This year on the Hub we are celebrating the Twelve Days of YA with a series of posts loosely based on the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas gifts. We have converted each gift into a related theme common to YA and paired it with a list of relevant titles. You may use the Twelve Days of YA tag to read all of the posts in the series.
Special thanks goes to Carli Spina, Faythe Arredondo, Sharon Rawlins, Geri Diorio, Becky O’Neil, Carla Land, Katie Yu, Laura Perenic, Jennifer Rummel, Libby Gorman, Carly Pansulla, Anna Dalin, and Allison Tran for their help creating the booklists and organizing this series.
On the seventh day of YA, my true love gave to me seven swans-a-swimming.
Remember when I mentioned that there were a lot of birds in the original song? Yep, we’ve got seven more here with the swans. So, we converted this one into an ugly-duckling-to-swan theme. Rather than focusing only on make overs for this theme, we looked mostly at books that included characters that were non-traditional beauties, but others saw that they were beautiful all along. We hope you enjoy the stories of lovely swans that we picked and encourage you to share your favorites in the comments!
- Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell (2014 Printz Honor Book, 2014 Teens’ Top Ten, 2014 Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults, 2014 Top Ten Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults, 2014 Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adults Readers)
- Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (2014 Best Fiction for Young Adults, 2014 Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults)
- The DUFF by Kody Keplinger (2011 Top Ten Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers)
- The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson (2012 Morris Honor Book, 2012 Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults, 2012 Readers’ Choice Nominee)
- Princess Ben by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
- The Sweetest Spell by Suzanne Selfors (2013 Best Fiction for Young Adults)
– Jessica Lind, currently reading My True Love Gave to Me edited by Stephanie Perkins
