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You are here: Home / Archives for teen

Last Night At The Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

April 6, 2021 By achuka Leave a Comment

ACHUKA Book of the Day 7 Apr 2021

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“This standout work of historical fiction combines meticulous research with tender romance to create a riveting bildungsroman. San Francisco, “with its steep stairways and sudden glimpses of the bay between tall, narrow buildings,” is almost a character itself. Interspersed flashbacks that detail the personal histories of Lily’s parents and Aunt Judy and timelines of world events further put the 1950s Chinese American experience into context for readers.” HORN BOOK
“Lo’s lovely, realistic, and queer-positive tale is a slow burn, following Lily’s own gradual realization of her sexuality while she learns how to code-switch between being ostensibly heterosexual Chinatown Lily and lesbian Telegraph Bar Lily. In this meticulously researched title, Lo skillfully layers rich details, such as how Lily has to deal with microaggressions from gay and straight women alike and how all of Chinatown has to be careful of the insidious threat of McCarthyism. Actual events, such as Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s 1943 visit to San Francisco, form a backdrop to this story of a journey toward finding one’s authentic self. Beautifully written historical fiction about giddy, queer first love.” KIRKUS
“Smoothly referencing cultural touchstones and places with historic Chinese American significance, Lo conjures 1950s San Francisco adeptly while transcending historicity through a sincere exploration of identity and love. Back matter includes an author’s note explaining Lo’s personal connection to the story.” PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

The award winning author of Ash gives us a very different story of love and duty set in San Francisco’s Chinatown during the 1950s. Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can’t remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father – despite his hard-won citizenship – Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.

Follow the author on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/malindalo/

Filed Under: Blog, BookOfTheDay, Books, YA Tagged With: Chinese, historical, lesbian, queer, teen, YA

Destination Anywhere by Sara Barnard ill. Christiane Furtges

April 5, 2021 By achuka Leave a Comment

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After five years at secondary school spent without any friends, Peyton King starts sixth form college determined that things will be different. Whatever happens, she will make friends at any cost. When she finds the friends she’s always dreamed of, including an actual boyfriend, she’s happier than she’s ever been.
But when they let her down in the worst way, Peyton is left no better off than when she started. Now Peyton knows the only chance she has of finding happiness is to look for it somewhere else. Her life may feel small, but it doesn’t have to be. With nothing but her sketchpad and a backpack, she buys a one-way ticket and gets on a plane. . .

In Destination Anywhere, Sara Barnard explores love, life and friendship in this exquisite tale of the lengths one girl will go to to change her story.

Follow Christiane Furtges on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fuertgesillustration/

Filed Under: YA Tagged With: friendship, love, sketching, teen, travel

Netflix taps Disney talent for new original tween series

April 10, 2017 By achuka Leave a Comment

Netflix has ordered Alexa & Katie, an original multi-camera comedy created by Heather Wordham (Disney Channel’s Hannah Montana).

Aimed at tweens and teens, the 13-episode series follows two lifelong best friends who become outsiders during their freshman year of high school. Disney XD’s Paris Berelc (Mighty Med, Lab Rats: Elite Force) will star as Alexa, while her best friend will be played by newcomer Isabel May.

Matthew Carlson (Malcolm in the Middle) will serve as both showrunner and co-executive producer along with Wordham.

The multi-camera comedy format has been gaining traction on the SVOD, thanks to the success of tween- and teen-skewing series Fuller House and Ashton Kutcher-starring The Ranch, which bowed last year.

via Kidscreen » Archive » Netflix taps Disney talent for new original tween series.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: series, teen, TV, tween

The Best YA Books Of 2016

December 17, 2016 By achuka Leave a Comment

A roundup of significant YA titles selected by Ellen Tannan

http://www.rte.ie/culture/2016/1213/838605-the-best-ya-books-of-2016/

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: reviews, teen, YA

YA or Not YA – Anthony McGowan

August 30, 2016 By achuka Leave a Comment

So what on earth could I have against kids reading YA, which at least generally includes characters of the ‘right’ age?

Partly, it’s because many of them aren’t, in fact, properly adult books. Of course there are great YA writers – Meg Rosoff, Patrick Ness, Mal Peet, Phil Earle, Sarah Crossan, Faye Bird, Jo Nadin and many others, who are among our finest contemporary writers, irrespective of age or genre. But too much of the rest is dross, presenting watered down, bowdlerised versions of life, selling kitsch ideas and witlessly soft-focus romantic reflections of reality –  and yes, I’m looking at you, John Green.

YA genre fiction (SF and fantasy) is particularly anaemic. The endless lazy dystopias, with kick-ass heroines saving the world from some unconvincing mega government, the sexy vampire bullshit, the boringly overdone quirky superhero novel – please, no more. Honestly, the kids would be far better off encountering adult SF and fantasy, where their minds might be stretched, rather than their preconceptions cosily nurtured.

the full piece via YA or Not YA – Barrington Stoke.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: teen, YA

I don’t think adults should read YA stuff, says Anthony McGowan

August 30, 2016 By achuka Leave a Comment

guardiansmallTo bursts of nervous laughter, YA author Anthony McGowan kicked it off by citing Sturgeon’s Law: 90% of YA was crap, pandered to by an audience that treated the whole thing as a “this kind of amorphous quasi religion”, more of a cult than category. He lamented speaking to “monocultural audiences” of white, older women at YA conferences. Some misogynistic, cause-and-effect musing began: most YA bloggers were women, all his editors were women, “so there is a huge amount of energy directing these kinds of texts, texts that may well appeal to women in their 20s and 30s rather than to teenagers. We’ve got this female-dominated world producing texts that reflect themselves, for other young adult women,” he said, perhaps unaware of the significance of making links between gender and perceived quality.

YA may not be a genre (it is a category, as is so often sighed), but the debate devolved into a value judgment regardless, as debates around genre so often do. “I don’t think adults should read YA stuff,” McGowan argued, as authors such as Elizabeth Wein and Philip Womack disagreed. “I think they should move on and read Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky or Dickens and stop reading Twilight and The Hunger Games,” McGowan said. “It is part of being a grown-up, you leave those things behind.”

via ‘90% of YA is crap’: the debate that dominated the Edinburgh book festival | Books | The Guardian.

You should also read McGowan’s more nuanced take on this subject here:
http://www.barringtonstoke.co.uk/blog/2016/08/22/ya-not-ya/

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: teen, YA

Wild Words Book Festival puts the spotlight on teenagers

August 10, 2016 By achuka Leave a Comment

LeitrimObserver

Wild Words Children’s Book Festival has rapidly gained its reputation as Ireland’s best Young Adult (YA) writing festival.This is primarily because Wild Words has attracted teenagers back to books and because the festival has picked up on the zeitgeist; a golden age for young adult books. Extraordinarily talented writers like Sarah Crossan, Dave Rudden and Eilís Barrett who are all part of this new wave underpin the reputation of the festival.With masterclasses, workshops, readings and other activities, the festival has plenty for every age group. This year however, with a wealth of new titles hitting the bookshelves, there is a strong emphasis on books for young adults.When Dave Rudden was at Wild Words last year he had just signed a six-figure book deal with Puffin. Those in attendance got a sneak preview of Knights of the Borrowed Dark. It has since been published – and it’s great. Rudden has been noted as “an author to watch” and Knights of the Borrowed Dark described as “a pacy, entertaining read, but with a heart, too.”It’s been a great year for Sarah Crossan too. Her new novel One, which tells the story of conjoined twins Grace and Tippi, has earned her the Bookseller’s Young Adult Book Prize, the Children’s Books Ireland Book of the Year and the CILIP Carnegie Medal. For Wild Words Sarah will be giving a masterclass and appearing alongside first time author Eilís Barrett, who at 16 years of age has already published her first novel Oasis, fulfilling one of her life ambitions. Oasis tells the story of Quincy Emerson, a young girl who is on the run because she carries the X gene that causes a virus that nearly wiped out the human race. The book is gripping and all aspiring young authors will want to meet this remarkable young woman.

via Wild Words Book Festival puts the spotlight on teenagers – Events & Listings – Leitrim Observer.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: festival, Ireland, teen, YA

Most YA fiction is grown-up fiction in disguise – Discuss

June 11, 2016 By achuka Leave a Comment

Not sure I agree with Anthony McGowan when he says, “Some of these books appeal to me, as an adult, because they are not teenage books at all.”
He seems to be discounting the possibility that teenage or YA fiction is capable of also satisfying an adult reader.
Just because I, an adult, enjoy reading a particular YA novel, doesn’t make it any less YA.
I’m currently reading RADIO SILENCE by Alice Oseman, a novel deeply embedded in teen experience and culture. It’s very clearly not a book that would have been suited to a publisher’s adult fiction list, but that doesn’t prevent it being a good adult as well as a good teen read.

guardiansmallSo what’s the problem? Well, I’d contend that at least some of these books appeal to me, as an adult, because they are not teenage books at all. They are adult fiction. The themes, the style, often even the characters belong in the world of adult literature. It is just some quirk of publishing that has left them washed up on the YA shore. For example, Mal Peet’s masterpiece, Life: An Exploded Diagram, was simply the best novel I read in 2011. It should have been up for the Booker prize. It was published as YA because Mal had always been published as YA.

Alongside these many fine novels there is plenty of dross. As with most areas of publishing, YA follows the 90% rule. And much YA is a lazy, disheartening mush of false problems, fake solutions, idealised romance, second-rate fantasy, tired dystopias. Easy to read; easy to forget.

But my main concern isn’t with quality. For me, the problem is that a huge amount of theoretically teenage publishing is churning out books that simply aren’t for teenagers at all. And that must mean, given the finite opportunities for new books, that “real” teenage books aren’t getting published.

via Most YA fiction is grown-up fiction in disguise | Books | The Guardian.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: label, teen, YA

CJ Flood: teen girls have a right to roam too

June 4, 2016 By achuka Leave a Comment

The question of safety came up early in a discussion about promoting my new book, Nightwanderers. Was it responsible, I asked my publicist and editor, to show teenage girl friends creeping from their bedrooms after dark, to wander their home turf in the moonlight?

It’s something I did as a teenager with one of the friends who inspired the character of Titania De Furia. She led me, breathless, through the deluxe garden of her rich neighbour, past his babbling rush of brook, and with cool, dewy air on our faces, we were giggling and tickled and free.

via CJ Flood: teen girls have a right to roam too | Children's books | The Guardian.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: freedom, girls, teen, teenage

Burgess’ Junk earns author YA award

April 22, 2016 By achuka Leave a Comment

The reaction in the print press to Burgess winning the Carnegie Medal for JUNK in 1997 was one of the motivating forces behind the establishment of ACHUKA. At that time there was some online coverage of American children’s/YA literature but hardly anything existed in the UK.
So that summer I taught myself HTML and launched ACHUKA in September, as a vehicle for celebrating and advocating children’s books and, especially, teen fiction.

The Bookseller will present Melvin Burgess with a YA Book Prize special achievement award to mark 20 years since the publication of Junk.

Published in 1996 by Andersen Press, Junk follows the lives of Gemma and Tar, two teenagers who become involved in drugs and prostitution. Based on Burgess’ own experience of living in Bristol during the punk era, the book went on to become a cult classic.

The novel was a key proponent in the inception and growth of the UK’s Young Adult market and movement, but Burgess says he “was the right person doing the right thing at the right time”.

He explained: “Junk and its success showed that the prevailing attitude to teenagers at the time—which was ‘they don’t read’—could be broken if only the right material was available. People had been talking about the developing teenage market for years, and Junk was certainly a big push in that process.”

 

…

Burgess will be presented with the award at the YA Book Prize ceremony, at the Hay Festival on 2nd June. Andersen Press is also releasing a 20th anniversary edition of the novel, with an introduction by Malorie Blackman and the correspondence between author and publisher.

via Burgess’ Junk earns author YA award | The Bookseller.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: awards, prizes, teen

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