teen – Page 2 – ACHUKA Children's Books UK

Observer Reviews: Teenage Fiction

March 21, 2016 By achuka Leave a Comment

Teenage fiction reviewed by Geraldine Brennan

The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner (Andersen Press, £7.99) is a richly textured tale set in small-town Tennessee where the sins of Dill’s father, a disgraced and imprisoned evangelist minister, are visited relentlessly upon his son. Dill and his mother are social pariahs living in poverty, while Dill’s friend Lydia, a fashion blogger heading for New York after high school, considers him a project. The gulf between their likely futures is the pink elephant in the back seat of Lydia’s car, which shelters Dill and the equally unfortunate Travis from the storms brewed by their elders. The universal highs, lows and power shifts in friendship are played out by three compelling characters until tragedy brings loyalty to the fore.

Other titles reviewed in the full piece:
The Smell of Other People’s Houses by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock
The Incredible Adventures of Cinnamon Girl by Melissa Keil
Needlework by Deirdre Sullivan
Maresi by Maria Turtschaninoff
Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit

via Teenage fiction reviews – small towns and other prisons | Books | The Guardian.

See also
Older Fiction – 8-12 reviewed by Kitty Empire
Picture Books reviewed by Kate Kellaway

New Australian Bookshop Specialises In YA Titles

March 19, 2016 By achuka Leave a Comment

Libby Armstrong, a former banker from a bookselling family, has opened Beachside Bookshop at Avalon on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, the first to specialise in YA books, with about 200 titles at the front of the shop beside the adult books.
"My goal is for young adult books to come out from under children’s books," she says.
Too often they are lumped together in reading guides and bestseller lists, she says. But YA readers range from "the mature end of primary, ages 11 to 12" to adults. The older readers enjoy books aimed at ages 15-plus that can explore sexual relationships as well as universal themes of friendship, peer pressure and parents, and are well written but fast reads for busy people.

via Young adult books on the rise thanks to adult readers (and their kids).

YA Conference in Dublin This Weekend

October 20, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

Some of the best-known figures of the literary world will gather this weekend at Smock Alley Theatre, in Dublin, for DeptCon1, a conference that celebrates and interrogates young adult (YA) fiction.
YA fiction is the largest-growing genre in contemporary fiction, accounting for almost 30 per cent of the children’s book market, according to Eason, which is organising DeptCon1. However, despite the variety of novels directed at their age group, it can be difficult to get teenagers to turn off their smartphones and pick up a book.
Elaina Ryan, director of Children’s Books Ireland, says the biggest challenge facing parents, teachers and librarians trying to encourage teenagers to read is “competition for time. When [young readers] are making the transition from primary to secondary school, all of a sudden they have much greater access to sports and clubs, the internet and screen time, and this means there are a lot more activities for them to choose from in their leisure time.

via Read it and weep: how teenagers relate to the books written for them.

Lizzie Skurnick: a passion for Young Adult fiction

September 4, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

Skurnick didn’t set out to bring-much loved and long-forgotten children’s books back into print. “I was hoping someone else would do it – it was very naive of me.” While writing Shelf Discovery, she began posting old book covers to her Facebook page, sparking conversations about the books and their authors. Ig Publishing, which reprints “overlooked” fiction and politics books, contacted Skurnick and asked if she wanted to spearhead a Young Adult reprint series. The idea attracted the attention of big-name children’s authors like Lois Duncan and Judy Blume, who wrote some forewords for the new editions.
Duncan’s 1958 novel Debutante Hill was the first title rereleased under Skurnick’s imprint in 2013. The book and the venture it launched were met with considerable interest in publishing circles and unbridled excitement among YA fans now in their 30s and 40s – the press even operates a subscription service for readers who don’t want to miss any titles. From the start, however, Skurnick has insisted that the appeal of these books is stronger than mere nostalgia, and that they still have plenty to say to today’s tweens and teens.
“As kids we were really lucky because we could sit in a store or the library and look through books,” Skurnick says. Early YA publishing was a high-volume, serendipitous business of “slam-bam-thank-you ma’am” editions. Even the capacious internet can’t quite recover all the ephemeral details.

via Lizzie Skurnick: a passion for Young Adult fiction | Books | The Guardian.

Why there are no taboos in Scandinavian children’s books

August 26, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

In Scandinavia there are no taboos when it comes to writing, even for children and young people. Books for teens exploring sexuality with explicit language are not censored. It’s so normal for us. There is nothing I can’t cover as a teen writer and I know my publisher would stand by me no matter what.
Here are a couple of examples to explain what I mean. The book Fittekvote by Axel Hellstenius and Morten Skårdal, about young girls in the military, won a literature prize in 2011. It would be called “Cunt Quota” if translated into English.
Another book, Tjuven (“The Thief”) by Rune Belsvik, is aimed at children around eight years old. In it, the main character, Jolver, learns how to masturbate from his friend Bob. The friend tells him how it’s good to touch yourself while looking at naked women in a magazine. I can’t quite see this happening in the UK… yet.

… …
In Scandinavia, and in Norway in particular, it’s possible to make a living as a YA author, even if you aren’t a bestseller. It’s OK to write a debut novel, fail and still get another chance. My debut book was published in 1998 – it was a decent debut, promising, said the critics. The most inspiring sentence was, as I still recall it: “Ingelin Røssland has written her first novel but it will not be the last”. I took it as a sign that I had potential to grow and improve. So I kept on writing and book by book I reached out to more young readers.
In 2006 and 2007 I started to win awards and my books started to be translated, first into German, then French and now, with Minus Me, in English. To be published in English feels like a miracle, but in reality it is hard work. Having a publisher that believed in me really helped, letting me write the books that I felt I needed to write, not what the market wanted. This has been a huge privilege for me and many other Norwegian writers such as Jostein Gaarder, who wrote the bestseller Sophie’s World, Johan Harstad, who wrote the brilliant sci-fi/horror novel 172 Hours on the Moon and Lene Ask, whose beautiful graphic novel Dear Richard was recently published in English.

via Why there are no taboos in Scandinavian children’s books | Children’s books | The Guardian.

ACHUKAreview; Fire Colour One by Jenny Valentine

July 21, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

This is SO good! Absolutely up my street. An economically written YA novel with wryly observed characters and an original storyline that is emotionally engaging to a degree that more overblown, in-your-face writing can never reach.
I want Wes Anderson to discover it and make a movie of it.

Read the rest of the review >

http://www.achuka.co.uk/reviews/?p=589

Selfies, sex and body image – the revolution in books for teenage girls

June 21, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

fro a big piece by Sarah Hughes in today’s Observer:

[Louise O’Neill’s Only Ever Yors] was shortlisted for both this year’s Waterstones children’s book prize and the Children’s Books Ireland book of the year and won the inaugural Young Adult book prize while the Irish Book Awards named O’Neill newcomer of the year. In the US it sold out on pre-order and was reprinted before its publication in May. Small wonder then that her publisher Quercus, convinced of the book’s crossover appeal, will bring out an adult edition on 2 July, an honour previously bestowed on the bestselling likes of JK Rowling and Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger Games.
“I’m trying not to get too caught up in it all,” O’Neill says. “I’m really grateful that people understand the work and the message I’m trying to put across because I felt passionately that we needed to talk about the way in which we view women’s bodies. We spend our lives looking at images of 6ft tall, size six Victoria’s Secret models and our self-esteem and self-worth starts to dip.
Of the women I know, only three or four aren’t affected in some way by the idea they should look a certain way
“I’d say that of the women I know only three or four aren’t affected in some way by the idea that they should look a certain way. Many women make a correlation between moral worth and weight and I really wanted to explore that. I didn’t set out to write a young adult novel when I wrote Only Ever Yours but I was in a way writing for myself at 16.”
That willingness to tackle dark and difficult themes – her second novel, the brilliant, harrowing Asking For It, due out 3 September, is set in present day Ireland (O’Neill is from the small town of Clonakilty in Co Cork) and focuses on a rape at a party – has placed O’Neill at the forefront of a young adult publishing revolution. For it’s not just that young adult novels are among the most popular genre in publishing (and read by teenagers and adults of both sexes alike), it’s that increasingly they are tackling important issues with honesty, humour and a steely precision that other supposedly more serious novels frequently lack.

via Selfies, sex and body image – the revolution in books for teenage girls | Books | The Guardian.

New YALC authors announced

April 16, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

Booktrust has announced 13 new authors appearing at this year’s Young Adult Literature Convention (YALC). They include Darren Shan, Sally Green, Kevin Brooks, James Dawson, Samantha Shannon and Amy Alward.

The convention will, as last year, run in tandem with the London Film and Comic Con, from 17-19 July at Olympia, London.

via New YALC authors announced | The Bookseller.