Suggestions?

[d_aulnoy]

Every time I teach my YA lit class, I wind up with a couple of outliers.  The YA class is generally intended for people who want to teach high school, so it carriers a field experience component ... but every term, I wind up with a couple of people who are just taking the class because they, well, like YA lit.  And who am I to complain?

So every term, instead of their spending 4 hours at a local high school observing classes and then however many hours writing up the 5 page report on it that I require, I have them read a contemporary, ideally very-recently-published YA book and report on that instead.  Last term, I gave them Little Brother, but then I decided I liked it enough to sub it in for Ender's Game and just teach it outright.  So now I'm looking for a good book to assign for this term.  Y'all got any faves that you'd like to point me towards?
 

Comments

[rosefox]

Flora Segunda!

[d-aulnoy.livejournal.com]

Genius! That could work *perfectly* ....

[penmage.livejournal.com]

Does it have to be SF? I highly recommend Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta.

Other non-SF noteworthy YA:
Paper Towns by John Green
Me, The Missing and the Dead by Jenny Valentine

In SF:
The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness.
The Explosionist by Jenny Davidson (sort of a YA Farthing)
Nation by Terry Pratchett

[d-aulnoy.livejournal.com]

Nope, it does not have to be SF - I tend to skew that way because of being, well, me, but I'd been thinking of using _The Green Glass Sea_, and it looks like a lot of your suggestions are right up that alley. I am particularly intrigued by the idea of a YA _Farthing_! Thanks!

[penmage.livejournal.com]

I tend to skew that way too :). I would definitely check out Jellicoe Road--it was this year's Printz winner, and one of my all-time top ten reads. There's a lot going on--it's one of the only books I've ever read, closed the last page, and then opened it up and started reading it again moments later. I love it very much.

Another book I highly recommend is Dreamhunter and Dreamquake by Elizabeth Knox--not published as recently, but fascinating gorgeous books that are smarter and deeper than most other books I've ever read.

[msmsgirl.livejournal.com]

and by Jenny! Have you and she ever talked about YA Lit?

[d-aulnoy.livejournal.com]

Wait, it's by *our* Jenny? I loved her first novel, but I had no idea she wrote YA ....

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

I was *just* going to recommend The Green Glass Sea, which I bought at Wiscon a few years ago and loved.

[ninja-turbo.livejournal.com]

Uglies, by Scott Westerfield -- futuristic sociological SF in a CW-channel distopia.

[d-aulnoy.livejournal.com]

Brilliant! This had completely slipped my mind, but it's exactly the sort of thing that I'm looking for. Thank you!

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Please, please, I beg you! Not an effing dystopia which tells kids that this is the best of all possible worlds. Westerfield is probably the best of the type, but why the hell are we telling kids a) to be grateful to be in this world, and b) that sf is all dismal?

If you want sf, try Conor Kostick's Epic. World uses virtual reality to control it's economy, kids come along and use virtual reality to change the paradigm of the world.

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

How 'bout Ellen Kushner's Privilege of the Sword?

[erica-ac.livejournal.com]

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins might be good, or Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan, but I think I'm rooting for Flora or Green Glass Sea.

And I recommend Bookshelves of Doom, a blog that posts a lot of great YA novel reviews (and, lately, quite a bit of Twilight-related funniness) if you haven't found it yet.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Anything by Frances Hardinge.