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A Few Cybils Reads – Part IX (Time Travel Edition)

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Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future by A. S. King
A. S. King’s books are in a class by themselves, both in terms of genre and writing. Set solidly in our own world, they also use fantastical elements in such clever, creative, and meaningful ways. I’m always amazed by the level of craft in each of her novels. Her latest is no different.

Glory and her friend-by-default Ellie find a dead bat, which eventually disintegrates to something resembling ash. They decide to mix the remains with beer and then drink it (as you do). The next day, whenever they meet another person’s eyes, they see glimpses of that person’s past, present, and future – including ancestors and descendants. Glory’s visions show her a terrible near future, one where women are
denied the right to work and the United States splits into two, spawning
a second Civil War. The people participating in these acts, both the
atrocious and the heroic, are often the descendants of the people she
knows, and possibly of herself as well.

A more traditional novel would have focused most of its attention on the mystery of the future, and there’s certainly some of that going on. But it focuses an equal amount of attention on how the future informs Glory’s present – her mother’s suicide, her pseudo-friendship with Ellie, her relationship with her father, her plans for her own future. How do you live your life knowing that these things you see will come to pass? It’s also a staunchly feminist novel, the extremism of the future tempered by the everyday sexism Glory experiences. Teens will easily see how one leads to the other. Because this is a King novel, I’ve only scratched the surface of its depth. There’s a lot going on, and it all fits together to tell the complicated, messy story of Glory’s teenage life. This might be my favorite of King’s books. It has a few killer ending lines that legitimately gave me chills and rank right up there with the last lines of The Book Thief.

The Here and Now by Ann Brashares
This is the most traditional time travel story in this grouping. Prenna comes from a future not far off, one where a disease transmitted by mosquitoes has killed off millions of people. Though they haven’t cured the illness, apparently they have figured out time travel, because Prenna, her mother, and a few others travel back to our own time in order to stop the plague from happening in the first place (it’s tied to climate change).

Here’s where the internal logic of the story loses me, because Prenna and the other time-colonists have a lot of rules to follow, and one of the rules is not to interfere with history. Which is kind of the whole point of them being there – to interfere and create a better future. So um, what is their point, after all? And none of the other characters seem to notice or care about this discrepancy. There’s a somewhat engaging romance with a “time native,” and some nifty plotting with a potential paradox and a couple of other surprise time travelers, but this was a mess overall. There are scads of better time travel novels out there, both better written and better-conceived. Recommended for only the most ardent time travel fans.

Subway Love by Nora Raleigh Baskin
I read this a couple weeks ago and already my memory of it is weak. The book focuses on two different characters – Laura in the 70s and Jonas in the present day. They each have problems within their homes. Laura’s mother has gone full hippie, plus she’s married a man just a few years older than Laura. He hits Laura and Laura’s mom doesn’t do anything about it. Jonas is dealing with his parents’ recent divorce. The two teenagers meet each other on the subway, which is the only place where their two time periods overlap. They fall in love.

Baskin’s writing style has always seemed more middle grade than YA to me. The content of this one is more mature, though, making it hard to recommend for a specific age group. It’s a slim novel, easily absorbed in an afternoon, but its impact is equally fleeting. There’s some interesting stuff about graffiti artists on the subway, which will definitely appeal to kids into street art. Ultimately, the book is a rumination on how some relationships can change us, even if those relationships do not – and cannot – last. I wonder if I would have appreciated it more as a short story.

2015 YA Book Cover Trends: Part I

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Every year when the end of December is in sight, I like to spend a little time looking through the covers for books coming out in the new year. It’s always interesting to spot trends going on in design. Covers are a big part of the marketing of a book, and this is especially try in YA — trends for book cover design tend to come and go in waves, hoping to capitalize off what looks are doing particularly well.

As interesting to me is seeing what sorts of design trends or micro-trends or similarities are similar to those which have come in years past. For 2015, as seen in the last couple of years, there’s an abundance of birds appearing on covers, either as the main image of the cover or as part of a bigger image. I’ve skipped including a section on font-driven covers or covers where the title takes up more than have the cover real estate because not only has it been a trend for the last two years or so, but it’s so common that pulling them together would take a long, long time.

This is a two-part post, with part two coming on Thursday, as there are a lot of interesting and unique trends and commonalities worth looking at and thinking about. Some covers fall into only one category, while others have found themselves across multiple trend groups.

I’d love to know if you are aware of other covers fitting any of these categories. Because this would otherwise be too long a pair of posts, I’m not including book descriptions, but rather, links to the titles on Goodreads so you can check them out for yourself and, if you want, add them to your to-be-read lists. Hopefully, some of these books will be new ones to get on your radar.

Put a Bird on It


I feel like I’ve made the same Portlandia joke in a few posts, but it still stands. Birds continue to be popular on covers of YA books.

Because You’ll Never Meet Me by Leah Thomas

All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

The Conspiracy of Us by Maggie Hall

Dearest by Althea Kontis

Delicate Monsters by Stephanie Kuehn

Fig by Sarah Elizabeth Schantz

Hold Tight, Don’t Let Go by Laura Rose Wagner

If You Were Me by Sam Hepburn

Little Bit by Alex Wheatle

Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley

Paperweight by Meg Haston

Positively Beautiful by Wendy Mills (I’m not sure why I can only find a draft cover for this)

Save Me by Jenny Elliott

A Sense of the Infinite by Hilary T. Smith

The Summer After You and Me by Jennifer Salvato Doktorski

Tether by Anna Jarzab

The Last Leaves Falling by Sarah Benwell

Things I’ll Never Say edited by Ann Angel

Three Day Summer by Sarvenaz Tash
Tracers by J. J. Howard (Which uses the same stock image seen in this post)

Until the Beginning by Amy Plum

When My Heart Was Wicked by Tricia Stirling

Legs


One body part there’s a lot of in 2015? Legs. Some of them are covered and some of them aren’t. But legs!

All The Rage by Courtney Summers

Jesse’s Girl by Miranda Kenneally

Joyride by Anna Banks

One of the Guys by Lisa Aldin

Seriously Wicked by Tina Connolly

Tracers by J. J. Howard

The Truth About My Success by Dyan Sheldon

Tunnel Vision by Susan Adrian

Wrong About The Guy by Claire LaZebnik

Post-It Notes


I’m fond of using post-its, almost to a fault, and I think they make for a nice look on a book cover.

All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

The Last Time We Say Goodbye by Cynthia Hand

The Queen of Bright and Shiny Things by Ann Aguirre

That “Instagram” Look


A number of cover images are being filtered in a very Instagram-style way, not to mention they’re styled either like selfies or the kind of pictures you’d see scrolling through a teen’s Instagram account. I’m pretty sure there are more covers that would fit this Instagram-y trend, but I’m limiting to the obvious ones.

Anything Could Happen by Will Walton

Faking Perfect by Rebecca Phillips

Finding Paris by Joy Preble

First There Was Forever by Juliana Romano

The Law of Loving Others by Kate Axelrod

Like It Never Happened by Emily Adrian

Love is in the Air by A. Destiny and Alex Kahler

Making Pretty by Corey Ann Haydu

Stand Off by Andrew Smith

We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach

Devils


There may only be 2 of them, but I find this cover commonality amusing and enjoyable. I think the Schreiber cover is especially clever.

Con Academy by Joe Schreiber

Hellhole by Gina Damico

Thorns and Vines


There’s something crawling along the sides or centers of these covers, be they thorns or vines or flowery twigs.

About A Girl by Sarah McCarry

Blood Will Tell by April Henry

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

The Girl at Midnight by Melissa Grey

The Glass Arrow by Kristen Simmons

Poppy in the Field by Mary Hooper

The Ruby Circle by Richelle Mead

Tear You Apart by Sarah Cross

The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma

Willowgrove by Kathleen Peacock

Light-up Place Signs


I can’t wait for two of these three covers to be continuously confused next year because they’re so similar.

Finding Paris by Joy Preble

I’ll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios

Kissing in America by Margo Rabb

Fingerprints


While there are a couple of noteworthy covers featuring hands, I think the fingerprints on covers is more interesting to look at.

Emmy & Oliver by Robin Benway

If You Were Me by Sam Hepburn

Soulprint by Megan Miranda

Cityscapes


This has been a trend for a while, probably because having a nice cityscape on a cover feels like it’s action-adventure or a good post-apocalyptic/dystopian story.

After the Red Rain by Barry Lyga, Peter FAcinelli, and Robert DeFranco

All Fall Down by Ally Carter

Bright Lights, Dark Nights by Stephen Emond

City 1 by Greg Rosenblum

City Love by Susane Colasanti

The Conspiracy of Us by Maggie Hall

Deceptive by Emily Lloyd-Jones

Feral Pride by Cynthia Leitich Smith (I love that this is the Austin skyline — I’ve never seen that on a book cover before!)

Fire Fall by Bethany Frenette

Firefight by Brandon Sanderson

If You Were Me by Sam Hepburn

Infected by Sophie Littlefield

Invasion by Galaxy Craze

One Stolen Thing by Beth Kephart

Quake by Patrick Carman

Rook by Sharon Cameron

Shadowshaper by Daniel Jose Older

Skyscraping by Cordelia Jensen

The Rise and Fall of a Theater Geek by Seth Rudetsky

Tracers by J. J. Howard (When your cover is made up of a ton of images collaged together, you’re going to fit into a ton of trends)

The Wrong Side of Right by Jenn Marie Thorne

We’re on a Boat


The popular mode of transportation on YA covers in 2015 is the boat.

The boat.

Love, Fortunes, and Other Disasters by Kimberly Karalius

The Nightmare Charade by Mindee Arnett

Tangled Webs by Lee Bross

The Trouble with Destiny by Lauren Morrill

Planes Aren’t Disappearing Though


Maybe it’s just popular to have a mode of transportation on a cover, since it seems as though planes are doing well, too. When you don’t want a bird, why not use a plane?

Black Dove, White Raven by Elizabeth Wein

Breakout by Kevin Emerson

Deceptive by Emily Lloyd-Jones

Promposal by Rhonda Helms

Sophomore Year is Greek to Me by Meredith Zeitlin

Floating Heads on a Blue Background

Let’s end the first post in this two-part series with one of the weirder commonalities. This isn’t a trend, per se, but it caught my eye as I was looking through covers. I can’t wait to see how quickly these two become confused by readers and those who work with readers because they’re both weird and weirdly similar.

Playlist for the Dead by Michelle Falkoff

In A World Just Right by Jen Brooks

“Best of YA” Lists By the Numbers: 2011 – 2014 Stats, Comparisons, and Thoughts

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In 2011, I started keeping track of the YA books that made the “best of” lists across the professional publications, which include Kirkus, Horn Book, School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and in instances where it’s happened, Library Journal. My methods of data collection have varied a little each year, as sometimes I’ve been more interested in one element than another or it’s a matter of time, energy, and having read or having had access to titles to verify what they do or do not include.

Since there’s now been four years of data, I thought it would be worthwhile to look at the similarities and differences as seen through these lists. This will be an imperfect post with imperfect data; it wasn’t until the last couple of years I better understood what I was looking at and how to look at it. That means some of the data might be lacking in some years and it might be inaccurate in others. That doesn’t change what’s worth thinking about, though.

All of the data comes from the following posts:

Because the journals have selected varying numbers of titles for their lists, haven’t selected any titles for their lists, and because my own counting has changed over the years, the number of eligible titles in each data set is different. That doesn’t make a huge change, though, when it comes to comparisons by percentages. Most years, between 55 and 90 titles are on these lists. Not all of the categories I’m going to hit in this comparison will have all four years featured; that has been noted where appropriate.
Let’s dig in.
Gender and “Best of” Lists

Have more female authors always been on the “best of” lists? Has there been any sort of change over the last four years? 
In 2011, the gender breakdown was 58% women and 42% men. 
In 2012, 80% of the authors on the “best of” lists were women and 20% were men. 
In 2013, the breakdown was roughly 75% women and 25% men.
In 2014, the break down was roughly 70% female authors and 30% male authors.
Each of the four years, women had more books on the “best of” lists than men did. This is decidedly different than the New York Times Bestsellers list, which is dominated by male authors. On average, 70% of the “best of” authors are women and 30% are men. 
There doesn’t appear to be any trend here in terms of whether male or female authors are earning more or fewer spots each year. 
When it comes to the gender of main characters, comparison is a little tricky, since I haven’t been consistent about keeping track of that. I covered it in 2013 for the first time, but I didn’t create a catch all category of “cast of characters” until this year. So this data is imperfect by nature, but I’m going to share it, since it’s interesting nonetheless. 
In 2013, the split of female and male main characters in YA fiction was almost 50/50. Female voices came ahead only slightly, with 53% of the titles. For a year when there were far more female authors than there were male authors, it can’t be said male voices were underrepresented in the books at all.
2014 had more female voices than male voices represented, but with the cast of characters as a third factor, the representation isn’t hugely different. Again, despite having more female authors on the “best of” lists, the difference in male voices in the books against female voices in the books remains not hugely different. There are plenty of books featuring male main characters and they’re earning recognition. 
Debut Authors and “Best of” Lists

As more people talk about and seek out debut authors, has that impacted the “best of” lists at all? Are we seeing more now than we did in 2011 or are we seeing about the same number? This particular factor interests me as it relates to the Morris award and when the finalists are announced. I haven’t kept record of that from prior to this year, so I can’t make a call on how it may or may not influence picks on these lists.
In 2011, roughly 25% of the books on “best of” lists were by debut authors, while 75% were by authors who’d been previously published.
The numbers changed a little bit in 2012, as 20% of the authors were debuts and 80% were more seasoned authors.
The percentages were unchanged in 2013, with 20% of authors being debut and 80% being previously published.
2014 featured the biggest percentage of debut authors, at almost 29%, with previously published authors filling 71% of the “best of” list slots.
The data shows there’s never been fewer than 20% of “best of” picks going to debut authors. This seems like a really positive percentage and shows how professionals picking these lists aren’t sticking entirely to those voices that are familiar to them. I think that sort of recognition — one that happens with Morris titles, too — helps these books find new readers and helps grow excitement for those debut authors’ sophomore efforts. 
“Best of” Books By Genre

Genre is touch to figure out every year. Some books could go one way or another way, and some books cross genres and blur the lines between them. In fact, something I’ve noticed about many of the “best of” titles over the years is that many of them seem to find themselves on these lists for that very reason — they are doing unique things with genre, making them stand out as memorable. 
But have there been any trends over the last four years? Is there one kind of book doing more strongly than others? Are there genres which don’t seem to appear as many times as others on these lists?
The first stab I took at genre was in 2011, wherein for some reason I thought it was valuable to separate thrillers from mysteries. There weren’t as many genre-braided titles in this year, though as it shows, contemporary/realistic titles had the most representation, followed closely by fantasy, historical fiction, and then mysteries/thrillers, and science fiction. 
The 2012 breakdown looks a little different than 2011, wherein fantasy titles outranked realistic, followed by historical, science fiction, then mysteries/thrillers. There was a noted drop in historical fiction here from the previous year. 
In 2013, I discovered how much easier this data is to look at in bar form than in pie form. Realistic fiction took the top spots this year, followed by historical fiction, then fantasy. If fantasy and paranormal were folded together, it’s likely it would be even with historical, if not slightly more. 
Even when the subgenres of fantasy were collapsed, realistic fiction still held the most “best of” spots in 2014. Fantasy wasn’t far behind. But most interesting is that historical fiction is nearly non-existent in 2014 on the lists — more books were historical fantasy than actual historical fiction. This year also ushered in more titles that were magical realism, as that was a subgenre/blending of genres not seen in previous years. 
Maybe the most interesting thing about this data is how science fiction hasn’t been a leading genre in the “best of” lists. In fact, it’s fallen a bit — are we not seeing science fiction among the “best” anymore? Has there been a drop in the number of science fiction titles being published? Are science fiction books more likely part of a series and thus not always easy to put on “best” lists? There are more questions than answers, but I want to know more about what’s happening with science fiction in YA. 
Also worth noting: despite the fact everyone considered this to be THE year for contemporary/realistic fiction, it’s not really doing better than in previous years. This is a statement I’ve made since the start, and I’ll stick with it: contemporary/realistic fiction isn’t a trend. It’s a staple, and it’s always been there and always been stable. Even if a couple of big names have made it more prominent in bookstores and in getting marketing/publicity money, the trend isn’t changing how well-respected and regarded it is. People have been reading it and people will continue reading it. 
Diversity and the “Best of” Lists

So…have we been seeing more people of color and more LGBTQ representation on the “best of” lists in the last four years? 
My data on this has been presented a few ways, depending on what information I could find about books or authors in a given year. I haven’t made any of this data visual in the past, so I’m going to continue in that trend:
  • In 2011, 8 books were primarily about or featured a main character of color. 2 featured main characters who identified as LGBTQ. I did not count authors in this year, citing that finding the information was too difficult, and I believe this — people have been identifying more in the last couple of years, making that information more public and accessible. 
  • In 2012, there were 89 books and 90 authors represented in the data. I collapsed representation of people of color this year, meaning the count included both the authors who identified and he books that featured a main character of color. There were 20 titles/authors that fit.  A total of 6 books featured LGBTQ main characters or story lines. 
  • In 2013, I kept the author/character counts separate for people of color, and I found that 8 of the authors were people of color, and 10 of the books featured main characters of color, for a total of 18. There were 55 authors and 62 main characters. A total of 5 books by my count featured main characters who identified as LGBTQ, though as noted in the comments, I didn’t include The Dream Thieves, so there are actually 6. 
  • In 2014, there were 14 main characters/authors that I identified as people of color and a total of 6 books that featured LGBTQ main characters or story lines. 

It’s really tough to tell whether or not things are improving or not. Sure, there are more people of color and more LGBTQ stories represented in the last year than in the first year, but it’s still a very small percentage. As I noted yesterday, only 2 books featured stories where the main character identified as LGBTQ and a person of color. I think it’s about damn time we saw more of these stories and about time we saw more of these stories being recognized. 
What can be said, though, is these numbers are still tiny. 
Final Data and Thoughts


There’s not a lot else to dig into when comparing the data that’s particularly useful — I note every year that Candlewick seems to have a good number of titles on “best of” lists for a publisher as small as they are, and I also note every year that books published as hardcovers have a markedly better time of being recognized as “best of” titles than paperback originals or split run titles. Books published in April, May, September, and October have better chances of landing on lists than those published in November, December, January, July, and August. 

Journals have been changing their number of titles selected each year, and that’s been interesting to see. A few years ago, Kirkus selected 100 titles; this year, they selected 50. Not all of them ended up in my count, since they included fiction and non-fiction, but Kirkus still has the largest number of titles on the list, and the titles Kirkus selects more often only end up on the Kirkus list, as opposed to showing up on numerous lists.

Another worthy element to consider, which I haven’t here but could if I were to dig up all of my original spreadsheets, is whether there are authors who are perennial favorites. I have a suspicion, for example, that Maggie Stiefvater and A. S. King are two authors who have appeared every year on these lists (in fact, I know that they have!). Anyone who is up for the challenge of ferreting that out is more than welcome to do so, and I’d be happy to include that work in a link round-up feature here.

So, with all of this data now here, what’s surprising? Is there anything worth thinking about or any conclusions worth drawing? What sort of picture does this paint about what is considered the best in any given year? What is going on in science fiction?

I’d love to hear thoughts and ideas about this, or anything else noteworthy in the “best of” lists, as there’s now a four-year look at data.