Rumpus Exclusive: “Kristy’s Invisible Hand and Das Baby-Sitters Club Kapital”
The babysitters inspired me, and Kristy’s entrepreneurial vision seemed plain yet elegant; easy-to-follow, too.
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Posts Tagged: young adult literature
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project: Dr. Amra Sabic-El-Rayess
“The difference with memorializing my story is that I have invited others to live it, for a moment.”
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Rumpus Exclusive: Cover Reveal for Foreshadow
An exclusive first look at the cover of the forthcoming collection, FORESHADOW!
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Both Hard and Soft: Talking with Lilliam Rivera
Lilliam Rivera discusses her new novel, DEALING IN DREAMS.
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Smart Girls, Weird Magic: Talking with Kendra Fortmeyer
Kendra Fortmeyer discusses her first novel, HOLE IN THE MIDDLE.
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Sound & Vision: Celia C. Pérez
Allyson McCabe talks with Celia C. Pérez about her debut middle-grade novel, The First Rule of Punk, her inspirations for writing the book, and her own childhood.
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Young People Are Our Hope: Talking with Lilliam Rivera
Lilliam Rivera discusses her debut novel, The Education of Margot Sanchez, world-building, and her desire to see bookshelves filled with stories by people of color.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Erika T. Wurth
Erika T. Wurth talks about her latest book, Buckskin Cocaine, persevering through rejection, and white writers writing Native characters.
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On Searching for Honesty in Writing: An Interview with Blake Nelson
Blake Nelson discusses his new book, Boy, letting his characters find their own fates, and possibly, maybe, being just the right amount of famous.
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What to Read When You Are a Girl in This Garbage-Fire World
Our voices are our weapons, and in these books, young women speak, shout, and scream the truths that you are not alone, you are not forgotten, and you are not done fighting.
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VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Angie Thomas
Angie Thomas discusses her debut novel, The Hate U Give, landing an agent on Twitter, and why she trusts teenagers more than the publishing industry.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #66: Reimagining Children’s Literature as Mixtape
In the best collaborations, creative individuals push themselves to work with new media and singular, wild things issue forth. Jeff Antebi of Waxploitation Records has managed to create just this kind of magic in his book, Stories for Ways and Means. A product of ten years’ worth of seeking and story pitching, Stories for Ways […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Jacqueline Woodson
Jacqueline Woodson discusses her latest novel Another Brooklyn, the little deaths of lost friendships, and her work with children across the country as the Poetry Foundation’s Young People’s Poet Laureate.
...moreWhere Our Favorite Stories Lived
Particularly in the case of children’s writers, some part of me might hope that these tourist sites will be living manifestations of beloved stories, of stories that seemed like physical locations, places to escape, as real as real life. Maybe it has something to do with seeking to make literal the metaphorical experience of being […]
...moreThe Art of Memory
It is optimistic in terms of fiction and young adult fiction to propose a world in which there is healing, and in which healing exists, because complete or perfect healing doesn’t exist in the real world. But there is the idea of making room for new people. Over at the Los Angeles Review of Books, […]
...moreChildren’s Literature through the Centuries
At NPR Education, Byrd Pinkerton looks at the emergence of children’s literacy and literature, starting with 17th century learning primers through to the late 20th century’s complex young adult literature, all of which have helped define the idea of “childhood” through the centuries.
...moreThe Faces of The Face on the Milk Carton
The YA novel The Face on The Milk Carton has marked a thrilling yet disturbing rite of passage for many young readers over the past 25 years, iconic right down to its simple, haunting cover—which many of those readers could easily conjure from memory. Mallory Ortberg, literary comedian and maestro of The Toast, was one […]
...moreCrushes on Fiction
Contributors over at Huffington Post discuss five fictional characters that stimulated their pre-teen/teen sexual awakening, including Artemis from Artemis Fowl and Gilbert Blythe from Anne of Green Gables: When it comes to my sexual awakening in fiction, specific characters figure very little. A prose adaptation of The Odyssey for young adults (hot goddesses were always […]
...moreOld Friends
Upbeat YA protagonists are a far cry from the tortured figures we’re used to watching on television. Flavorwire’s Sarah Seltzer makes her predictions for Nancy Drew and Anne of Green Gables’s forthcoming return to the small screen: Two iconic characters with sunny auras and relatively straightforward histories are about to be reimagined in the context of today’s […]
...moreWhy Some Voices Are “Stronger” than Others in YA Lit
At the School Library Journal, Kelly Jensen examines gender norms and double standards in YA fiction, questioning which female protagonists we refer to as “strong”—and why do not refer to male voices as such: When women take risks in their writing, when they choose to write female-driven narratives with take-no-bull girls who may not care at […]
...moreDoes Age Matter?
With the publication of several new young adult novels by teen authors, Julia Eccleshare wonders if age impacts a novelist’s ability to connect with younger readers. In addition, Eccleshare returns to the origins of the young adult genre, and investigates the influence of popular works by John Green, Judy Blume, and Beverly Cleary.
...moreWould You Rather Babysit Cathy Ames or Christine Hargensen?
What do Yukio Mishima, Tana French, Shirley Jackson, and John Steinbeck have in common? They’re the masterminds behind a couple of the most evil fictional youngsters of all time, according to a list compiled by British bookstore Abebooks. The list shuns contemporary malevolent characters in favor of the “utterly evil” children of yore, reasoning: “While […]
...moreConversations with Literary Ex-Cons: Jack Gantos
Jack Gantos discusses the sense of “delusional invincibility” he had in 1970s New York that led him to prison—and then on to a career as an award-winning children’s book author.
...moreYA’s Last Taboo
Sex scenes in YA, the kind that (gulp) turn us on and make our cheeks flush and get our hearts racing, have never been more important than they are now. Stories that give protagonists flesh and bone and heart and all that goes with being in a body also give us a portrait of sexual […]
...moreThe Fault in Our Sentences
Hit young adult novels may spread like wildfire, but they don’t grow on trees. The Times profiles Julie Strauss-Gabel, a YA editor known for whipping her writers into shape: The last thing you want is an author saying, ‘That’s what’s selling right now, so that’s what I’m going to write.’ That’s the point at which […]
...moreAutism on the Page
Even if we already know our identity, proper representation helps us accept that identity. It’s well-established that negative/no representation has awful effects on self-esteem. When we see no one like us—or when we’re only ever the troubled sibling, never the heroic kid —it sends a message. We’re not normal. We’re not welcome. We’re not heroes. […]
...moreNot-So-Young Adults
Good news! Early reports show that book sales are up 4.9 percent in 2014. Who can we thank for this Christmas miracle? Adults who read e-book versions of YA novels, that’s who. Sales are up by a dramatic 53 percent in YA/Children’s e-books, while sales in Adult Fiction/Nonfiction are down 3.3 percent—maybe because all the […]
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The Rumpus Saturday Essay: Stain
It’s hard to remember why I was silent. Maybe, like some of the women only now reporting they were raped by Bill Cosby decades ago, I was afraid I wouldn’t be believed.
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The Rumpus Interview with Maxwell Neely-Cohen
Maxwell Neely-Cohen discusses smart teens, furious parents, the apocalypse, and how our screens change how we see the world.
...moreThe Birth of the Young Adult
For the New Yorker, Jon Michaud reveals how S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, a staple in middle school and high school classes, came to define the young adult genre: “The Outsiders died on the vine being sold as a drugstore paperback,” Hinton told me, but her publisher “noticed that in one area it was selling very […]
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