Ep.72 Don't Omit YA Lit with Mindy Jett 12-16-20

If you are a book lover of a certain age, you may have spent a lot of time reading authors like Judy Blume, Paula Danziger, Gary Paulsen, or Christopher Pike when you were a teenager. Although books began to be categorized as ‘young adult” as early as the 1960s, when we were teens we didn’t know that, and we certainly didn’t care what the boring grownups were calling the books we gravitated to. While it blows our minds to think that it has been 30+ years since the end of the 80s and early 1990s, a lot has changed in the book publishing industry since the time when we were young adults. Young adult literature is everywhere and has many subgenres, including dystopian, romance, and historical fiction. Our guest this week, Mindy Jett, is a self-professed book nerd who still gravitates toward YA fiction even though she has teenagers of her own. She talks about how reading YA is just like immersing yourself in a sci-fi world or a different time period except it is the world from a teen perspective. We discuss how reading YA fiction has given her more insight into her own children, and how much nostalgia from her own childhood plays into her love of books from that era. This is our last regular episode of 2020. Next week we will have a wrap-up episode where Carrie and I discuss some of our favorite books of the year that we overlooked during past episodes. Then we will take several weeks off for the holidays but will be back in early January to start season 4 with a whole new crop of cool and interesting bookish guests. Books mentioned-- 1- Forever by Judy Blume 2- From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg 3- Twilight Where Darkness Begins (series) by various authors 4- Sweet Valley High (series) by Francine Pascal 5- Diary of a Wimpy Kid (series) by Jeff Kinney 6- Amulet (series) by Kazu Kibuishi 7- Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume 8- Looking for Alaska / Paper Towns / An Abundance of Catherines / The Fault in Our Stars / Turtles All the Way Down by John Green 9- Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell 10- Warcross by Marie Lu 11- Simon vs. The Homo Sapien Agenda by Becky Albertali 12- Ready Player One by Ernest Cline 13- The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton 14- Little Women by Louisa May Alcott 15- Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens 16- Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pessl 17- The Court of Thorns & Roses by Sarah J Maas 18- Obeslisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin 19- Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir 20- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak 21- Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson 22- The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo 23- Pride by Ibi Zoboi 24- Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison 25- We Were Liars by E. Lockhart 26- Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn 27- The Hate You Give / On the Come Up by Angie Thomas 28- Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds 29- The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton DiSclafani 30- Hole in My Life by Jack Gantos 31- Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz 32- Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys 33- Rough Magic by Lara Prior-Palmer 34- Stuart Little by E.B. White 34- The Green Book by Jill Paton Walsh 35- 101 Books to Read Before You Grow Up by Bianca Shulze 36- Where the World Ends by Geraldine McCaughrean 37- Lord of the Flies by William Golding 38- Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid 39- My True Love Gave to Me edited by Stephanie Perkins