Substantial is the word for some of the best non-fiction this year, too. Among books that deftly balanced the dark and the light were Amy Timberlake’s One Came Home, Rita Williams-Garcia’s P.S., Be Eleven, and Meg Medina’s Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass. We also appreciated when the laughter came in the midst of stories exploring substantial topics. Among those we were thrilled to discover were several books by Native authors and artists-what a delight! Julie Flett’s Wild Berries, her collaboration with author Richard van Camp on Little You, and Quanaq Mikkigak and Joanne Schwartz’s Grandmother Ptarmigan, from Inuit publisher Inhabit Media, were so welcome.įrom Kathi Appelt’s response to a friend’s challenge to “Write something funny,” The True Blue Scounts of Sugar Man Swamp, to the blithe Bollywood-inspired adventure in Uma Krishnaswami’s The Problem with Being Slightly Heroic, we loved the books that made us laugh this year. But finding terrific new books for babies and young toddlers was much harder this year than last. Once again, we found more and more books featuring characters beyond the age of eighteen, or that focus on the lives of adults as well as teens.Īt the other end of the spectrum, way at the other end, we relished a number of fine picture books. We also continued to enjoy young adult literature that pushed against the upper end of the age spectrum (see The Summer Prince, above). (Relationships? Those can be complicated.) We hope we continue to see more books like Julie Halpern’s The F-It List and Alaya Dawn Johnson’s The Summer Prince, which acknowledge the reality of sex in some teens’ lives. There was a matter-of-factness, occasionally a frankness, to teens and sex that we appreciated, with the act itself often angst-free and pleasurable. Often, we were referencing the portrayal of sex and sexuality in young adult literature. Refreshing! We wrote that in notes about our reading, or said it as we informally discussed books, quite a lot over the past year.
(This essay originally appeared in CCBC Choices 2014) © 2014 Cooperative Children’s Book Center
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