Shaunta and I have been paying attention to the Michael L. Printz awards for the last few months, but recently we learned about the William C. Morris Award, which also acknowledges the work of YA authors. This year all five finalists are debut authors, which is great for us, because we love discovering new writers! All five of these books sound amazing, so much so that I’ve already purchased two of them (I won’t say which two, to provide a little mystery)! Have any of you read these books? If so, let us know what you think!
Here are this year’s finalists for the 2013 William C. Morris YA Book Award!
Wonder Show: (Houghton Mifflin) by Hannah Barnaby, a dark tale of historical fiction about a teenager who joins a traveling sideshow as she searches for her father.
Love and Other Perishable Items: (Knopf) by Laura Buzo, an unflinchingly honest story following a fifteen-year-old and her intense, but one-sided, crush on an older co-worker.
After the Snow: (Feiwel) by S.D. Crockett, in which a teen boy searches for his family in a bleak, dystopian world of freezing temperatures, crowded cities, and a fascist government.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post: (Balzer + Bray) by emily m. danforth, a complex and poignant coming-of-age story of an adolescent girl, wrestling with the death of her parents and her own sexuality, who is sent to a conversion camp for gay teenagers.
Seraphina: (Random) by Rachel Hartman, a fantasy about a girl who inhabits a world where dragons and humans uneasily coexist—and who is hiding a potentially devastating secret.
