October is an exciting month for any YA lit fan, because it includes Teen Read Week! In honor of this annual celebration of young adult literature, YALSA invited book-loving teens all over the world to apply to share their enthusiasm for reading in a guest post for The Hub. Thirty-one talented young writers were chosen, and we’ll be featuring posts from these unique voices all month long. Here’s Saraya Flaig from Idaho.
Divergent by Veronica Roth - Everything in society is run by factions. Each faction has specific job, and everyone is part of one of the factions. It is time for Tris to take her test to see what faction she gets into, but she doesn’t have one faction she has three, which is divergent and divergent is dangerous.
Selection Series by Kiera Cass - Society is ran by a caste system, and the highest is the ones who are royalty. America is a four. When the time comes for Prince Maxon to choose a wife she applies for the Selection. For some mysterious reason she is chosen and gets to live at the castle and experience royal life in a setting kind of like the Bachelorette.
Maze Runner by James Dashner - Imagine waking up in a box and not knowing where you are, who you are, or anything except your name. That is what everyone who goes to the Glade experiences. The only thing they know is what people tell them when they get there, which is that there is no way out, only through the maze that no one can solve.
Delirium Series by Lauren Oliver - Love is evil, and love must be cleansed from your system, this what the society believes. When Lena falls in love, she starts to doubt society and rebel against everything she as ever known.
Contemporary Authors Mentioned:
Rainbow Rowell- Writes books like Eleanor and Park and Fangirl, usually about misfits that find their way in life.
John Green- Writes The Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska, usually writes teen romances with characters that don’t know where they are going in life.
My Favorite Fantasy Books:
The Mortal Instruments Series by Cassandra Clare - Imagine that all of the creatures you dreamed about when you were little were real, well they are. Shadowhunters hunt them and kill the bad ones. Clary is a girl who is a shadowhunter by blood and she doesn’t know it, until she sees something in a club one day.
Percy Jackson/Heroes of Olympus Series by Rick Riordan -Takes place in modern day America, but has ancient Greek and Roman god elements. Demigods (half god, half human) have to learn how to deal with the God’s tempers and try to save the world.
Splintered by A.G. Howard - A modern Alice in Wonderland that is twisted. Ever since Alice every woman in Alyssa’s family has been in a mental hospital. She starts hearing whispers from bugs and flowers and she starts to learn that Wonderland isn’t really wonderful.
- Saraya Flaig is a 15 years old. She is from Idaho and a sophomore in high school. In her free time she absolutely loves to read and do cheerleading.