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5 YA Books About Intrepid Aspiring Reporters
Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Young reporters make great protagonists, see. Fiction has a long and proud tradition of producing lovable, insatiable, distinctive, and tireless journalists. Sometimes they’re young (Harriet the Spy), occasionally they’re the subject of satire (Scoop), and once in a blue moon, their jobs take them to a flat disc balanced on the backs of four elephants, who in turn stand atop a giant turtle (The Truth). Almost always, they’re inquisitive, keen, and dogged.
And never more so than in YA, perhaps because curiosity and unflagging devotion to pestering others are often the only way teenagers can get the unalloyed truth on what, exactly, is going on. Here are just a few young ink-stained wretches whose byline you need to become familiar with.
These Shallow Graves, by Jennifer Donnelly
Everything seems to be coming up roses for 17-year-old Jo Montfort. The daughter of a wealthy New York newspaper magnate, she’s beautiful and wonderfully bright. All around, she’s a great catch, except for that bedeviling precocious streak: she wants to be a writer, not a wife. Unfortunately, the first story she’ll be forced to dig up is one that hits close to home: her father is found dead, and despite appearances, Jo knows it can’t be by his own hand. She’ll stop at nothing to uncover the truth, and it doesn’t take Nellie Bly to recognize that mark of a newshound.
Fallout, by Gwenda Bond
Would any list of intrepid fictional reporters be complete without Lois Lane? Negative, and here she is as a fiercely independent high-schooler. Lois is the new kid at school, and all she wants to do is fit in and lay low. Fat chance. Empowered by her job as a reporter, our gal starts poking around at the behest of a troubled source: a bullying victim whose attackers use an immersive video game as a weapon. She’s got help, of course, in the form of an anonymous online ally: SmallvilleGuy.
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Fake ID, by Lamar Giles
In this tightly plotted, blisteringly paced thriller, Nick Pearson is pounding the pavement like any investigative reporter worth his salt. Though Nick’s circumstances are slightly different than most reporters: he and his family are in the witness protection program, thanks to his father’s previous occupation as bookkeeper to a mobster. But it’s hard to keep your head down when your new friend, the editor of the school newspaper, turns up dead in suspicious circumstances. Instead of lying low, Nick has to dig deep to find the truth—and it involves a lot of very close calls with danger.
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The Year of the Gadfly, by Jennifer Miller
In the land of YA, where there’s a prep school, there’s typically trouble. And The Year of the Gadfly is no exception, which Iris Dupont finds out when she tries to take down Mariana Academy’s vigilante secret society. Iris wants to penetrate the ranks of The Devil’s Advocate, the society’s underground newspaper. It’s a solid plan, one enabled and complicated by Iris’ imaginary friend and sole confidante: the ghost of Edward R. Murrow. You’ve got to hand it to her, he’s a good pal to have when you’re on the trail of a multilayered mystery.
Famous Last Words, by Jennifer Salvato Doktorski
It’s a common expression in newspapers that every great reporter started in obituaries. But just try telling that to 16-year-old Samantha D’Angelo, who’s bored to tears with her summer internship as an obit writer. The job is severely inhibiting her social life, much to the consternation of her best friend. Sam’s talented, though, and she catches some big breaks in the newsroom. Soon enough, she has become infatuated with print journalism, and, to the credit of Doktorski, Sam even manages to convey the winking self-deprecation of the best fictional newspaper reporters.