Uncreated Conscience

Lately I’ve been mulling over a question that seems to crop up in a lot of what I read for both work and pleasure, namely whether or not a definition of YA exists. Of course YA exists, but what it is seems to be a fluid idea, shaped by many different considerations: age of protagonist, [...]

A few days ago, Twitter exploded when The Wall Street Journal posted an article written by Meghan Cox Gurdon (and no, I’m not going to link it) about the so-called “darkness” of the subject matter in today’s YA being too poisonous for teens, as well as a none-too-subtle jab at the publishing industry for pushing [...]

There must be something in the air (or perhaps the books we read and the media we consume) that is making many writers blog about the subject of sex in fiction (and specifically YA). Kody Keplinger (who wrote the wonderfully sex-positive THE DUFF) blogged about it (twice!) at YA Highway, Marie Lu asked why sex [...]

You know how when your body is deficient in certain nutrients, it will start craving foods rich with said nutrients? There must be a serious lack of literary contemporary YA in my reading diet, because lately, that’s all I’ve been craving. Today my colleagues and I were discussing the vague sense of ennui that had [...]

On Twitter, I eavesdropped a little on a conversation between Barry Goldblatt and Malinda Lo about gay boys vs. gay girls in fiction (and specifically teen fiction). This, of course, got me thinking. LGBTQ characters are far from common, although thankfully they seem to be growing in visibility, although I feel (and this may not [...]

Now, my favourite books were Alice in Wonderland and The Secret Garden when I was younger, but my kitchen isn’t very well-stocked, nor do I have any houseplants. Clearly I ought to remedy this. (But there are so many books on this list I adored as a child! I couldn’t possibly choose one.)

This is a brilliant idea; perhaps I should give it a try myself at some point.

Dear internet, you have probably seen me tweet about Cindy Pon and Malinda Lo‘s joint venture Diversity in YA, but I want to take the time to mention it again and explain why it is important to me.

Things I have learned from YA Trivia Night: I am really good with middle grade books published before 1997. If it’s fantasy, I’m all over it. I have appalling gaps in my children’s fiction knowledge including, but not limited to: Picture books. No really, my knowledge of picture books (past and present) is abysmal. Contemporary [...]