Juvenile fiction/Young Adult fiction

I'll confess, I'm a juvenile fiction junkie. It frustrates my husband to no end as he thinks I should be reading something with more substance--or at least more adult in nature. For now, I've bought time because I tell him that I'm evaluating books for our son to read.

However, he and I both know it goes beyond that. It really is one of my favorite genres. There is a great deal of discipline involved with writing young adult fiction and it takes a very talented author to do it well. Some of the best writing takes place in so-called children's books, especially when the authors have a real respect for their audience and don't buy into the philosophy that you have to use small words when talking to children.

I've been on a juvenile fiction kick lately, reading one or two novels a night from a stack of books that were published in the past two years. I've been really impressed with what I've read, especially since some of them I was skeptical about the chosen topics and didn't have very high expectations for them. One in particular (which I'll review and blog sometime soon) absolutely blew me away.

At any rate, in my wanderings over the Web, I came across this challenge. It's a Young Adult Literature Challenge. It's a challenge that was too fun to pass up. I'll blog about it here--I need to get back in the book blogging habit anyway and share some reviews along the way.

If you find this sort of thing interesting, let me know and I'll dig up a few more. Perhaps one day we'll even have a Book Help Web challenge.

posted by Book Help Web at 10:09 AM |