Monday 27 December 2010

Five challenge: Hopes for YA in 2011

Dear Blog,
Another Persnickety Snark FIVE post, a day late again, alas. I really have to get my act together.
Anyway. So today I'll be listing my five hopes for YA fiction next year.

  • That we get over this paranormal rut that teenage fiction seems to be stuck in.  It seems that all a book needs these days for it to sell is a love triangle, immortality in one form or another and a black cover with a single inanimate object on it.
  • Novels with LGBT protagonists that don't just focus on them coming to terms with their sexuality. There's an increasing number of YA novels with LGBT narrators/protagonists, and I think that's awesome; but a little variety in that genre would be even better.
  • More comedyComedy comedy.  Spud, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Georgia Nicholson, you know the sort of thing.  I wish that I could rattle off a few more such names, but alas I can't.  Because, well, there isn't enough of it. 
  • Interesting, complex antagonists.  I'm increasingly less satisfied with the state of contemporary antagonists/villains. "Bwahahaha behold my evil!" is not enough. Why are villains the villains they are? What led them to make lives a misery for the protagonists? We need more Claude Frollos in YA lit.
  • More translated teenage fiction. I love fiction in translation; it's both a crossing of language and culture and an insight into another place. And while I could rattle off a couple of European teenage authors, it is oh. so. hard to consistently find them.   Jostein Gaarder and Haruki Murakami, for example.  rock my socks, but they don't write directly for teens.
Well, that's about it, I think. Have you got any such hopes?  What do you think?

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