a local-to-me middle school librarian who asked me simply where to tell teachers they should begin if they wanted to give reading YA a shot. 


Of course, I had to ask her to weigh in and round out the second batch of posts on this very topic. 


Heidi is a middle school library media specialist. She gets to spend her day with seventh and eighth graders so she never knows what to expect. The best part? Getting to talk about books with teens at least once a day! Heidi is passionate about reading and young adult literature. Her goal is to show her students that even if they don’t love reading they can find books that are interesting to them. Her passion of young adult literature is expressed on her blog YA Bibliophile. Follow her on twitter for ramblings on YA lit, pictures of her adorable nieces and nephew, and far, far too many tweets about nothing in particular.



When I think of how I fell in love with young adult literature it’s not individual books that come to mind. It’s authors. I’m the kind of obsessive reader who finds an author they love and must read everything that author has ever written right now. This was especially true when I first started reading YA. Below you’ll find a few of the authors that showed me YA lit can be smart and clever and not “speak down” to it’s readers. They showed me that books can tackle the real issues that teens deal with and not have an “after school special” feel They showed me that YA books can be fun and light or dark and twisted or some combination of the two and still be authentic. If you’re looking at trying out young adult literature I highly suggest you start with any thing by any of these authors.

John Green: If you’ve been to my blog or you follow me on twitter you probably know that I am a total John Green fangirl. He is my favorite author. Ever. I stumbled across An Abundance of Katherines at my local public library. It was on display in the teen section and I passed it up a couple times. The whole math aspect threw me. I am so not a math girl. After seeing it a few times I added it to my pile. Best. Decision. Ever. It was funny and clever and there were footnotes! Basically it was everything I wanted from a book. I eagerly snapped up Looking for Alaska and have impatiently waited for every new book from John Green since.

Holly Black: My first introduction to her writing was her Modern Faerie Tale series. I didn’t think I liked Faery books. Then I read Tithe.  I don’t think I have the words to express how Holly Black’s writing captured me. She is so incredibly talented. The storytelling and world building blew me away. Her books were also some of the first I read that were considered “edgy.” Let’s just say the faeries aren’t of the Tinkerbell variety!

Chris Crutcher: This man published his first YA book in 1983. His books have been being challenged ever since. Crutcher is a child psychologist and doesn’t shy away from addressing issues like abuse and racism. Because of this, censors find his books to be “too mature” for teens. I find them amazing. They typically feature sports in some way but I would not call them “sports books.” There is so much more going on. Deadline is a great place to start. Another favorite of mine is Whale Talk. But really, they’re all good!

Tamora Pierce: I randomly picked up Alanna: The First Adventure when I got my job as a middle school librarian. The cover was pretty unappealing and I wanted to read it to decide if I should order an updated copy or just get rid of the book. Over the next couple months I read every book ever written by Tamora Pierce. The worlds that she creates are fascinating and her characters are authentic and diverse. I recommend starting where I did with the Song of the Lioness quartet.

Sarah Dessen: Sarah is my go-to author for contemporary romance with a bit “more.” The public library is to thank for my introduction to her as well. The Truth About Forever was on display and the cover appealed to me. I couldn’t put it down. I loved the characters and the story. It just seemed like the people and places could be anyone, anywhere. I  love accessibility in a book! I also love that many of her books are set in the same fictional locations so we get glimpses of characters we’ve met before. Just Listen is my all time favorite of hers.

Other authors I read when new to YA lit: Lisa McMann, Melissa Marr, Robin McKinley, Scott Westerfeld, Maureen Johnson, and Meg Cabot.

July YA Debut Novels

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If you’re keeping tabs on the YA releases from first-time authors, here’s this month’s installment. All descriptions come from Worldcat, unless otherwise noted, and you can check out prior monthly installments on June’s post. 

I’ve tried to get them all, but if there are any traditionally-published, first-time novels for young adults out in July that I’ve missed, let us know in the comments. We’ve linked to relevant reviews, and we’ll update as we review novels throughout the year, as well. 

45 Pounds (More or Less) by K. A. Barson: When Ann decides that she is going to lose 45 pounds in time for her aunt’s wedding, she discovers that what she looks like is not all that matters.

After Eden by Helen Douglas: Eden, sixteen, must choose between helping Ryan, a time-traveler, and her best friend Connor who, according to Ryan, is about to become famous through a significant scientific discovery that will, ultimately ruin the world.

All Our Pretty Songs by Sarah McCarry: In the Pacific Northwest, the bond between two best friends is challenged when a mysterious and gifted musician comes between them and awakens an ancient evil. Kelly talked a little about this book in her post on empowering female sexuality. 

Contaminated by Em Garner: Velvet fights for her family’s survival after a widespread contamination turns a segment of the population, including her mother, into ultra-violent zombie-like creatures

OCD Love Story by Corey Ann Haydu: In an instant, Bea felt almost normal with Beck, and as if she could fall in love again, but things change when the psychotherapist who has been helping her deal with past romantic relationships puts her in a group with Beck–a group for teens with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Prep School Confidential by Kara Taylor: When Anne’s misbehavior sends her from her Upper East Side prep school to a prestigious boarding school outside of Boston, her only goal is to get back home until her roommate, Isabella, is murdered and Anne decides to find out what happened, whatever the cost.

Since You Asked by Maureen Goo: Fifteen-year-old Holly Kim, the copyeditor for her San Diego high school’s newspaper, accidentally submits a piece ripping everyone to shreds and suddenly finds herself the center of unwanted attention–but when the teacher in charge of the paper asks her to write a regular column her troubles really start.

Some Quiet Place by Kelsey Sutton: Seventeen-year-old Elizabeth Caldwell sees, rather than feels, emotions; they’re beings who walk among us. The only emotion who engages with her now is Fear, and he’s as desperate as Elizabeth is to figure out how she became this way. 

Starglass by Pheobe North: For all of her sixteen years, Terra has lived on a city within a spaceship that left Earth five hundred years ago seeking refuge, but as they finally approach the chosen planet, she is drawn into a secret rebellion that could change the fate of her people.

The Theory of Everything by Kari Luna: When fourteen-year-old Sophie Sophia journeys to New York with a scientific boy genius, a Kerouac-loving bookworm, and a giant shaman panda guide, she discovers more about her visions, string theory, and a father who could be the key to an extraordinary life.

Vigilante Nights by Erin Richards: His beloved twin dead, his future destroyed, Lucas forms a vigilante posse to take revenge on the gang members responsible. Can his new love, and his sister’s voice from beyond death, stop Lucas from self-destruction?

The Theory of Everything by Kari Luna

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Fourteen-year-old Sophie Sophia and her mother just moved from San Francisco to the small town of Havencrest, Illinois (roughly 50 miles north of Chicago) after spending the bulk of their lives in Brooklyn, New York. Sophie is obsessed with eighties music, with dressing however the heck she feels like, and with figuring out what happened to her father.

Sophie’s super-smart, passionate, and strange physicist dad disappeared just a few years ago, and that’s what set her and her mother off on this series of cross-country moves. It was less about getting away and more about finding. Finding themselves. Finding a way through the grief. Finding a way to build something new.

It doesn’t take long before Sophie’s made herself a new friend in her physics class named Finny. But it also doesn’t take long before she starts being visited by her shaman Panda named Walt. Is Sophie crazy or can these trips to a parallel world full of spiritually-guiding pandas be the way to find and connect with her long-long father?

The Theory of Everything is an enjoyable read, but it won’t be one of my favorites. I certainly see how it’s been compared to books like Going Bovine or even The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but I think it falls short of being a strong read alike to either of those titles. In many ways, Luna’s debut novel fails to fully form Sophie as a memorable character in and of herself, which both Bray’s novel and Chbosky’s do. Much of what makes Sophie a character are the things surrounding her, rather than who she is in and of herself. More than that, she’s hard to buy as a 14-year-old with the sort of knowledge and wisdom she has in consideration of the larger story, and secondary characters throughout the novel don’t blossom beyond certain tropes.

The bulk of Luna’s novel is realistic — it’s about Sophie learning to cope with big changes in her life. She’s recently moved, and now she has to learn to fit into a small town where she is, of course, under the belief she’ll be the only eccentric girl there who loves 80s music and funky clothes because no one in a small town has any culture to them. While I buy that belief wholeheartedly, especially given that Sophie is from Brooklyn and spent time in San Francisco, I took issue with her obsession with 80s music. I know I’ve blogged before, but in many ways, the trend of having characters who love anything 80s or setting a book in the 80s for the music/pop culture rings false to me. It reads more like authorial nostalgia than it does character development or authenticity. Do teens today like 80s music? Maybe some do. But as someone who was born in the mid-80s myself and who tries to stay moderately up-to-date in pop culture, a lot of the references or significance of this stuff is completely lost on me. I think we aren’t quite yet removed enough from this era to see it or appreciate it for what it is in that historical context. I think in the case of Sophie, it wasn’t so much about her character being a fan of the music. It felt more like a way for her character to be unique, which I didn’t like. She had plenty of other qualities inherent to her character to do that for her.

Almost immediately in the story, Sophie befriends Finny in her physics class. Both geek out about string theory and the notion of parallel worlds, among other things. They’re best pals quickly, and Sophie opens up to him about the real things going on in her life, including why she’s living in Havencrest. Finny, on the other hand, gives almost nothing to Sophie — maybe because Sophie is a little self-absorbed she misses it, but I think that in many respects, Finny just isn’t a full character. What we know about him is that he’s gay and he’s easily convinced to skip school and hop a train with Sophie for a whirlwind adventure in Brooklyn to look for her father. We learn later on he’s the type of person who can establish relationships quickly, period, as he does just that with the new woman in Sophie’s father’s life. I wish he’d been a lot more developed because he was interesting. I wondered about his own life in small town Illinois, about what it was like for him to be gay in that situation, and I wondered, too, if he had any friends besides Sophie. In many ways, Finny felt like simply the gay sidekick in the story.

The Theory of Everything isn’t entirely realistic though — at least, it might not be. What makes Sophie truly unique is that she often falls into a parallel world, where she’s greeted by a shaman panda named Walt. He is friendly with her and he assures her many times that things are going to be okay.

The thing about these episodes Sophie experiences, though, is that they’re the same episodes her own father used to experience. They’re the same kinds of episodes that would happen and cause him to disappear for days at a time and to raise worries with her mother and his other loved ones. These moments of disconnecting with the real world and falling deeply into this made up one were the real reason he disappeared and never came back, as well as why Sophie and her mother left Brooklyn.

What makes Luna’s book go the magical realism direction, though, is that it’s possible these episodes aren’t a method of coping nor a mental illness. They could all be explained by physics in some capacity. Are there parallel worlds we can fall into? If so, how can we do that? If parallel worlds exist, are Sophie and her father both capable of entering and exiting them in as much a physical way as they are able to enter them in a mental way. Sophie can bring objects back with her from her episodes, only making these questions tougher to answer.

There is a lot of suspension of disbelief necessary for the story beyond the episodes. Sophie and Finny run off to Brooklyn together without either of their parents becoming too concerned — and remember, they’re 14. There’s also a really underdeveloped and somewhat random romantic interest given to Sophie mere days after her move, and the guy stays patient and understanding with her, despite the fact she flakes out on him more than once. So there is a “love story” here in terms of a romance, but it’s shallow and secondary; the real “love story” might instead be to family.

The ending is a bit unsatisfying, as I’m not sure it draws any conclusions or further considerations for Sophie beyond giving her closure in the understanding that sometimes, there simply is not closure (which is a fair takeaway for her and for the reader, even if I don’t necessarily like it).

Writing-wise, there’s nothing particularly memorable here. It suits the story, and it doesn’t get bogged down. My only qualm might be that it felt like there was too much trying to be crammed in in an attempt to give Sophie a quirkiness that she didn’t need to have because it already existed within her — starting with her name.

Despite the fact this wasn’t one of my favorite reads in recent memory, those looking for something different and fun, despite the heavier themes of grief and mental illness, will likely appreciate The Theory of Everything. I can see readers who like Natalie Standiford’s brand of quirk in How to Say Goodbye in Robot or Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters finding this a satisfying read, as would those readers who want their stories with a little bit of science-fantasy. Likewise, readers who like A. S. King’s magical realism, particularly Everybody Sees the Ants, will likely find this a great read alike. There’s probably a lot to be discussed among the two when it comes to mental illness and coping mechanisms.

Review copy received from the author. The Theory of Everything is available now. 

Twitterview: Phoebe North

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This month’s twitterview guest is Phoebe North, debut author of Starglass, which had its book birthday yesterday! She’s here to discuss her inspiration for the story, world-building, tired SF tropes, and more. You can read more about North and Starglass at her website, and enter to win a copy of the book at the end of the interview.

Pitch Starglass in 140 characters or fewer.

One girl’s coming-of-age on a spaceship where, to survive their 500 year journey, the inhabitants have lived dramatically constrained lives.

What inspired you to write the book?

It started as a grad school assignment, an SF retelling of James Joyce’s “Eveline.” Revisited it years later and it ballooned from there!

You describe the ship’s society as “casually Jewish” (vs. casually Christian). How much did your own background influence this decision?

Quite a bit! My mother (a Fineberg herself) was raised Orthodox Jewish. I am fascinated by the line between religion and culture in Judaism.

How would you describe Terra?

Terra Fineberg can’t get a break. Her mom’s dead, her dad’s a mess, and she’s terribly lonely. But she’s got a secret strength inside her.

The world the Asherah is traveling toward is called Zehava. What’s the meaning behind this name?

Hebrew for “gold.” It’s a Goldilocks planet: not too hot, not too cold. Just right for a human colony–or so they hope!

What about Asherah?

Semitic sky goddess who may have been the consort of god and the Queen of Heaven to the pre-exile Hebrew people.

What was the most fun part of writing the book?

Kissing scenes! And anything involving Mara Stone. I love that little grumpy botanist with all my heart.

Starglass is your debut novel. How long was its journey from idea to publication?

Long! I started the draft in 2010, but the first seed was in a short story written in 2008, and there were four failed novels between.

I loved reading the extra world-building info on your website. What other YA books would you recommend to teens for their world-building?

A Confusion of Princes by Garth Nix! SO GOOD. Also the Earthseed novels by Pamela Sargent and John Christopher’s Tripod books.

What about other books about generation ships?

Beth Revis, of course! But Amy Kathleen Ryan’s Skychaser books deserve a shout-out, too.

What draws you to writing SF?

I am a big, big nerd who loves robots and spaceships and aliens. Seriously, that is the long & short of it.

What is the most over-used trope in YA SF right now?

Aliens who look just like us (or have no physical bodies) and have no appreciable culture of their own. Also bland human cultures.

What would you like to see more of in YA SF?

Alien and human diversity! More weird, surprising stuff that really pushes philosophical boundaries. Scientists as heroes.

Who do you think is breaking ground in YA right now?

I’m kinda digging this sci-fi revival that’s going on!

What did you like to read as a teenager?

Mercedes Lackey (oh, the angst!) and Anne McCaffrey (oh, the dragons!). Their books are written on my heart.

Describe your writing process.

Write all the words (by any means necessary). Sort out the details when you revise.

What’s the best writing advice you ever received?

“Finish the book.”

What’s your best writing advice to give?

My process is not your process. Figure out what works for you. Finish the book!

Outside of writing, what do you do with your free time?

Read, walk, garden, snuggle with my cat. I really am a boring introvert, despite what my wacky hair and tattoos might suggest.

You’ve got the conclusion to the Starglass duology coming out next. What other writing projects are you working on?

Some various projects: space school, Cernunnos hunters, magical transhumanism, a girl and her robot. We’ll see what happens.

Is there anything more you can tell us about Zehava, or will we just need to wait until the sequel arrives?

One word: ALIENS.

Starglass by Phoebe North

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Terra is about to come of age on the Asherah, a generation ship that’s been in space for five hundred years. It’s approaching its destination, the planet they call Zehava, and hers will be the last generation to grow to adulthood on the ship. Despite this very exciting fact, Terra can’t muster much happiness. She’s been assigned to work a job that she hates, and her father is a drunk and consumed by his grief for her mother, who died some time ago. The boy she likes seems to only be interested in her prettier friend.
And then, naturally, things get worse. Terra witnesses a terrible act of violence by a soldier on the ship, someone who is supposed to protect them. She’s forced to keep it a secret, knowing if she revealed it, her life would be forfeit. She begins to realize that the ruling class of the ship may not have everyone’s best interests at heart, that they’ve overstepped their bounds and may be intending to extend their control of the people of the Asherah beyond the ship, to the planet below. Unsurprisingly for a story like this, Terra finds herself involved in an underground rebellion. Soon, she’s asked to do something terrible, but – so they say – necessary, too.
There’s a lot of creativity at work in Starglass. In particular, the ship’s culture, which is very overtly Jewish, stands out. It’s a nice change from the “casually Christian” cultures of so many other SF stories, as North describes on her website. And it fits nicely into the frame story, which adds an interesting and unexpected layer.
The ending, too, is unexpected, but believable as well. In a way, it subverts the expectations many seasoned SF readers will have. I can’t begin to count the number of SF books I’ve read that have telegraphed their endings. It was nice to be surprised. (I’m being cryptic, but I don’t want to spoil anything.)
That’s not to say all aspects of the story are difficult to guess. Even casual readers will know how Terra’s two “romances” (and I use that word loosely here) will play out. But the writing is solid and the story is well-rounded, with a main plot that drives steadily forward while being buoyed by interesting, purposeful subplots. Starglass is not a thrill ride. In many ways it’s a cultural study of the Asherah’s people, as seen through the eyes of a teenage girl.
I’ve decided I have an affection for stories about generation ships. The possibilities are so huge (read: aliens and new planets) that it’s hard not to get excited about what the author will do. At the same time, it’s hard not to be disappointed if and when the author only scratches the surface of what’s possible. In Starglass, Terra does not leave the ship. Luckily for us, there’s a sequel in the works, and the ending to Starglass leaves no doubt that these possibilities that interest me so will be explored there. It reminds me a lot of the anticipation I felt after finishing Beth Revis’ A Million Suns, where the characters were poised to explore the new planet – and North has given us some hints of what her characters will find on Zehava.
This is a natural readalike for Revis’ trilogy, though readers should expect a more leisurely story than Revis provides. I’m sure it will be classified as a dystopia by many, but this is just good old-fashioned science fiction, and it should please readers looking for just that.
If this review has piqued your interest, check back tomorrow – we’ve got a twitterview with the author, plus a giveaway of a finished copy of Starglass.
Review copy via Edelweiss