Category: By Teens

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 Zeinab Hussen from Minnesota.

You pick up a book, then read the book. Spend hours upon hours flipping through pages and finishing chapters, while divulging yourself into the story. You end up getting emotionally invested and attached to a character…only to find out that the author kills them off.

Paired along with your shocking discovery, an intense emotion of despair soon follows.

You may look like this:

 

Or like this:

Or even this:

Don’t worry, all of those reactions are normal. But, I’ll be the first to admit that it can be hard to move on and come to terms with the actuality of the event.

So, here are five tips to getting over a fictional death:

Tip #1: Dealing with Denial

Sometimes death in young adult literature can come out of nowhere*cough cough* The Fault in Our Stars. As you begin to reread the paragraphs that ensued to their death, you skip a few pages ahead convinced that the author has played some cruel trick on you.

Then, it hits you like a wrecking ball. They’re not coming back. Well, at least it’s not half dressed.

Realistically, if a character dies they tend to not magically be revived. And I say, good. Why? Because it allows you the chance to reflect upon the meaning of their role. You get the opportunity to see how significant that character was by witnessing them mold the other characters in the book as the story continues to enfold. But, their not the only ones that are molded. Their existence is amplified due to the emotional conflict they create and leaves a huge impact on the reader as well. Often times, fans reminisce about the character, by paying homage to them, making them memorable in pop culture.

Continue reading Getting Over a Fictional Death

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. Our first post comes from Timber Mabes in Oklahoma.

Is your love for literature being strained by large amounts of homework? Can you no longer find time to re-read your favorite novel? Have you been seeing movies before reading their books because you “just don’t have the time?”

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then I certainly have a solution for you: Short Stories!

These short and sweet tales started off as spoken fables. Some of them are still told today, but less widely believed true. Old fables would often explain how the earth came to be or why a certain animal has its name, or looks the way it does.

Another ancient form of a short story is the anecdote.  These were made popular in Roman and Greek culture and functioned as a sort of parable. These classical works of fiction would mark the onset of the world’s first published short stories.

 Today, these “mini novels” are read, and loved by many.

Because short stories naturally range from 1,500 to 30,000 words, you can complete them in an afternoon. 

Just like one of your favorite novels, short stories can:

• Take you to another time period or transport you to a different generation.
• Fly you all around the globe, into different countries and incredibly cities.
• Create strong emotional bonds and attachments to their characters.
• Surprise you with gut wrenching plot twists. And,
• Make you anxious for a movie modeled after them. Continue reading The Beauty of the Short Story