Help?

[squirrelhaven]

My niece is turning 14 this weekend. I have only just now remembered this. With amazon prime, I can order something this afternoon and it will arrive on (or near enough) her birthday that I won't feel like the deadbeat aunt. She loves to read, so surely a couple books would fit the bill. Yet I am drawing a total blank on what the classic young

Comments

[kassrachel]

How about the Golden Compass books? They are sophisticated, but given their adolescent-girl protagonist, they might make good reading for a kid her age.

[kcobweb]

You might try this site - enter titles you know she liked, and see what it comes up with?

http://www.whatshouldireadnext.com/search

You'd think, with all the YA I've been reading lately, I could come up with something. But I've been reading more on the younger end of the YA scale..... (as well as the fantasy-ish end). But I just saw a YA reading list in some class stuff. Be right back.

[kcobweb]

Okay - this is from a library science YA course (I am thinking about taking this class eventually).

Classics:
The Outsiders (SE Hinton)
Weetzie-Bat (F L Block) (???? I don't think I've ever heard of this one, though the author's name is vaguely familiar)
Forever (J Blume)
MC Higgins the Great (V Hamilton)
Go Ask Alice (Anon) v. depressing; not a good birthday gift

It also has categories of Horror (Twilight), Fantasy (The Giver), Science Fiction (Wrinkle in Time), GLBTZ (Annie on My Mind), Historical Fiction (The Braid), Realistic/Issues (Speak by L H Anderson), Graphic Novels (Rapunzel's Revenge, which I just read and is Awesome!), Multicultural (Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian), and Biography/Non-fiction (Diary of Anne Frank). I can give you more ideas in any of those categories, if you wish.

YA novels.

[mika_uriah]

I love how you won't recommend GO ASK ALICE as a birthday gift because its too depressing, but you'll recommend DIARY OR ANNE FRANK. HELLO?! can't get more depressing then that.

Re: YA novels.

[kcobweb]

o.O Personally, I found Go Ask Alice very traumatizing when I read it as a teen, even so more than Diary of Anne Frank. Everything that happens to Alice, she does to herself; Anne is acted upon by outside forces. So as a matter of fact, you *can* get more depressing than that. Just my opinion.

[bayleaf]

If she enjoys reading fantasy novels, she might enjoy Mercedes Lackey. (Terrible, terrible writing but I ate that shit up with a spoon when I was 14 & 15. Particularly the Arrows series.)

[bayleaf]

Oh, and I recently read several of the Marked series and enjoyed it.

[squirrelhaven]

Have just read the amazon blurb. With the vampyres, and the Goddess Nyx. This novel brought to you by the letter Y! And yet it still looks trashily delicious. Or rather, trashyly dylycious.

[squirrelhaven]

Terrible, terrible writing

Uh, that's kind of a dealbreaker for me. Not that I object to guilty pleasures, of which badly written books can certainly rate. But somehow I don't feel that I, the writer, can give my niece a book when the only thing I know about it is that someone whose opinion I respect uses these words to describe it.

That said, I appreciate the honesty. ;-)

Your Niece's birthday =)

[mika_uriah]

Hello Squirrel

Re: Your Niece's birthday =)

[squirrelhaven]

Thanks for the suggestions. If you don't mind my asking, how did you happen upon my journal?

Re: Your Niece's birthday =)

[mika_uriah]

I am not quite sure how I found your journal to be honest.
I'm quite new at this livejournal bit, and clicked on random things and found it.

[woobat]

If she's at all open to fantasy, I have to pimp my all time favorite book, "The Hero and the Crown" by Robin McKinley. Also decent YA fantasy is Anne McCaffery's Harper Hall series (Dragon Song, Dragon Singer, Dragon Drums).

[bayleaf]

Oh oh, yes! I second the rec for McKinley.

[squirrelhaven]

I gave her the first Temeraire book last year, though. So I've kind of played the dragon card already. I'll look into McKinley, though -- thank you.