So Serious Saturday #14

Fiction needs a basis in reality. Exercising non-fiction muscles once in a while benefits an active imagination, channeling creative energies as it focuses on a subject. So Serious Saturdays will be an active place for critical essays or writing about reality in the context of real events - even when it is not written on Saturdays.

Type: Informational/Opinion

Recommended Books for Young Adults

This week I was approached by a woman seeking to inspire ninth grade students, particularly boys, with fun and appropriate reads for a co-curricular book club.

I was actually recruited because I was the only one in that aisle of the bookstore who had read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, a wonderful young adult novel about a girl with two scientist parents who must rescue one of them from the far reaches of darkness and the universe with the aid of three mysterious women, her very gifted brother, and their new friend. After I had explained the basic plot of this timeless story, the woman informed me what she was searching for; the fact that I happened to have an English degree was a bonus.

Most of the books I’d read recently were either old, adulterous, long or obviously feminine, so for this task I had to sit and recall my own reading list dating back to middle and high school. Besides The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, these are the other books I am acquainted with, and that I believe are acceptable for early high school readers of either gender:

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by quintessential American author Mark Twain is the classic story of a boy who lives out many amazing childhood adventures in his village. Sawyer is young, but the story is from an older time, which makes for a slower paced but still lively narrative, as in many of Mark Twain’s works. Its sequel is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, differing from Tom Sawyer in that Huckleberry Finn tells his own story.

Inkheart by German author Cornelia Funke proves to be a fantastic adventure story in which a father, whose talent makes the books he reads out loud come to life, must be helped by his daughter when dangerous storybook characters are brought into the modern world. The Princess Bride, although better-known as a movie, is an adventure book by William Goldman with the same excellent sense of wit and action as its cinema counterpart. The fantasy adventure Stardust by Neil Gaiman involves a fallen star and a young man who ventures into the magic land where he was born. Its prose and unique take on the fairy-tale genre are praised by many readers, although its movie version develops scenes that are more active.

The Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan involves the more contemporary, fantastic adventures of a boy who discovers that he is the son of a human mother and a sea-god father; his friends are also demigods, and together they train and go on quests to save the world. Irish author Eoin (pronounced "Owen") Colfer wrote the eight-book Artemis Fowl series, which also has mythological beings. In the first book the boy genius title character encounters officers of the fairy organization called LEPRecon, and a hidden world of magic which may prove to be outside of his incredible powers of logic.

Author Scott Westerfeld has written a large selection of Young Adult books, including Leviathan, which takes place before World War I and has a steampunk or even pirate feel. Westerfeld also wrote a four-book series referred to by the title of the first book, called Uglies, following Tally and her friend Shay through perilous journeys to discover the truth of the past and the present. Besides imagining a high-tech future of both ruin and standardized beauty – and sometimes 3-D printing and mag-lev hoverboards – the 2005 series provides opportunities to think about the possible consequences of biological manipulation in humans and our environment.

The first book in the Sky High series by British author A.J. Butcher also provides contact with genetic experimentation in the mutants created out of a mad doctor’s lab. Six teenage spies from the secret training school, affectionately termed “Spy High”, must boost their team’s ranking and save the world from man-made monsters – if only they can learn to work together in Mission One. The second book, Mission Two: Chaos Rising,once again puts Bond Team at the center of the action when a mysterious virus hacks into the computers that run everything – trains, cars, light bulbs – in their ultra-high-tech society.

Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider series has expanded  ten (or more?) books long, but the first three or so originals are still the best and most uncomplicated as Alex Rider, a teenage orphan, becomes a British secret agent in order to rescue his spy uncle, foil a deadly computer system, infiltrate an elite boarding school, stop a nuclear weapon, etc. Spy enthusiasts may also enjoy Silverfin: A James Bond Adventure by Charlie Higson, which focuses on a teenage James Bond before the British secret service and particular martini orders. A warning to the squeamish: the narrative features needles and eels that may prove to be deadly.

Finally, although not a Young Adult novel, Life of Pi by Canadian author Yann Martel tells the realistic yet fantastic story of a boy who survives on a small boat with a hungry, full-grown male tiger in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. At times amazing, tragic, beautiful, or all three, the novel is unlike any other well-known book for cohabitation of its detailed description of survival measures and a renewing philosophical and spiritual discipline that helps young Piscine Patel deal with his extraordinary situation.

These and millions of other books exist in libraries and secret places all over the world. Leave the names of your favorite young adult novels in the comments section.

Happy 100th Post!