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5 of the Best Opening Scenes in YA Lit
Opening scenes are some of the trickiest to pull off, not least because they’re expected to do so much heavy lifting. They’re our first introduction to character, voice, atmosphere, world, and plot. They’re a gentle handshake or a sonic boom; a promise or a warning; a hint or a hope of what’s to come. But the best openings, like the ones below, do all that and more. They entice, intrigue, captivate, even seduce. Whether through an unexpected structure, an inescapable voice, or a perfectly executed flashback, these scenes convince—or, perhaps more accurately, compel—their readers to continue.
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Best Use of Multiple Points of View
How It Went Down, by Kekla Magoon
How It Went Down opens moments after 16-year-old Tariq Johnson is shot and killed. The reader experiences those terrible moments alongside five different characters in short bursts of beautiful prose (and one of verse). Each perspective fills in more of the scene—the colors, the milk, the dust, the blood, the sirens, the tears—while also subtly and masterfully introducing us to the characters (and their many complexities) that we’ll follow as they deal with the aftermath of Tariq’s murder.
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Best Opening Death Scene
The Summer Prince, by Alaya Dawn Johnson
At first blush, it might seem a strange choice to begin a book with the ultimate ending, but The Summer Prince couldn’t have begun any other way. When she was eight, June Costa watched a king die. To be precise, she watched her Queen slice the Summer King’s throat according to tradition—a tradition (and a sacrifice) June didn’t yet understand. This scene manages to be more than merely shocking, though. It deftly balances both delicate world-building and dense characterization, all within a few pages.
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Best Use of Voice
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, by Becky Albertalli
“It’s a weirdly subtle conversation,” Simon Spier says to open this hilarious and heartfelt romance. “I almost don’t notice I’m being blackmailed.” A classmate of Simon’s has stumbled on his secret emails with a boy who goes by Blue, and threatens to out both Simon and his mysterious pen pal if Simon doesn’t play wingman for him. While the opening scene does a beautiful job of setting up the plot, it’s Simon’s immediately present and wholly engaging voice that makes this scene shine.
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Best Not-Actually-a-Scene
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, by E. Lockhart
In a letter addressed to the Headmaster and Board of Directors of her elite prep school, Frankie Landau-Banks confesses to masterminding a string of, as she calls them, mal-doings committed by the Loyal Order of the Bassett Hounds, a storied secret society at Alabaster Prep. What follows is the delightful tale of how exactly Frankie came to admit in a written missive to “behavior [that] disrupted the smooth running of your patriarchal establishment.” The story would technically work without the opening letter, but why would you want it to?
Best Foreshadowing
Labyrinth Lost, by Zoraida Córdova
When Alex was seven years old, she snuck downstairs to a basement filled with music and her mom’s Circle of brujas and brujos. There, Alex saw her dead Aunt Rosaria—whom the family had just buried—dancing. This opening scene is not only a promise of magic and mystery, but also signals the role family will play and the importance of the less-than-distinct line between life and death. If that weren’t enough, when her mother warns Alex at the end of the scene to “never break a Circle,” we’re given a chilling suggestion of the conflict to come.