•  Top Ten Survey Results

•  My Favorite YA novels

Here's a comprehensive website devoted to teen readers and writers:  TeensReadToo.com 

A note to all aspiring authors, young or not so young: 

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, or SFWA, has an active committee investigating and helping to prosecute scam agents, book doctors, publishers, and editors.  If you're in search of any of these, first visit our site to know which of them may have been investigated or have received complaints:  Writerbeware.com  Please know that legitimate agents do NOT charge authors fees to represent them.  You can learn more by visiting the website for The Association of Authors Representatives, also.

Many thanks to all my readers who took part in the survey of Top Ten Speculative Novels for young adults to read. 

The results were wildly inconclusive, which seems to mean that just because a group of readers all love one or more books, they don't necessarily love all the same books! 

It was necessary to skew the numbers a little to arrive at a list,
but here they are:

1. The Lord of the Rings, trilogy, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. Ender's Game, Orscon Scott Card
3. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
4. Dune, Frank Herbert
5. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley                                                                               
6. Doomsday Book, Connie Willis                                              
7. Beggars in Spain, Nancy Kress
8. Dragonriders of Pern, Anne McCaffrey
9. 1984, George Orwell
10. The Forge of God, Greg Bear 

I'd like to add: Sharyn November's two young adult anthologies both belong in every high school and public library:  Firebirds and Firebirds Rising.  Sharyn is the premier editor of young adult fantasy and science fiction working today, and these are both exciting collections.

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At Orycon 25, I took part in a lively panel on speculative fiction for children, and the following list, aimed at middle-grade readers, arises from that discussion:

1. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle
2. Half Magic, Edward Eager
3. The Giver, Lois Lowry
4. Artemis Fowl, Colin Eowyn
5. Young Wizards, Diane Duane  

And I want to list five of my personal favorite young adult novels:

1. I Am Mordred, by Nancy Springer
2. The Safekeeper's Secret, by Sharon Shinn                
3. The Moon and the Sun, by Vonda McIntyre
4. The Hero and the Crown, by Robin McKinley
5. National Velvet (I just read this for the first time--great!)

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