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The 10 must-read YA books
Authors John Boyne and Jenny Valentine have drawn up their list of nine must-read YA novels – and the Hay Festival audience chose the final one
There has been a "massive explosion" in Young Adult fiction over the past 30 years, according to Daniel Hahn, editor of the Oxford Companion to Children's Literature. "The amount of YA fiction and the quality of it and the way we talk about it is quite different now," Boyne said at the Hay Festival in May..
So what better time to draw up the definitive list of must-read YA fiction.
Hahn chaired a discussion with YA authors John Boyne (The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas) and Jenny Valentine (Finding Violet Park), both of whom selected their four favourite YA novels. Hahn then contributed one pick and, after a lively debate, the audience decided on the final entry.
"The fact that it has been so difficult to choose [these books] already tells you something about the wealth of material out there," said Hahn. But what do you think? And which other YA books deserve to be on the list?
The 10 must-read YA books
Boyne: "Set during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, it's about a boy, Fergus, whose brother is on hunger strike. Fergus discovers this body in a bog. At first he thinks it's a victim of the violence but it is actually a prehistoric body, which has been mummified. I think it's the best novel I've ever read about the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It features the kind of character I love in YA fiction, which is a really optimistic, resourceful young person."
Valentine: "It's such a brilliant blend of accident and unbelievably tight planning. Stanley is falsely accused of stealing a pair of trainers and sent to a young detention centre, where he has to dig holes. It's hot, it's dry and they have to dig meaningless holes and whatever they find, they have to hand in. As a reader I loved the story, and it was just so engaging and funny and the characters are brilliant. And as a writer I just thought 'I wish I'd written that book.' It's a perfect circle."
Boyne: "Of all the books I read last year – adult or young adult – this was the best one. It features an incredibly resourceful young man, Linus, who is in a terrible situation. Along with four adults and one other child, he has been kidnapped, drugged and left in a room to die. The subject matter is extremely dark but Linus keeps his spirits up. I didn't understand the negativity that greeted its Carnegie Prize victory. Linus is the kind of character that everybody should aspire to be when they are younger."
Valentine: "This book is stunning, it's so honest. Conor's mum is sick and she is not going to get better. There's no marshmallow ending. There's a tree outside Conor's bedroom window that turns into a monster and tells him stories and parables that don't really make sense. You think you know where they're going and then the endings are all wrong, they're kind of off. It's really confusing. But the monster helps Conor come to terms with the fact that life doesn't have the ending he wants it to have. I don't often cry when I read books but, boy, did I cry during this one. It's brilliant."
Boyne: "It's about children living on the dumpsites in South America and trying to find food, money, treasure or anything. This was a part of the world completely unfamiliar to me as a reader. I felt quite upset about the lives that these kids were living. But one of the things I really liked about the book was the adventure story at the centre of it."
Hahn: "It's an extraordinary coming-of-age story. There is this teenager in Norfolk in the Sixties, who is concerned about school, about losing his virginity – concerned really about all the things you're meant to be concerned about as a teenager in Norfolk in the Sixties. But the book is also about the world in which this is happening, so it's also about the Cuban missile crisis. There's this enormous story in the background – the imminent end of the world – and at the same time, there is this very small story about a teenager, which is somehow enormously important, as well."
Valentine: "I chose Green's first book because, even though he's such a force in YA writing now, I felt that this is the most important of his novels. It's the one that brought him here in the first place. He has such a great voice, such a great tone, the moment you start reading this book you know you're in safe hands. Miles Halter is very bored of his life and, inspired by the poet Francois Rabelais, he wants to follow 'the great perhaps'. He wants to get out there and see what's available. He goes to boarding school and meets a girl called Alaska Young, who is dangerous, gorgeous, messy, badly behaved, sexy, just the most wonderful character he has ever met and he follows her to the great perhaps. John Green is so good at people. I've always thought that it doesn't matter what happens in a book, as long as you care about the characters. If you haven't read it, you must."
Boyne: "This is very good at describing the events in Ireland over the last five years and the effect of the recession on families – people losing their jobs and families being forced to live on the streets. It explores the manner in which parents and children can be separated by the depression that sits with the adult members of the family – how adults struggle to cope anymore and children are left alone. Observing all this from a child's perspective is something Roddy Doyle does very well; putting a child in an adult situation well before their time and having them cope with that and understand it. It's quite an important book and, as you'd expect from Doyle, it's funny. If you're writing about depression, you want to have laughs on every page."
Valentine: "Daisy comes to stay with her aunt and cousins, her aunt goes to London, they're left on their own on the farm, Daisy fancies her cousin, it's all free. And then a bomb goes off in London. Suddenly we're in this post-apocalyptic scenario and Britain is under attack. This wonderful summer of love turns into this struggle to survive. This is just such a brutal love story. It's so clean, it's so unrestrained. There's so much feeling in it, it flaws you. I was blown away by it."
And chosen by the audience...
The longlist: