Last month, while reading and re-reading books for The Horn Book’s annual “Fanfare” discussion, I teased followers of the Read Roger blog with mention of a book that had me excited for YA publishing all over again: “Granted, the half-dozen books I have to get through before [the meeting] are themselves already separated from the herd, and granted that you can still find plenty of formula in YA publishing, but at this minute I am feeling very proud of all you YA writers and editors and publishers.”
The book — now it can be told — was Nova Ren Suma’s The Walls Around Us, which is just one of several excellent YA novels to make our list of the best books of 2015, beginning in this issue on page 12. While I had known before reading it that the book was being passed around the Horn Book offices with fervent recommendations, I confess that overhearing the words ballet and horror had made me quietly resolve to ignore it if I possibly could. My mistake, and one fortunately rectified via professional obligation.
The Walls Around Us, along with A.S. King’s I Crawl Through It, Neal Shusterman’s Challenger Deep, and Tim Wynne-Jones’s The Emperor of Any Place, all also on the Fanfare list, are recommended for high school readers. This is not to say that younger readers should be steered away from these titles, simply that the books’ complexities will probably be best and likeliest approached by sixteen-year-olds rather than the twelve-year-olds who, twenty-five years ago, were in the sweet spot of YA publishing. And by complexities I don’t mean sexual material; while contemporary YA does sometimes make me blush, none of the four books I mention is notably juicy in that regard. Rather, the challenges they present are narratorial, each of them employing shifts in point of view, register, and timeframe, along with an elastic sense of realism, to tell their stories. While these novels are very different from one another, they are united in the generous trust they have in their readers to navigate the unexpected: a helicopter you can only see on Tuesdays (I Crawl Through It)? An island where you’re haunted by your future descendants (The Emperor of Any Place)? Is he on a boat, or what (Challenger Deep)? Wait, who’s dead (The Walls Around Us)? These writers do not hold our hands through the strangenesses but instead encourage us, through confident prose, to stay with them because we don’t want to be left behind.
We have known for a while that many, maybe most, readers of contemporary YA are adults. Nothing wrong with that in itself, of course, and these four books are evidence that such readers are not necessarily looking for something easy. (I believe I have said in the past that they were and herein Take It Back.) But, except insofar as their dollars might allow YA publishing to take risks, I don’t care about adults reading YA, do you? And what I love best about our Fanfare YA choices is that none of them is an adult book in disguise; each one approaches young adulthood from the inside — even if it’s from the inside of an invisible helicopter.
From the January/February 2016 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.
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While I recover from unintentionally wearing The Nest tights (don’t let the wasps get me!!), you can enjoy The Horn Book’s 2015 Fanfare list, the best children’s books of the year.
For more matchy-matchy, click here. It’s fun!
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The Horn Book Magazine‘s choices for the best books of 2014. Sign up now to receive the fully annotated list in next week’s issue of Notes from the Horn Book:
Picture books:
Sam & Dave Dig a Hole by Mac Barnett; illustrated by Jon Klassen (Candlewick)
My Bus written and illustrated by Byron Barton (Greenwillow)
The Baby Tree written and illustrated by Sophie Blackall (Paulsen/Penguin)
Draw! written and illustrated by Raúl Colón (Wiseman/Simon)
Gaston written by Kelly DiPucchio; illustrated by Christian Robinson (Atheneum)
The Farmer and the Clown written and illustrated by Marla Frazee (Beach Lane/Simon)
Once Upon an Alphabet written and illustrated by Oliver Jeffers (Philomel)
Viva Frida written and illustrated by Yuyi Morales, with photos by Tim O’Meara (Porter/Roaring Brook)
Bow-Wow’s Nightmare Neighbors written and illustrated by Mark Newgarden and Megan Montague Cash (Porter/Roaring Brook)
Fiction:
The Madman of Piney Woods by Christopher Paul Curtis (Scholastic)
The Key That Swallowed Joey Pigza by Jack Gantos (Farrar)
My Heart Is Laughing written by Rose Lagercrantz; illustrated by Eva Eriksson; translated from the Swedish by Julia Marshall (Gecko)
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart (Delacorte)
Egg & Spoon by Gregory Maguire (Candlewick)
Rain Reign by Ann M. Martin (Feiwel)
The Turtle of Oman written by Naomi Shihab Nye; illustrated by Betsy Peterschmidt (Greenwillow)
West of the Moon by Margi Preus (Amulet/Abrams)
This One Summer written by Mariko Tamaki; illustrated by Jillian Tamaki (First Second/Roaring Brook)
Folklore:
Little Roja Riding Hood written by Susan Middleton Elya; illustrated by Susan Guevara (Putnam)
Poetry:
Firefly July: A Year of Very Short Poems selected by Paul B. Janeczko; illustrated by Melissa Sweet (Candlewick)
How I Discovered Poetry written by Marilyn Nelson; illustrated by Hadley Hooper (Dial)
Nonfiction:
Buried Sunlight: How Fossil Fuels Have Changed the Earth written by Molly Bang and Penny Chisholm; illustrated by Molly Bang (Blue Sky/Scholastic)
El Deafo written and illustrated by Cece Bell; color by David Lasky (Amulet/Abrams)
The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus written by Jen Bryant; illustrated by Melissa Sweet (Eerdmans)
The Story of Buildings: From the Pyramids to the Sydney Opera House and Beyond written by Patrick Dillon; illustrated by Stephen Biesty (Candlewick)
The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia by Candace Fleming (Schwartz & Wade/Random)
Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker written by Patricia Hruby Powell; illustrated by Christian Robinson (Chronicle)
Neighborhood Sharks: Hunting with the Great Whites of California’s Farallon Islands written and illustrated by Katherine Roy (Macaulay/Roaring Brook)
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson (Paulsen/Penguin)
The post Fanfare! appeared first on The Horn Book.
The latest issue of Notes features our Fanfare list with parent-friendly annotations, so pass it along. Also: Martha Parravano talks to picture book hero Kevin Henkes.
