Several summers ago, I rented a cabin in the Catskills for a weekend. It was perched on a hill in middle of nowhere—the nearest grocery store was 15 miles away and staffed by very suspicious locals—and decorated in high rustic style, with musty wool blankets and lamps made out of antlers. Best of all, it had a record […]
Sometimes it seems like parents in YA (at least one, if not both) are either checked out or dead. So it’s always nice to come across a fictional parent or two that not only exist as an actual presence in their children’s life, but also act like totally normal parents—in other words, completely and utterly embarrassing, all of the time. […]
A recent New York Times profile on Orphan Black star Tatiana Maslany reflects that her masterful portrayals of Project Leda’s disparate clones represent a range of female TV archetypes, from Desperate Housewives to a European horror story to a police procedural. I’d like to argue that the members of the Clone Club also embody many of the archetypes observed in YA novels: the scrappy fighter, […]
Summer reading is a standing part of a school’s curriculum, but what prepares you for class in the fall doesn’t necessarily prepare you for, well, anything else. College is a whole different animal from high school, and if you really want some reading to help you prep for new people, new living situations, new emotions, […]
Let’s face facts: life is just a string of moments between Harry Potter rereadings. Ever since J.K. Rowling put her magical quill to parchment and penned the series that changed us forever, we’ve all been doomed to a life of answering every “What’s your favorite book?” query with a fervent and slightly suspicious “You mean… besides Harry Potter, […]
