Posts tagged with coming-of-age
Eoin Colfer
Eoin Colfer is one of the many, many fine authors to have been relegated to the "If you loved the Harry Potter books, try ___" list, which always irritates me because it seems like so many o...
Susan Cooper
My little brother is incapable of reading Susan Cooper’s two-time Newbury Award-winning The Dark Is Rising series without giving this whiny speech about how none of the books’ suspense actually wo...
Louise Fitzhugh
Louise Fitzhugh’s 1964 novel Harriet the Spy introduced readers to a new type of children’s book: a post-Dick and Jane story where everybody, including the heroine, was pretty screwed up. Everyth...
Chris Fuhrman
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, Chris Fuhrman’s first and only novel, opens with the following paragraph:“By eighth grade, Jesus Christ had been bone meal and rumors for most of 1,974 years, bu...
Neil Gaiman
Despite the fact that he's always photographed dressed up in black t-shirts and leather jackets, looking like he'd be happier with a skull in one hand, Neil Gaiman is actually capable of being a t...
Elizabeth Gaskell
The only one of Mrs. Gaskell's books that I have read is Wives and Daughters. I thoroughly enjoyed it--it has the sprawling plot and occasional heavy-handed moralizing of a Dickens novel, enliven...
Diana Wynne Jones
I read The Lives of Christopher Chant and Charmed Life as a child, loved them, and then lost track of the author. Re-discovering Diana Wynne Jones as an adult has been a delight. While I find th...
Annette Curtis Klause
Annette Curtis Klause has only written a handful of books, and I disliked one of them (Silver Kiss) and was too turned off by the hokey cover and title to read another (Alien Secrets). The third,...
E.L. Konigsburg
Elaine Lobl Konigsburg is the only author to have both won the Newbery Award (for 1968’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler) and been the runner-up (for Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth...
Madeleine L'Engle
Despite being the author of over forty books, including the Newbery-Award winning children's classic A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle spent years working as a librarian at the Cathedral of St....
Dodie Smith
While Dodie Smith is best known as the author of 101 Dalmatians, she also wrote the strange and wonderful mid-20th century coming-of-age novel I Capture the Castle. I Capture the Castle was a cul...
L.J. Smith
Being a fan of L.J. Smith is somewhat trying, as we’ve been waiting for the final book in her Night World series for the better part of a decade. So while I cannot in good conscience describe tha...
Louise Rennison
Louise Rennison’s Georgia Nicolson books (the series that begins with Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging) combine the agonizing adolescent dorkiness of Sue Townsend’s early Adrian Mole diari...
Daniel Pinkwater
Daniel and Jill Pinkwater are my idols. Their collaborations (he writes, she illustrates) have produced some of the weirdest, funniest little kids’ books on the planet (including The Hoboken Chic...
Megan McCafferty
While there is little to distinguish Megan McCafferty’s Jessica Darling novels from the slew of other young adult diary-style novels, they are perfectly respectable entries in an enjoyable and rap...
Fanny Burney
Fanny Burney's first and best-known novel, 1778's Evelina, is usually described as the first novel of manners. Burney had originally intended the book to serve as an instruction manual for young ...
Jill Pinkwater
Daniel and Jill Pinkwater are my idols. Their collaborations (he writes, she illustrates) have produced some of the weirdest, funniest little kids’ books on the planet (including The Hoboken Chic...
Lloyd Alexander
I used to work at a major chain bookstore. Every few hours, like clockwork, a desperate-looking parent would turn up and announce that their kid had recently turned off Grand Theft Auto for the f...
Tanuja Desai Hidier
Tanuja Desai Hidier is in a band, has directed a short film, written some short stories, and is the author of the novel Born Confused. All of her artistic endeavors apparently deal with the theme...
Nick Hornby
Having read Nick Hornby’s novel High Fidelity, I can understand why The New Yorker asked him to be their pop music critic. Many people feel this was mistake, but you can see why they made it: Hor...