Let's Start the Year Reflecting by Steve Bickmore
A new year begins.
Dr. Bickmore’s YA Wednesday enters its 13th year. Many of those years have been productive providing information to scholars, researchers, teacher, students and people who are just curioius about YA Lit. I rarely write Wednesday posts now, most of those are done by guest contributors.
As the year begins about 50% of our Wednesday slots are called for. This means there is still room for you, one of you students, or colleagues would like to contribute a post. Here is the link if you would like to reserve a place.
I have been reflecting on nearly two decades reading and thinking about Young Adult Literature academically. After retirement at the beginning of 2022 and spending a year in Rwanda I read very little YA literature. Nevertheless, people still talk to me about YA Literature as if I were an expert. In truth, after the last three years, even though I am still curating the blog and interviewing authors, I am becoming less informed and, as a result, less relevant.
This doesn't mean I don't have opinions. I have favorite authors, genres, and topics. I also still care deeply about what adolescents are reading and if they read at all.
For this blog I decided to very quickly think of 10 authors who stay with me. This, of course, means several things. Some of which are: 1. Whose books are still on my shelves after moving and seriously limiting my books to the available space. 2. Which writers do I recommend to others without reservation. 3. Whose books and influence do I frequently think about. 4. They also might include writers that I think are under read and neglected.
I made the list very quickly and without revising. I say that because as soon as I started to put the authors into this blog space, I realized how many more authors could have easily been on the list. With out belaboring the issue other authors I might have included are A. S. King, Sharon Draper, Kekla Magoon, Daniel Nayeri, Meg Medina, Brendan Kiely, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Jo Knowles, M. T Anderson, Andrew Smith and Traci Chee.
You see the task is hopeless. I left my list alone knowing that if interested readers started with these ten, they could be reading great books for awhile and would probably start running into the others authors I left off the list. Other knowlegable people might want to add a variety of other authors.
If fact, if you want to create your own list and put it on the blog space let me know. One rule, no more that two duplicates from my original list.
From now on this is a wordless post. I will link to the authors websites and link to where you can get their books.
Enjoy.
Dr. Bickmore’s YA Wednesday enters its 13th year. Many of those years have been productive providing information to scholars, researchers, teacher, students and people who are just curioius about YA Lit. I rarely write Wednesday posts now, most of those are done by guest contributors.
As the year begins about 50% of our Wednesday slots are called for. This means there is still room for you, one of you students, or colleagues would like to contribute a post. Here is the link if you would like to reserve a place.
I have been reflecting on nearly two decades reading and thinking about Young Adult Literature academically. After retirement at the beginning of 2022 and spending a year in Rwanda I read very little YA literature. Nevertheless, people still talk to me about YA Literature as if I were an expert. In truth, after the last three years, even though I am still curating the blog and interviewing authors, I am becoming less informed and, as a result, less relevant.
This doesn't mean I don't have opinions. I have favorite authors, genres, and topics. I also still care deeply about what adolescents are reading and if they read at all.
For this blog I decided to very quickly think of 10 authors who stay with me. This, of course, means several things. Some of which are: 1. Whose books are still on my shelves after moving and seriously limiting my books to the available space. 2. Which writers do I recommend to others without reservation. 3. Whose books and influence do I frequently think about. 4. They also might include writers that I think are under read and neglected.
I made the list very quickly and without revising. I say that because as soon as I started to put the authors into this blog space, I realized how many more authors could have easily been on the list. With out belaboring the issue other authors I might have included are A. S. King, Sharon Draper, Kekla Magoon, Daniel Nayeri, Meg Medina, Brendan Kiely, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Jo Knowles, M. T Anderson, Andrew Smith and Traci Chee.
You see the task is hopeless. I left my list alone knowing that if interested readers started with these ten, they could be reading great books for awhile and would probably start running into the others authors I left off the list. Other knowlegable people might want to add a variety of other authors.
If fact, if you want to create your own list and put it on the blog space let me know. One rule, no more that two duplicates from my original list.
From now on this is a wordless post. I will link to the authors websites and link to where you can get their books.
Enjoy.
E. Lockhart
Chris Crutcher
Laurie Halse Anderson
Matt de la Pena
Padma Venkatraman
Jason Renyolds
Maria Padian
Jeff Zentner
Sharon G Flake
Ellen Hopkins
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