[GUEST POST] Courtney Schafer on Voices Not Forgotten (6 Underrated Young Adult Novels You Should Know About)
Courtney Schafer‘s impatience while waiting for new SF books to hit the shelves used to drive her crazy, until she realized she could write her own stories to satisfy her craving for worlds full of wonder and adventure. Her debut fantasy novel The Whitefire Crossing releases August 1 from Night Shade Books. When not writing, Courtney figure skates, climbs 14,000 foot peaks, squeezes through Utah slot canyons, and skis way too fast through trees. To support her adrenaline-fueled hobbies and writing habit, she received a degree in electrical engineering from Caltech and now works in the aerospace industry. Visit her at http://www.courtneyschafer.com.
After reading the discussion of the Russ Pledge here on SF Signal back in June, and then Judith Tarr’s fascinating and dismaying follow-up post relating her experiences in the publishing industry (Girl Cooties: A Personal History), I got to thinking about all the excellent YA SF novels written by women that I read as a girl in the 1980s/1990s. Novels that sparked my imagination, broadened my horizons, and helped make me an SF fan for life – and yet aren’t mentioned very often these days.
Sure, some female authors I loved in childhood remain household names amongst SF fans: Madeleine L’Engle, Diana Wynne Jones, Jane Yolen, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Anne McCaffrey, and Patricia McKillip, for example. But theirs weren’t the only books I read and re-read until they were dogeared and falling apart. So I want to shout out some love to a few more women whose books meant the world to me; to say, hey, ladies: your voices were heard, and made a difference.
And if you know a kid who’s already read more modern middle-grade and YA SF books like Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy, Catherine Fisher’s Incarceron, or Jeanne DuPrau’s The Books of Ember and is hungry for more – why not suggest they give one of these classics a try?
