YA BEA Book Buzz
Carlie Webber -- School Library Journal, 06/03/2009
“Wonderful new voices telling wonderful new stories” was how David Levithan of Scholastic described some of this coming fall’s hottest young adult titles. The six books highlighted at Book Expo America’s “YA Editors’ Buzz Panel” come from both new and established authors and cover a range of genres.
Lips Touch Three Times by Laini Taylor, illustrated by Jim DeBartolo, was Arthur A. Levine’s pick from Scholastic. This collection of illustrated paranormal romance novellas, according to Levine, has the three building blocks of buzz: emotional impact, suspense, and heat. His promise? “The book is bound to make you blush.”
Ari Lewin of Disney offered The Devil’s Kiss by Sarwat Chadda, which brings old tales of the Knights Templar to modern London. The Templars now exist to fight the unholy and the supernatural, and Billi, the only female Templar, is about to go through their secret, scary initiation process. Lewin described Billi as someone that “girls will want to be and boys will want to know.”
Feiwel and Friends brought a Southern novel, guaranteed by editor Liz Szabla to “give you goosebumps, to make you laugh and cry.” In The Sweetheart of Prosper County by Jill S. Alexander, 15-year-old Austin decides that she will become the girl who sits on the float in the parade. In Prosper County, this means getting involved with the Future Farmers of America and raising a rooster.
Established adult author Adriana Trigiani offers her first YA novel, Viola in Reel Life, buzzed by Tara Weikum of HarperCollins. Filmmaker Viola is sent to the Prefect Academy for Young Women in Indiana, a place that couldn’t be more different than her native Brooklyn. Weikum promises that Viola will be fine, but first “she has to set her camera down and let the world in.”
Mark Siegel of First Second Books brought “a teen story, one that could define First Second.” Danica Novgorodoff illustrated Pushcart Prize winner Benjamin Percy’s story Refresh Refresh. In a small town in Oregon, friends Josh and Gordon check their emails constantly for notes from their fathers, who are serving abroad in the military. Suddenly, the email stops coming.
Krista Marino of Random House confirmed that dystopias are as hot as ever with The Maze Runner by James Dashner. Every 30 days, a new boy, and always a boy, emerges from a box in the middle of The Glade, which is surrounded by high stone walls. The day after Thomas arrives, however, a girl falls out of the box with a note in her hand.
