Edited 12/10 to add:

Ye gods! I forgot to add Jane Yolen's Pit Dragon books! What possessed me! Let me also add, while I'm here, Philip Reeve's fantasy books and Timothy Zahn's science fiction.

okay, back to the main post:


In another discussion here, thetathx1138 wrote:

I've been shopping the YA shelves recently for my middle-school cousins and much of the new material on the shelves just wouldn't appeal to them, let alone me when I was in middle school. The back promises soap opera, not space opera, just as an example.

To which I replied:
This is when you come to me, silly! I'll do a separate post on this, since otherwise I'd create a major bulge in the middle of this thread. What's the point of having a kidlit author on tap if you can't ask her about stuff like this? (I like to tease Dan when he's being ruff `n' tuff.)

But the truth is, I do know my way around the boy books, and not just in fantasy. So we start with my own list of recommended books for boys, this one being strictly science fiction and fantasy and a couple of years out of date. To it I'd like to add
Clive Barker: ARABAT
Orson Scott Card: always adding new books to his oeuvre. Card is very controversial in the GLBT community; I have stopped reading him; but if you're more concerned with getting a boy to read SOMETHING, ENDER'S GAME or the Alvin Maker books seldom fail, and Card's controversial values have not filtered into his books in my knowledge.
Eoin Colfer: also always adding new books
Nancy Farmer: add THE LAND OF SILVER APPLES
P. B. Kerr: sequels
Gordon Korman: everything
Kenneth Oppel: sequel SKYBREAKER (talk about pulp fiction, Dan--how about these two books being the best pirate stories I've read since TREASURE ISLAND--and they have dirigibles?!)
Terry Pratchett: his adult books are certainly accessible to middle school readers--try THUD! and MAKING MONEY
Rick Riordan: sequel

new stuff:
D. M. Cornish: FOUNDLING (the sequel, LAMPLIGHTER, to come out 2008): monsters, orphans, bluff sailors, sinister and beautiful monster killers, adventure on the high road
Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell: the Edge Chronicles, maybe, depending on the kids' reading age
Joseph Bruchac: anything, especially the really creepy SKELTON MAN stories
Tobias Druitt: CORYDON AND THE ISLAND OF MONSTERS (and sequel)
Debra Doyle & James Macdonald: KNIGHT'S WYRD
Jason Hightman: SAINT OF DRAGONS (and sequel)
Deborah & Thomas Hoopler: THE GHOST IN THE TOKAIDO ROAD IN
Geraldine McCaughrean: ODYSSEUS, THESEUS, JASON
Gerald Morris: everything
Douglas Rees: VAMPIRE HIGH
N. D. Wilson: LEEPIKE RIDGE
Markus Zusak: I AM THE MESSENGER, THE BOOK THIEF

now, the other folks. Some of these I haven't read, but they're recommended by people I trust or by sheer popularity.

Will Hobbs: THE MAZE, DOWNRIVER, THE CANYON, everything (adventure)
Anthony Horowitz: everything
Gary Paulsen: BRIAN, HATCHET, everything (lots of adventure)
Darren Shan: CIRQUE DU FREAK and sequels
Chris Crutcher: sports books
Terry Trueman: CRUISE CONTROL, INSIDE OUT, everything, very intense
Jack Gantos: Joey Pigza books (middle school level)
Gail Giles: SHATTERED GLASS
Dan Gutman: HONUS AND ME
Carl Hiassen: HOOT, FLUSH
Jeannette Ingold: HITCH
Jack Higgins and Justin Richards: SURE FIRE
John Flanagan: the Ranger's Apprentice series
Anthony Horowitz: the Alex Ryder series
Iain Lawrence: THE WRECKERS
Brian Jacques: CASTAWAYS OF THE FLYING DUTCHMAN and sequels
Rick Yancey: THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF ALFRED KROPP
John Marsden: TOMORROW WHEN THE WAR BEGAN and sequels
Ben Mikaelson: everything
Dave Barry & Ridley Pearson: PETER & THE STARCATCHERS and sequels
Scott Westerfeld: everything

Okay, I'm gonna stop now, because my fingers are mighty tired. There are more. LOTS more. Maybe you went to a very small bookstore.

But before I'm done, Dan, and for anyone else who wants to tell me that no one writes for boys anymore, I would like to gently and kindly remind you of the 8,000 pound gorilla that has held the world's literary establishment in a grip of stone since the late 1990's, flooding stores, libraries, and homes, and then I would like you all to stop telling me just how overlooked and neglected the boys are, particularly when the author was told at the beginning that she would get nowhere if she made her hero a girl:

HARRY FUCKEN POTTER

Okay? `Nuff said? So please stop telling me how sad and neglected the boys are, because I have just made my hands very sore in only a partial attempt to show you that in fictionland it ain't so.

And don't complain to me about the science fiction. Editors in kids' publishing and I have been begging and pleading for people to turn out decent science fiction for teenagers. So far Margaret Peterson Haddix and Scott Westerfeld have been killing themselves to hold up the side.