The Book Expo YA Buzz

BookExpo America 2011 took place last week in New York from May 23 to the 28th. One of the most popular sessions is the Young Adult Buzz panel where editors from various houses promote their upcoming books. This year's panel included five editors who summarized their books:

1) Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
Alvina Ling, editor at Little Brown and Company

Alvina described the book as a story told backward with this tag line: "Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fall in love. It did not end well."

2) Carrier of the Mark by Leigh Fallon
Erica Sussman of HarperCollins

Erica explained that the book begins with Megan moving to Ireland with her father. She learns she carries the power of the element Air. She falls in love with Adam, who carries the mark for Water. She also meets his brother (who has the mark for Fire) and his sister (who has the mark for Earth). Megan and Adam are told that carriers of the mark cannot be together without disastrous consequences.

3) Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick by Joe Schrieber
Margaret Raymo from Houghton Mifflin

Margaret said the tag line for this humorous YA novel is "Ferris Bueller Meets La Femme Nikita." Perry is a senior in high school whose mother persuades him to take a Lithuanian girl named Gobi to the prom. He discovers to his horror that Gobi is really an assassin who has five targets on her hit list for the night.

4) The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin
Courtney Bongiolatti of Simon & Schuster

Mara Dyer is at a sleepover where she and her three friends play with a ouija board. She wakes up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there and why she is not harmed although her friends were killed.

5) Down the Mysterly River by Bill Willingham
Susan Chang of Tor Forge

Susan described this book as a fable about a boy scout who wakes up in a woods where he meets a talking badger, barn cat and bear. The four are chased by a group of hunters known as the Blue Cutters (because of their swords).

It's pretty telling that four of the five books have paranormal themes and three of the five books have female protagonists. If I had to pick one of the five to read it would probably be Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick.

I'll talk about the Adult Buzz session later.