Posts Tagged "YA Fiction"

Patrick Ness has announced on his website that on August 3, 2009, he’ll be announcing the title for the third Chaos Walking book. For those of you that read the interview we did with Patrick recently will know that everything about the third novel has been kept top secret. That includes the title. So, as you can imagine, we’re very excited about this!

Stay tuned for the announcement!

This just in from the ALAN Review:

The Assembly on Literature for Adolescents (ALAN) of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) is pleased and proud to announce the finalists for the inaugural Amelia Elizabeth Walden Book Award for Young Adult Fiction. The honored titles for 2009 (in alphabetical order by title) are:

· After Tupac and D Foster, by Jacqueline Woodson (Putnam)

· Graceling, by Kristin Cashore (Harcourt)

· The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins)

· Me, The Missing, and the Dead, by Jenny Valentine (HarperCollins)

· My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, and Fenway Park, by Steve Kluger (Dial)

This year’s winning title will be announced at an open reception and reading at the 2009 ALAN Workshop in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Established in 2008 to honor the wishes of young adult author, Amelia Elizabeth Walden, the award allows for the sum of $5,000 to be presented annually to the author of a young adult title selected by the ALAN Amelia Elizabeth Walden Book Award Committee as demonstrating a positive approach to life, widespread teen appeal, and literary merit.

The 2009 Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award Committee was comprised of ten members representing the university, K-12 school, and library communities who considered 232 young adult titles over the duration of the process.

For more information contact Wendy Glenn, 2009 AEW Committee Chair, at wendy [dot] glenn [at] uconn [dot] edu.

Wind kissed my ear, cool and soft, and I heard a voice. It sounded like clover tastes, green and new and sweet.

“Where y’at, Iris?”

Iris and her friend think they have the ability to talk to the dead. They love hanging out in cemeteries and they play around with ouija boards and spell books. Nothing too much has ever happened before, though, so one summer when someone actually talks to Iris – someone that is definitely not alive – she can’t help but take notice.

When Iris tells her best friend, Collette, about her encounter, the pair of them set about finding out everything they possibly can about this ghost. After some pretty simple investigative work, they got enough information to start piecing all the bits together, and Iris realises that her ghost hits a lot closer to home than she first realised.

The story around town goes that Elijah simply went missing, and his body was never found,but for Iris, it just doesn’t add up. Elijah went to school with her father, and whenever Iris asks anyone her dad’s age – including her father – about what happened to him, everyone always changes the subject. It seems that her town folk are all too good at dodging her questions and Iris begins to think that some people might know more than they’re actually letting on. But when Iris figures out the truth about her ghost, she’s not even sure she wants to know …

Iris is a normal girl that I think a lot of young teens will be able to relate to. And while this isn’t one of those romance charged supernatural stories that seem to be so popular right now, I reckon true supernatural fiction fans will be impressed with Shadowed Summer. This one has all the elements of a true ghost story without being totally freaky, so even if you’re spooked by regular ghosty stories, I reckon you’ll be able to digest this one without wetting your pants.

I did, however, find Collette (Iris’s best friend) a little on the annoying side. I thanked God every moment that I spent reading this novel that Collette was not the focalising character. She’s shallow, spiteful and far too jealous of all the things Iris has – even though she’s got plenty of fabulous things herself.

This is a quick and easy read that gives the reader the exact kind of closure s/he is looking for.

Rating::

Dru Anderson has what her grandmother called “the touch.” (Comes in handy when you’re traveling from town to town with your dad, hunting ghosts, suckers, wulfen, and the occasional zombie.)

Then her dad turns up dead—but still walking—and Dru knows she’s next. Even worse, she’s got two guys hungry for her affections, and they’re not about to let the fiercely independent Dru go it alone. Will Dru discover just how special she really is before coming face-to-fang with whatever—or whoever— is hunting her?

Dru’s world is very different to yours and mine. See, in her world there are many, many things that go bump in the night. Zombies, vampires and werewulfs are just the start of it. Dru’s dad is a professional monster fighter and has taught Dru how to take care of herself, but being the daughter of a demon hunter has its downsides. Dru has to be ready to pack up her entire life at a moments notice and hit the road. Life for Dru has been kind of lonely…

Then her dad comes home from some kind of demon killing mission one night all zombie-fied. Dru is no idiot, she knows that thing that looks like her dad isn’t really him, and she knows that unless she does something fast, she too could find herself six feet under. Without thinking twice, Dru slaughters her zombie-dad right in her very own living room.

More alone than ever, Dru decides that she can’t stay in her house for a minute longer, and takes off.

Meet Graves. He lives at the mall in some kind of backroom but that’s all we really learn about him. He’s hell bent on finishing high school with spectacular grades, but has that whole bad-boy allure about him. He’s completely mysterious and something tells me that we’re definitely going to learn more about him in the coming novels, but for now, all I can say is that I’m pretty certain he’s jonesing for Dru. Dru shacks up with him for a while (in the sleeping in the same room sense, not the romantic sense) and they develop and odd kind of friendship. Then they’re attacked by a stack of demon beaties and Dru realises that she’s not safe.

Enter Christophe. He’s a djampire and pisses Dru off instantly. He’s got information about her dad’s death – information which, he’s not readily giving up – and that makes Dru instantly suspicious of him. But he’s here to help, apparently, and Dru is faced with some pretty tough decisions. Does she let this half demon guy into her life for the sake of safety, or should she trust her instincts and run like hell – away from him, away from everything. It becomes pretty clear that Dru isn’t going to be able to help herself, but is Chris going to be the savior she’s looking for?

Dru is one of those tough-as-nails characters that has the potential to be a real girl power kind of role model for female teen readers. At the moment, though, I find her rock hard exterior a little frustrating. I wanted her to grieve the death of her father properly – I mean, she did slay his zombie butt, after all – and maybe she did, in her own rock hard way, but for me, she moved on from his death way too easily. Although I completely understand why she’s like this, I hate that she is so untrusting. I can forgive her for this, though, because she’s spent her whole life running from, and fighting big bad beasties. Can’t imagine you’d see too much humanity in anything like a demon, that’s for sure.

Strange Angels is all about the tension. From the first chapter right till the very end, each page is full of nail-biting tension. Unusually, though, I didn’t actually find myself compelled to keep reading. Strange Angels is full of unanswered questions, which frustrated me to no end. I can see, however, that having so many unanswered questions in the story is a bit of an aphrodisiac for some and will drive the kiddies wild.

The one thing I absolutely loved about this book was Lili St. Crow’s writing style. She manipulates the English language brilliantly and her imagery is outstanding. It was very easy to picture just what was happening in the story and my imagination came alive with all kinds of mental images. Even though I found many other aspects of this story frustrating, the fact that I loved Lili’s writing style so much made reading Strange Angels an enjoyable experience.

Rating: :

Patrick Ness is the brilliant author of the Chaos Walking trilogy. The second (and latest) novel in the series, The Ask and The Answer, is on shelves in the UK and Australia now, and is nothing short of spectacular. Patrick sat down with us last week to answer some of our burning questions about his beloved series…

Where did the idea of the Chaos Walking trilogy come from?

It was two ideas really, as I like to say, one serious, one stupid.  The serious one was that the world is a noisy place already, with mobiles and the internet and networking sites and on and on.  You can’t really turn anywhere without someone telling you their opinion.  So I thought the next logical step was, what if you couldn’t get away?  What if you and everyone else was completely robbed of privacy?  Especially if you were a young person.

The other idea was that I’ve never liked books about talking dogs, and I thought it would be funny to have a dog character talk like an actual dog would, instead of just being a miniature person.  And I think dogs would talk about things important to a dog, like eating and going to the bathroom and how excited they were to see you.

That’s how it began, and it just grew from there.

Viola and Todd are both incredibly mature for 12/13 years old. How did you decide on their age?

Well, they’re as mature as many young people on the cusp of adulthood:  really savvy about some things and just learning about others.  Plus, Viola was trained for her role as someone who’d scope out the planet (you find this out in the free short story about her available on booktrust.org.uk), and Todd was raised without a childhood really, having to get right in there with work and responsibility.  It’s a more old-fashioned idea of what 13 year olds used to have to do.

In The Ask and the Answer, it becomes clear that Todd and Viola are totally in love with each other. Do you think that they’re too young to really understand that kind of love?

I disagree that they’re “totally in love” with each other.  I think that implies regular teenage romance, which isn’t at all what Todd and Viola have.  They learn that they really have to rely on one another, in a way far beyond just a simple romance.  I think it’s deeper than that.  They’re lost people who found one another, and they may not being able to understand all the depths of that just yet, but I think they’re more than smart enough to know how important the other is to them.  And that’s because they’ve each earned it, through hard circumstance.

Todd has the bravery of a grown man. Where did he learn that?

I’m sensing some reluctance about Todd’s age!  Again, in a hard-scrabble farming community, he’d be forced through necessity to learn so much more.  He’d have no choice.  Plus, there’s the issue that the year may be a bit longer on his planet (13 months instead of 12).  And most importantly, he was raised by two great, kind men, Ben and Cillian.  Both of whom are very brave and who kept Todd as decent and kind as they could.  I think Todd is the recipient of some really excellent parenting, and that always helps.

When you started the trilogy, did you always know how it was going to end, or were you making it up as you went?

I knew how it was going to end before I wrote the first sentence actually.  It’s a practice of mine; I may not know exactly how I’m going to get there, but I know how I want to leave the reader, the last feeling I want to leave them with.  So, yes, I knew the very last sentence before I wrote the first one and a general idea of the story.  I left it loose enough for surprises, though, and a few good ones popped up.

If there was one thing that you wanted your readers to take away from Chaos Walking, what would that be?

I always worry that if I start out thinking in terms like that then I end up writing a lesson rather than a story.  Hopefully, if I pay proper attention to what the story wants to be and try to make it the best story possible, then there will be things in there for the reader to take away anyway.  I think that’s the best way; that way you never preach.  Having said that, looking back on the books now, they’re probably most about how hope lies in the people we love, that if you can find someone to count on and who counts on you, then that’s probably the best meaning life is going to get.  A hopeful message.

From start to finish, how long does it take you to write a book?

Usually about year or so.  Six or seven months writing the first draft, then five or six rewriting and editing.  But I work pretty hard.  I should probably take a few more holidays, frankly!

Do you have any quirky habits that help you write?

Well, I’m a long-distance runner (a couple marathons under my belt), and running is great for sorting out plotting problems.  I get my best ideas while out running.  Probably the rhythmic meditative aspect of it.  Breathe in regularly for 20 minutes and your brain’s probably nice and calm.

Who is your all time fave fictional character?

I think Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a great and glorious creation.  Smart, kick-ass, extremely funny, but recognisably with real problems.  Genius.  Not that I want be her, necessarily, but she’d be unbeatable as a friend.

When you’re not writing, what are you doing?

Usually running, my big hobby, though there hasn’t been much non-writing time lately!  The books are pretty long, and I’m working hard on the third volume, making sure the series has a good finish.

What are you reading at the moment?

I’m reading Bettany’s Book by Thomas Keneally.  And next is Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz, which is just coincidence that it’s two Australians in a row, but you won’t find me complaining.

Before we go, can you divulge any insider’s secrets about the last Chaos Walking novel?

Nope, sorry.  Even the title’s a secret for now.  Though I can say I’ve already written the ending, and without giving anything away about whether the ending itself is  happy or sad (because you never know with me!), I can say that I’m really, really pleased with it and very happy for it to be the end of the whole series.  Rarely do you get exactly what you want when you set out to write, but this ending is exactly what I wanted.  And it may not be what you expect…

If you haven’t read The Knife of Never Letting Go or The Ask and the Answer, we suggest you put your shoes on and head down to your nearest book store and get yourself a copy!