As a librarian, I'm always searching for quality books for Tweens and Youth. I have purchased several secular books that are just plain quality reading. Not interested in cheesy romance books or the "dark books" that are popular. I've even considered the book "Wonderland Creek" by Lynn Austin for Youth section. I have a 6th grader that comes into the library weekly that loves the challenges of the Youth books, yet I need to keep the message focused on quality and God's message. I display some adult books for her, i.e. Tim Tebow! Your suggestions are appreciated.
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Here is a list of my favorite Christian tween/youth authors and the series they had published:
1) Frank Peretti - Cooper Kids Adventures
2) Gilbert Morris - Seven Sleepers
3) Bill Myers - Forbidden Doors
4) Wayne Batson - Door Within
5) Bryan Davis - Oracles of Fire
Eva, thank you for alerting me to the wonderful listing within this website. I have several of the titles/series, but always gain new knowledge of books for kids and youth. I would like to make a suggestion of the book, Girl Politics, by Nancy Rue. I was at my local Christian bookstore and a mother came in frantically looking for this book. Her daughter was in parochial school with a small group of girls in her class and she was dealing with cliques, and the like that girls deal with. Every time I suggest this book to a young mother, she says "Ahh, just what our family needs to read".
Bev,
There a great a author by the name of Melanie Dickerson who writes for YA. She takes classic fairy tales and rewrites them into a more realistic story with a Christian message. Although aimed at teens both my sister and I enjoy them. She currently has three out with a forth scheduled for release this fall.
thanks for your suggestions. I'll check it out.
Bev,
Our library has a number of YA readers (i have to admit that i love YA fiction, myself), and i've been working on developing that collection for the last couple of years. There is a lot of quality Christian YA fiction out there, but it's a newer market and publishers are hesitant to branch out too much, so the genres are limited. There are a few great fantasy authors (Donita K. Paul, Wayne Thomas Batson, and Andrew Peterson spring to mind). Outside of fantasy, there's Melody Carlson, who writes for teen girls, Andrew Klavan, whose books are adventure-suspense, and Ted Dekker, who's primarily an adult author but who has a series for teens. It does seem, though, that fantasy has the largest market share of Christian teen lit right now, which i know is a grey area for some parents. i expect the emphasis on fantasy to change as publishers see that more teens are reading and are able to take more risks. If you go to christianbook.com, they have a section for tweens and another for teens, and browsing around there might give you some ideas. For an author who is, i believe, a Christian, but who publishes great speculative fiction through mainstream publishers, check out Margaret Peterson Haddix. She's very popular.