I read a lot of Meg Cabot, Ann Brashers, Jane Austen (okay, not YA, but still,) Nancy Farmer, and the lady in question, Sarah Dessen.

I can sympathize with not writing as much from the perspective of someone of a different race/sexual orientation/gender than one's self. I can understand that as an author it would raise questions of authenticity that issues of class wouldn't.

Francesca Lia Block

Besides her I mostly classic novels. It always surprised me when dead writers were insightful, for some reason. I think, in my youth, I thought being insightful or self-aware was a strictly modern phenomena.

I was into Francesca Lia Bloc a little but my real favorite YA book was "Hard Love" by Ellen Wittlinger, because it (in my opinion) convincingly talked about zines AND lesbianism, two things that were conspicuously missing from my upbringing prior to reading it. If I read it again now I would probably have a better critique since it is from the point of view of an assholeish guy, but at the time it was so interesting and compelling I even wrote the author an email asking if it would ever become a movie!

There was only a brief period where I read YA fiction, because I was always way ahead of my grade in reading level, but the subject matter in YA fiction was too much for my 7-year old self. The first few months after I moved to the states (when I was 12) I read some...

Shit, I can't remember any of it! This isn't young adult, but Anna Maxted is an author I LOVE. She publishes "chick-lit" but her characters are always strong women who I can completely relate to (although they too, are pretty white and heteronormative), and she even tackles serious subjects such as rape, grief, and eating disorders while managing to be completely entertaining.

Sorry, I was a little OT!

and by "convincingly" I mean in a non-after-school-special kind of way.

The short story "Am I Blue?" by Bruce Coville, about a young gay(ish?) male adolescent meant a lot to me when I was a teenager. Also the "Dealing With Dragons" books by Patricia C. Wrede, about a totally kick-ass, strong & independent princess.

And finally, I loved "Philip Hall Likes Me I Reckon Maybe" when I was real little, about an extremely smart little black girl. I still remember reading how mad she got when someone called her "girly." I remember that moment in the book stuck with me for a long time, I thought about her irritation at that phrase a lot.

I read a lot of fantasy as a teenager, more than reality-based YA lit like Dessen's. Loved Robin McKinley. Also Sherryl Jordan. Even though I didn't discover him until last year, I adore David Levithan :). And Melissa Marr's first book, Wicked Lovely totally kicked ass. Oh, and Holly Black's Tithe series--I keep hoping she'll come out with number four!

lisa mentioned Patricia C. Wrede, I used to LOVE the Enchanted Forest Chronicles series! I love how the dragon culture presented in the books was so gender-ambivalent (Princess Cimorene's first encounter with dragons is when she meets a female, two males, and one who hasn't decided what sex it wants to be yet). Oh, and the antagonists were a bunch of stuffy, white male wizards with an exaggerated sense of entitlement and superiority. :) And I never actually realized until now how incredibly feminist the series was! It had its flaws (heteronormative, all the human characters are white), but I definitely think it helped me to adopt a lot of feminist ideas before I completely understood what the term meant.

I read a whole lot when I was younger. I definitely remember reading and enjoying Dessen's work. Also Sharon Creech and Karen Cushman. Then there was Little Women and Anne of Green Gables and all of those.

I also admit to reading all the American Girl books, back when they were a big part of the whole deal. In theory. I can't deny that a lot of my interest in history (in which I'm getting my Bachelor's right now) comes from that. I was all about the historical fiction for young adults - Ann Rinaldi anyone?

I also remember by favorite ever was a book called The Forestwife by Theresa Thomlinson. It was a Robin Hood story told from the point of the Maid Marion character. It was great.

And what about children's books when we were younger? My mom always read me The Four Gallant Sisters and The King's Equal.

Good times.

Does Madeleine L'Engle count as YA? She did have a gay couple in one of her books, but they were for the most part white, hetero families. I remember one mother in one of the books didn't wear pants because the father didn't think women should.

But, she had fantastic female leads, including female scientists and doctors.

I read Sarah Dessen until I realized that, yes, I was a big gaymo, and her kind of sappy romances became unsatisfying.

I liked Sara Ryan a LOT, her "Empress of the World" is about a girl at a summer program for gifted kids realizing she's bisexual. I also loved "Hard Love" and "Am I Blue?" as well as Julie Ann Peters' "Keeping You A Secret" (she also wrote a book about a transgirl told from her sibling's perspective called "Luna")

I really liked "Gingerbread" and Lynne Ewing's Daughters of the Moon Series until I got sick of them all being gorgeous and superhuman all the time and having problems like falling in love with evil jerks.

Still mad love for Tamora Pierce, who writes kick ass feminist sword and sorcery fantasy. The lady herself is also amazing- I attended a workshop two years in a row where she taught and she was fantastic.

Also, "The Geography Club" and sequels by Brent Hartinger, about a young white gay man. The third book follows the same events told twice, once through his eyes, and once through his bisexual Asian-American female best friend. Very cute books.

Oh and there's "Boy Meets Boy" by David Leviathan which is also goot LGBT lit for younguns.

I still love YA fiction. I am working on my undergrad, but come summer and I load up on YA books from the library.

I love:
Francesca Lia Block
Sharon Creech
"Hard Love"
"Speak"
"The Perks of Being a Wallflower"
"Rats Saw God"
"The Woman in the Wall"
"The Amazing True Story of a Teenage Single Mom"
"Smack"
"Kissing Doorknobs"
"Armageddon Summer"
and
"Keeping the Moon" by Sarah Dessen

The only YA fiction I can recall reading (after I was done with all of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books) were horror. Then I moved on to adult horror that was much more satisfying.

I read a lot of Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine.

My favorite YA novels were written by Francesca Lia Block, Chris Crutcher, David Levithan, Han Nolan (who taught Creative Writing at my college twenty years ago, go figure) and Ellen Wittlinger. I also read "Empress of the World" by Sara Ryan a dozen times. "Speak" by Laurie Halse Anderson. The Rainbow series by Alex Sancez. I could probably go on forever.

Does anyone remember Catherine Called Birdy? That was one of my favorite YA books as a kid. I haven't read it in years, but from what I remember she was clever, funny and strong-willed, and used every trick imaginable to get out of an arranged marriage. She is engaged by the end, but not to any of the original sleazy guys. I think I can forgive the ending because of its historical context--in medieval times the choice was pretty much marriage or convent, so it wouldn't have been likely that she'd have been able to stay single and completely independent.

I still read YA too. It's fun and easier reads than other genres, but still fufilling.

My newest favorites are Libby Bray's Gemma Doyle Trilogy: A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angers, and The Sweet Far Thing.

They are really really good.

Man, I read so much (my dad says I was born with a book), I don't remember most of the books I read when I was younger.

I LOVED the Little House on the Praire books, though.

I started reading Stephen King (Mysery being my first) when I was 10, along with H.P. Lovecraft. Heh. Not exactly YA.

While I still enjoy them, I do wish they had more to say about things like race and sexual orientation.

I'm not a writer, I'm an editor. But I do know that while you can write what you don't know--I edit SF and fantasy, after all--but for the story and characters to seem real you need to have a connection to them. It's possible that the author doesn't feel she's able to write authentically about race or gender, and doesn't want to insult the groups she's writing about by getting it wrong. A hack can write about anything, but it doesn't sound like this author is a hack.

And, yes, I do read YA literature, but mostly genre stuff. I love Garth Nix, I love Robin McKinley, especially her book Sunshine, and there are others. I just took Twilight out of the library, I think after reading about it on this blog--I know a movie is being made about it. I like YA literature because it often leaves out a lot of the extraneous stuff and gets right to the heart of the matter. It's refreshing after a lot of 1,000 page fantasy manscripts.

Tammy Pierce (the Lioness series) continues to rock my world. As does Katharine Paterson (Lyddie, Great Gilly Hopkins) and Karen Cushman (Catherine, Called Birdy).

YA books make me miss working in a bookstore more than anything.

I love Sarah Dessen. I came of age reading "This Lullaby." I read it for the first time the summer before I started high school and I've read it every summer since.

I love Sarah Dessen. I came of age reading "This Lullaby." I read it for the first time the summer before I started high school and I've read it every summer since.

My degree is in English Language Arts Education and I LOVE YA Lit. I had to take an entire class focused on YA Lit. It was great. I have many favorites: Speak, Cut, Stargirl, Because of Winn Dixie. I could go on and on. There are a couple YA authors that write about homosexuality. I can't remember he name off the top of my head. If I remember I'll come back and post it. It was initials and then a last name. Oh that's going to bother me now...

I used to love Tamora Pierce. Her characters are mostly white and straight, but the books focused on very strong women.

Francesca Lia Block's books had both strong women and a variety of races and sexual orientations.

Holly Black's Tithe series also had strong women and a variety of races and sexual orientations.

Here, here gingerakimbo! Hurrah for Hard Love!

BluePencils, you should check it out, in terms of sexuality, at the least. It won the Lambda award, and I credit this book with introducing Ani DiFranco to 13 year-olds everywhere (thank god).

Also, I have a soft spot for Megan McCafferty's Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings-- they're nothing groundbreaking on the race/sexuality front, but the writing is damn good and I nearly laugh out loud (still).

"I used to love Tamora Pierce. Her characters are mostly white and straight, but the books focused on very strong women."

The Circle of Magic and the Circle Opens books are much better than the Tortall books in this regard- 2 of the 4 the main characters are nonwhite and one is gay, and they take place in an area analogous to the Mediterranean/Middle East so the diversity of surrounding characters is much better than Tortall (which is analogous to medieval France). Their teachers throughout the series are also in a lesbian relationship.

Really? I read tons of YA (both because I like it and because I'm an aspiring YA writer) and Sarah Dessen's books often really anger me. I hate some of the moral lessons, really hate that so often boys seem to hold the answers to life that girls can't figure out on their own.
"This Lullaby" seemed to me a guidebook for how to stalk a girl into a relationship.

aaaames, I have to agree. I've read two of Sarah Dessen's books and I wasn't very impressed by either the writing style or characters, and it actually DID kind of feel like a public service announcement to me - I remember thinking that I doubted someone who was actually the age of the character would have included certain parts.

I didn't think Libba Bray's books were done well, either.

There is plenty of YA fiction featuring strong women that I love, though - Holly Black's books, John Marsden's, Philip Pullman's (Sally Lockhart novels and His Dark Materials trilogy), Joanne Harris (Runemarks), Garth Nix (Sabriel). Probably a lot of others I can't remember.

There are so many good YA books with queer themes! And thankfully, they don't all involve queer teens dying, turning straight, or having horrible accidents, as in the YA fiction of yore... I'm thinking Freak Show, Some Day This Pain Will Be Useful to You, Naomi and Eli's No Kiss List, The Book of Lost Things...

As for when I was younger--I loved Chris Crutcher, S.E. Hinton, and Bruce Coville.

(And for some mild blog-pimping--I'm an aspiring high school librarian, so right now I'm in a YA lit class and working my way through the 2008 YALSA lists. I review all the books I read at least briefly, with more analysis of the ones we read for class.)

I've been reading Sarah Dessen's blog (http://www.livejournal.com/users/writergrl)
for years now, although I've never gotten to reading any of her novels (I plead four years of majoring in English). I did want to bring to attention the fact that one of her novels, "Just Listen" was challenged by a parent in Hillsborough County Schools in Florida because of a scene in which a rape is attempted. You can read about it here: http://www2.tbo.com/content/
2008/jan/10/me-school-says-book-can-stay/

Growing up, I read The Baby-Sitter's Club, and then the California Diaries series, a more mature spin-off series by Ann M. Martin following Dawn and her friends in California. My little sister found the few books I had purchased from that series (my library didn't have more than one or two, and they soon went out of print), and I ended up buying her the rest off of ebay for Christmas a couple of years ago.
Throughout middle and high school, most of my reading was pretty 'academic.' I read Harry Potter, and Shakespeare, and Ella Enchanted (over and over again!) with plenty of other random novels I found through my English classes and working at my local library (my favorite find from my junior year of high school: "Lies My Teacher Told Me"

I love Francesca Lia Block's Dangerous Angels series, as well as the Harry Potter books. My favorite young adult book is Girl by Blake Nelson.

I'm totally bookmarking this thread for summer beach reading, thanks! I adore YA when it's done well. Somehow the expectation that it's for a younger age groups seems to make the writing sharper, clearer, less pretentious. When I was actually that age group I only wanted to read Sci-Fi Fantasy and actively disliked realistic fiction, but now that I'm older I'm going back and reading some classics and new stuff and really enjoying it. I used to hate Beverly Cleary when I was a kid, mostly because I thought Ramona was really stupid. But now I'm in love with Cleary's dedication to sex ed, etc. All my favorites from recent years have been covered above, but I have to chime in in support of "Am I Blue" and the Patricia C. Wrede stuff. They give me hope for the future.

I am in high school, so I read a lot of YA fiction, and recently my friends and I became obsessed with the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. It doesn't really relate to race or sexual orientation issues unless you count the Native Americans that have a big part in the story. I also LOVE Speak and Keeping the Moon.

"Also, I have a soft spot for Megan McCafferty's Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings-- they're nothing groundbreaking on the race/sexuality front, but the writing is damn good and I nearly laugh out loud (still)."

These were my absolute favorites. By the time I read the third one, though, at age 20, I had a more critical perspective and didn't enjoy it as much.

Another series that I loved were the Alice books by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. Though the books were predominantly about white, middle class suburban kids/families, they always dealt with teenage sexuality in a very real way. As Alice got older the books also explored eating disorders, a couple of her friends being lesbians, and issues of racism at her junior high. I started outgrowing them about the time she entered high school, so I don't know where they've gone since then.

Sharon Creech was also a favorite (especially Walk Two Moons) and Ella Enchanted, which someone else mentioned. This is a great thread!

Tamora Pierce; I fangirl Tammy so hard. She's a huge feminist, and it really comes through in her books without being preachy - just one strong female character after another. Who else? Diane Duane (the Young Wizards series), Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series, Patricia McKillip. I'm sure there's tons more I'm forgetting.

I also love the Alice books- I still read them when they come out every summer. They are fantastic with sex and body issues, bullying, etc. The lesbians are only a big part of one of the books, though, and in high school (but not before) Alice becomes friends with Gwen, who is black, and her third best friend.

Sharon Creech is awesome too.

Nick and Nora's Infinate Playlist is pretty awesome- I read that recently, and it featured white teens who are fairly heteroflexible. Rachel Cohn, who wrote Nora's section, also wrote other fantastic stuff.

I'm also very much in love with Robin McKinley and Franscesa Lia Block, not to mention a lot of the other authors mentioned

Linda Newbury has written a couple of books that explore queer themes in a really interesting and historical way and Pamela Dean has written some great YA fantasy-Tam Lin and Juniper, Gentian and Rosemary come to mind. Pamela Dean especially has strong, interesting and very varied female characters.

Born Confused by Tanuja Desai Hidier is a really sweet and fairly apt YA novel about a girl stuck between her South Asian and American cultures. Bonus-it also looks a little at queer culture in India

I'm going to school to be a secondary (7-12) English teacher and I'm happy to say that we're required to take a YA class. I discovered YA as a young adult and still read it lovingly. I've put stars by the ones that deal with topics that are not usually covered in YA lit (queer, drugs, sex, whatever).

Books:
*Perks of Being A Wallflower
*Speak
*Stargirl and Love,Stargirl
*Hardlove
*Empress of the World
*Annie on My Mind (my first teen dyke book!)
*Girl Walking Backwards
Girl by Blake Nelson
Sloppy Firsts, Second Helpings, Charmed Thirds (I think I'm too old to want to read the fourth book)
*My Heartbeat
*Donorboy (artificail insemination, lesbian moms, teen girl, very interesting)
The Book Theif
The Giver, Gathering Blue, The Messenger
Wrinkle In Time Series
Twilight Series!
Feeling Sorry for Celia
Love and Other Four Letter Words
Harry Potter (of course)
Ender's Game Series
Youth In Revolt
Life Of Pi (when I read it it wasn't considered YA, now it is, go figure)

Authors:
Rachel Cohn (latest book, Cupcake, includes total infomercial about Emergency Contraception!)
Francesca Lia Block
Scott Westerfield (So Yesterday is a really great look at consumer culture and advertising, the Uglies series is also interesting)

I have nothing but love for Tamora Pierce. Her Immortals series is still my favorite book series ever. All of her female characters are bad ass!

I loved Sarah Dessen when I was younger, but in recent years I've definitely become more critical of the fact that her protagonists often seem to be 'saved' by a boy who comes in and can identify and solve all their personality problems. I think The Truth About Forever is still one of favorite books, I just try and examine it a little more critically than I used to.

Loved, loved, loved Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles. Such a fabulous series. As for Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings, I agree with robinemma. I really enjoyed the first two, but by the time I was older and reading the third and fourth books, I definitely didn't enjoy them as much.

I realized there was an audience for the stories inside me when I read Chris Crutcher's STAYING FAT FOR SARAH BYRNES and IRONMAN...at the age of 40. As a tween & teen I had read Judy Blume but did not find the grit