Vampires are so over. Kids killing kids have trouble topping Katniss. Dystopia still has momentum . . . for now.
But what’s the hot topic in teen novels for fall? Genetic engineering. Clones.
It’s by no means a surprise topic for the genre, as questioning the meaning of humanity is familiar territory for teen lit. However, it seems this fall has a particularly large number of female heroines that are either clones or projects, or are discovering the genetic question for themselves. Check out a few of the bigger titles for this fall:
Origin by Jessica Khoury
Enter the Amazon jungle with the tale of Pia, a girl raised in a secret laboratory hidden deep in the rainforest. She was created to be the first of a new immortal race. This one’s big—it’s the first title on the 2012 Penguin Teen Breathless Reads. Keep an eye out for our interview with debut author Khoury in September!
Eve & Adam by Michael Grant and Katherine Applegate
The author duo behind the Animorphs series also set their book in a sinister laboratory. Eve is the daughter of the leading geneticist at super secretive Spiker Biopharm, and after a terrible accident, she finds herself bedridden and bored. Her mom gives her a special project: Design the perfect boy—but nothing is ever that simple.
The Lost Girl by Sangu Mandanna
This debut novel stars Eva, an “echo” designed to replace a real girl, Amarra, if she ever died. Eva must do everything Amarra does, eat what she eats, learns what she learns. When Amarra dies, Eva must choose: Stay and live out her years as a copy or leave and risk it all for the freedom to be an original.
Beta by Rachel Cohn
On the island of Demesne, the wealthiest people on earth employ clones as workers. Elysia is the experimental model of the first teenage clone, and she quickly discovers she’s not as unfeeling or soulless as she’s supposed to be. She must keep her emotions secret or suffer the consequences—but keeping quiet in a place like Demesne isn’t easy.
Why do you think YA books seem concerned with the question of what it means to be human?
We all love a good spooky story. It could be the inner child in us that still fears the dark. I wrote a series of spooky stories for my grandchildren. They are intended to be read around the family camp fire (the fireplace). Moral lessons are also contained within these stories. My grandchildren loved the stories so much that I decided to publish them in ebook form on the KINDLE bookstore under the title SPOOKY MOON STORIES by RAYMOND THOR. Click here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_nr_i_0?rh=k%3Araymond+thor%2Ci%3Adigital-text&keywords=raymond+thor&ie=UTF8&qid=1344014633
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