– The Compound, by S.A. Bodeen (April 2008)
– The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins (October 2008)
– The Diamond of Darkhold, by Jeanne DuPrau (August 2008)
– The Other Side of the Island, by Allegra Goodman (September 2008)
– The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan (March 2009)
– And, umm, Bones of Faerie, by this Janni Lee Simner person (January 2009)
I’m beginning to wonder, honestly, if it’s something in the water. 🙂 (In a post-apocalyptic world it would be, right?) Certainly something in the air these past few years much be spawning so much in this particular YA genre–and I’m not convinced that it’s just that we live in dire times, though that’s part of it. But living in dire times isn’t really all that new a thing. I think that probably half my life or so, all told, we’ve probably lived in what were considered dire times.
The thing that fascinates me is that, when I started writing Bones of Faerie, it seemed no one was writing post-apocalyptic fiction. Writing something post-apocalyptic seemed an awfully child-of-the-cold-war thing to do, and I kind of wondered if that would be a problem–but I put those concerns aside, because this was a book I really really wanted to write.
I’m reminded of this notebook I have from high school, with a page in it filled with names for characters. Around the time my peers began having children, I stumbled upon that list, and all those names I loved and wanted to use? They were the names my friends were giving to their kids. Whatever made me like those names at 15, it was making everyone like those names.
It’s so strange, how things we don’t see influence us all in similar ways sometimes, and even afterwards, we can’t quite say what those things are.