Sometimes you just don’t have enough time to preview every book or series your teen is interested in. Sometimes they come home with a book from the library that you’ve never seen before, and you wonder what it’s about. Some YA books have 13- or 14-year-old protagonists are written for kids a couple years younger than that, while others have 17- or 18-year-old protagonists and are much more gritty; you’re not sure you want your 12-year-old reading it yet. But how to tell?
This site aims to offer a simple rubric, plot summary, and review for popular YA books in the sci-fi and fantasy genres. Here, you can find pages on individual books, series, and authors to help you get an overall idea of what the content is. Since different people are concerned or interested in different things, I’ll be noting sex, violence, religion, language, political overtones, and other such things so that you have a better idea of when your teen would be ready for that book, and what you might want to ask them about or discuss. You may even find some books you want to read yourself!
As C. S. Lewis once said,
“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.”
