It’s one of the first YA books that many adult book clubs embraced. I think it helped open the eyes of readers who once overlooked YA.

Walter Dean Myerrs,Jacqueline Woodson,Julie Anne Peters and David Levithan not making the list is baffling.

Especially when you consider it was probably harder for these authors to get published.

From what didn’t make the list I’d have to say it was put together by someone on the inside looking in.

Without many of the authors who were forgotten or just warranted a quick mention at the end, many teens would still be waiting for their stories to be told.

My suggestion is for a series instead of an author. I think the Bluford High series has been incredibly influential in terms of getting kids who are self-proclaimed “non-readers” to read. They are urban stories about African American teens. They are priced cheaply so that you can purchase and replace easily. And kids ask for them by name. Repeatedly. And I think they’ve helped to push along the series Like Drama High and Hotlanta that we’re seeing more of.

I wasn’t sure about MT Anderson being on the list, having only read one of his books very recently. But I’m sure there are people who have read all of his books that will disagree with me. Also, I was three years old when his vampire book Thirsty was written so naturally I have no idea about it.

I agree with wandering-dreamer: eight authors is too short a list to cover all of the influential authors out there.

I soon realized that some of the best writing I ever came across – including that in literary fiction – was in YA. I also learned that it was not just about girls crushing on boys. The subjects included deaths in families, generation gaps and reconciliations, drugs, sibling problems, and much more.

More than a dozen years and I’m still reading. In fact, I’m writing a YA novel – under a female pen-name, of course.

But I’d also like to argue for Walter Dean Myers, Ellen Hopkins (goes without saying!). And there were no Latino authors named, either. What about Julia Alvarez? I live in Colombia, South America, and there’s a huge GAP in Latino YA. Does anybody know of any influential Latinos in the area?

I think it’s hard, in a list like this, not to fall into a trap of choosing one author to represent each “giant step” or each microgenre. But the list is definitely missing someone to represent the surge in GLBT books, whether that’s Levithan or Julie Anne Peters or Ellen Wittlinger.

Just a few things to check out today: 1. My interview with Girls’ Life magazine: “I Wanna Be… An Author!” 2. Omnivoracious did an amazing post on The YA Decade (that would be the ’00s), and Justine Larbalestier wrote a……

Uh, I think Rowling already did that… I know she didn’t start publishing in this decade, but, seems like this was already covered before the decade began, since she’s basically why YA-anything took off…

I definitely agree Ellen Hopkins should have been on there. I used to HATE poetry with a passion until I started reading her novels. Now I read tons of it (though rare is the novel-in-verse that captures my attention and holds me breathless until the end the way hers do).

Philip Pullman also is a geographical thing. He was HUGE in the UK, but not so much in the US.

I second the nomination of Sarah Dessen, though. There are a lot of people out there making a living writing teen romantic dramas due to her influence and sales.

i think something that is left out of the list is what characterizes YA for me in the last decade – even with the paranormal/fantasy elements, so many of the books written dealt with scary, big, adults-are-afraid topics. i think almost all the authors on the list fall into that category (scott’s “uglies” discussing beauty, self-injury, etc. to laurie halse anderson’s “speak” and “wintergirls” to elizabeth scott’s “living dead girl”.)

the other person that stands out as sort of different for me is actually maureen johnson, who started out with very realistic fiction and then started adding small elements of whimsy to the story – which i hadn’t really seen before. it let me find my way to fantasy (and things like “tithe”) as someone who never really was into fantasy/faerie/sci-fi/etc. (like i said, “a separate peace” is a big favorite.)

lastly, i would like to say that my name is not due to john green’s influence, despite my love of his work. blame the velvet underground for this one.

Paolini is on there because he was a teenager when he wrote the book. I was about 15 when I read the book, the same age he was when he read it. I was a little inspired (though I didn’t know his family owned a publishing company at the time) by the fact that he was my age and he published a book. In my mind, I thought, if he could do it, I could. I think that’s his influence. We don’t have enough books written by teens about and for teens.

There’s a little side paragraph that mentioned Walter Dean Myers and you. I don’t know if that was before or after you wrote the blog though. I think you are influential for people of color, you’re influential for me. =)

I think J.K. Rowling might actually be a better choice than Paolini for letting publishers know that YA fantasy can sell, even if the Harry Potter books are more children’s than YA. Rowling opened a huge door in publishing that had echoes throughout the YA world as well as children’s.

And I might be the only one, but I think Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower had a bigger influence than it’s credited for.

To me, she is THE most influential young adult writer of the past decade, for that reason alone.