Ten YA books that will change your life

Sona Charaipotra is a New York City-based writer and editor with more than a decade’s worth of experience in print and online media. For the B & N Teen Blog she tagged ten YA books that might change your life, including:

Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson

Okay, so I always start my Brown Girl Dreaming recs with the caveats that a) it’s middle grade, b) it’s verse, and c) it’s a memoir. But all that being said, Woodson’s Dreaming—a National Book Award winner and Coretta Scott and Newbery honoree—is a must-read. Her languorous and thoughtful ruminations on her childhood growing up in both the Jim Crow South of the ’60s and rough and tumble ’70s Brooklyn is rhythmic and mesmerizing, full of quiet spirit and insights as a young girl discovers herself as reader, a writer, and so much more.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue