“It rattles you as a reader.”
“Y’know, guys change everything.”
“How lucky we are, we’re allowed to love.”
Those are quotes from the teens that spoke at the Best Fiction for Young Adults teen input session. This was one of my favorite sessions at Midwinter, so I made SURE to attend it again this time around. Teens speak so eloquently about the books they loved and hated.
Four pages of nominated books were open for discussion and the committee went through page by page, inviting teens to come up to the front and speak about any of the books they wanted. There was a clear call for more contemporary realistic reads and it seemed like these teens were getting frustrated with series books. Most interesting to me were the books that the teens didn’t talk about, including What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen, The Last Little Blue Envelope by Maureen Johnson, and Cryer’s Cross by Lisa McMann. They went through 4 pages of nominations in just over an hour, so there were lots of nominated books unspoken. Maybe the teens didn’t have a chance to read those yet or maybe they just didn’t have anything strong to say about them!
Check out the 2012 Best Fiction for Young Adults nominated books (the list is updated monthly and will be updated again at the beginning of August).
And several people live-tweeted the teen input session today, so check out the hashtag #bfya to see our thoughts!
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