Sue

So I’ve recently become an unofficial reading mentor to some girls in my neighborhood and it has been fun and satisfying.  I posted earlier about my involvement with the Utah Women and Education Project, and one of the research outcomes showed that a young woman with a caring adult who is also a female college graduate will be more likely to attend college.  So I’m putting research into practice. 😉  Right now I’m trying to come up with a perfect Christmas gift for each one and that has been a very interesting experience.  I had no trouble deciding on the first and after mulling over the second for two weeks and re-reading a book to make sure, I’ve decided on her gift.  But the third has been tricky.  She is a young teen and wants to read some mysteries but her trip to the library with her mom yielded adult mysteries that the mom thought inappropriate.  So I figured I’d give her an appropriate young adult mystery.  Merry Christmas!  I thought of one and started re-reading it but found a mild expletive around page 60 that I’d forgotten.  So no go with that choice.  I racked my brain for days and finally Googled some young adult mystery lists for inspiration.  I found several possible titles that seemed to be repeated on all the librarian’s lists so I headed to my local library to do some research.  I ended up coming home with a stack of nine YA books, only two of which I’d previously read.  Scott looked incredulously at the stack and asked me if they were to solve my problem and did I plan to read all those in the next week?  Ha ha……then he reminded me that I was already feeling stressed about all the stuff I needed to to do, like finish the half-decorated tree in our living room.  Yeah, right.

I started on the stack, glanced through one that I’d read and saw language I’d forgotten, glanced through the other I’d read and wondered why it was on everyone’s mystery list and now I was down to seven.  I discarded another as boring-seeming and was left with six.  Two were from a series and a cursory glance found language so those were out; two others were from another series and I found an extended passage detailing a keg party with lots of drinking so those were out.  What’s up with these novels?  Now I was left with two.  I was really frustrated and Scott asked me, “Haven’t you read any other YA novels you could give her?” Well, yes, but I want to give her a mystery since she’s interested in that right now.  I make my life hard.

I need someone to write clean and absorbing young adult mysteries for teens with strong characters, preferably female.  Who’s up for the challenge?

In the meantime, I’m reading frantically before making my Amazon order……