YA Book Suggestions

[geogal]

It is one of the great joys in my life that my niece is turning into a lover of spec fiction.  I dragged her and her mother (my older sister) to FenCon back in October, and got her stocked up, but I'm constantly on the lookout for new books that she might like.  Her birthday is in a couple of weeks, and I'd like to get her a new stack to enjoy

Comments

[amysisson]

Just some thoughts:

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
Airborn by Kenneth Oppel
Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin
Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy
Airs Beneath the Moon by Toby Bishop (winged horses!)
Flora Segunda by Ysabeau Wilce (this one's not so much to my personal taste, but they are well written and quite popular)

These next two are a bit older, but they're really great -- spooky, moody, atmospheric, and original. They're more simplistic than the other books I've mentioned, but I still enjoy them as an adult:

Down a Dark Hall by Lois Duncan
Stranger with My Face by Lois Duncan

[pyro_rebel]

The Sabriel books by Garth Nix. If she liked Meyers, she might like LJ Smith. I grew up on those books, and they're rereleasing them as bound trilogies/compilations.

[octoberdreaming]

The Blue Girl by Charles de Lint
The Neverending Story by Michael Ende

[nqllisi]

I think that's about how old I was when I started the Pern books by Anne McCaffrey.

[carynsilver]

Tamora Pierce is my favorite Y/A author ever -- especially the Alanna quartet (First Test, In the Hand of the Goddess, The Woman Who Rides Like a Man, and Lioness Rampant). They are about a girl who wants to be a knight and disguises herself as a boy to go to the palace and train for knighthood.

If she likes the vampire genre (what I lovingly call Y/A vampire crack), I've enjoyed the House of Night series by the Casts and the Vampire Academy series. Not so much the Blue Bloods series.

Scott Westerfield's Uglies and Midnighters series were also interesting.