Pointe

We’re living in a YA golden age, with loads of diverse, funny, smart, sad, joyous, illuminating books hitting the shelves each week. We all have a list of books that comforted us, exhilarated us, and even saved us when we were teen readers, those fortuitous bookstore and library finds that spoke directly to our budding brains. But with the benefit […]

Ballet is notoriously elegant, beautiful, and deceptively delicate, but those with more intimate knowledge of the dance know that inside those pristine pointe shoes lie blisters and blood. The best insider looks at ballet exemplify the way training and performance push the dancers to their limits, working them as hard as any athletes while demanding […]

It’s a dark reality of the world that no one waits until you’re “old enough” to deal with trauma, and to represent in YA literature the effects of childhood abduction is something that must be done with care, sensitivity, nuance, and great skill. While some of these titles are told from the perspective of the abducted […]

Back in 2015, I asked a bunch of publishing professionals about YAs they think “get it right”—ones that truly nail a part of the human, and specifically teen, experience. But while adults are definitely major consumers of YA, and wholly responsible for publishing it, no one can speak to the effectiveness of modern YA like […]