Secondly I would like to thank Kevin Lee for all his hard work in sorting the data. It was an overwhelming task that was made difficult by typos, votes provided without authors and other curious entries. It was a mountain that Kevin tackled with enthusiasm and grace and I don't really have the words to thank him enough.
Lastly I would like to thank Judith Ridge for her perusal of the list. Judith is the resident YA expert here in Australia and used a John Stephens quote as the basis for what title met the YA criteria - “the emergence of subjectivity as a development of a central character’s ability to express self-recognition or agency”. I valued her knowledge and thank her for her role in fine tuning the top 100.
In future polls the definition will be spelt out more clearly but even with a very basic criteria in 2010 many people voted for title that were clearly not within the bounds of YA. The line between middle grade and young adult is still fuzzy with many people's opinions quite subjective.
At the conclusion of the Top 100 YA Novels poll for this year, I would like to share some information gathered from your votes.
- Voting took place over five weeks at the end of April and throughout May.
- 735 people shared their top ten choices of the best YA titles. The participants come from across the globe and many different careers. Students, librarians, teachers, editors and a myriad of other professions took the time to volunteer their thoughts on YA.
- At least 80% of participants were female.
- An overwhelming majority of voters identified themselves solely as readers.
- Sarah Dessen accumalated the most points which is amazing considering she has not written a series. The only title of hers not to make the top 100 was That Summer, her first publication.
- The top five authors represented on the list in terms of title rankings order were - Sarah Dessen, JK Rowling, Melina Marchetta, Stephenie Meyer and Cassandra Clare. Three represent the strong representation of paranormal series on the list while the other two represent contemporary works with strong female protagonists.
- Despite having only a single title (The Princess Diaries), Meg Cabot was the author with the most titles voted for - 20.
- The top five authors in terms of titles voted for were - Meg Cabot, Tamora Pierce, DianaWynne Jones, LJ Smith and Judy Blume.
- The top five authors represented in terms of point accumalation were - Sarah Dessen, JK Rowling, Suzanne Collins, Stephenie Meyer and Philip Pullman.
- As I am an Australian it is with pride that I point out that five titles were from my homeland.
My intention is to conduct this poll again in 2011 with some revisions. Readers have been pretty vocal in their thoughts on this poll and I would like to hear from you on what you'd like to see next year. Feel free to have your say in the comments section or privately via email.
Note - Should you reference this poll and its finding, please ensure you hyperlink to Persnickety Snark as the original source. Thank you.
And now for the final list ....
Persnickety Snark's Top 100 YA Novels for 2010
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Suzanne Collins
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J.K. Rowling
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Harper Lee
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Laurie Halse Anderson
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Philip Pullman
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Sarah Dessen
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Markus Zusak
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S.E. Hinton
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Stephenie Meyer
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Sarah Dessen
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John Green
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Sarah Dessen
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J.K. Rowling
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Louisa May Alcott
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Cassandra Clare
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Melina Marchetta
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J.D. Salinger
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J.K. Rowling
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Stephen Chbosky
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Sarah Dessen
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Maggie Stiefvater
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Richelle Mead
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Kristin Cashore
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Jay Asher
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Megan McCafferty
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J.R.R. Tolkien
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Tamora Pierce
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Orson Scott Card
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J.K. Rowling
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Scott Westerfeld
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Libba Bray
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John Marsden
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E. Lockhart
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Jane Austen
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Ellen Raskin
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John Green
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J.K. Rowling
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Suzanne Collins
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Betty Smith
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Sherman Alexie
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Sarah Dessen
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Philip Pullman
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Claudia Gray
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Garth Nix
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J.K. Rowling
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Kami Garcia, Margaret Stohl
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Judy Blume
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Dodie Smith
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Gail Carson Levine
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Meg Cabot
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Jerry Spinelli
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Diana Wynne Jones
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Susan Cooper
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Becca Fitzpatrick
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Melina Marchetta
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Megan McCafferty
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Sarah Dessen
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Stephenie Meyer
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Rachel Cohn, David Levithan
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Kristin Cashore
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Robert Cormier
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Francesca Lia Block
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Anne Frank
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Melina Marchetta
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Meg Rosoff
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Cassandra Clare
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Sarah Dessen
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Stephenie Meyer
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Louise Rennison
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Gayle Forman
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Megan Whalen Turner
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Laurie Halse Anderson
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Robin McKinley
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Robin McKinley
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M.T. Anderson
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Ann Brashares
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Anonymous
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Melissa Marr
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William Golding
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Sarah Dessen
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Carrie Ryan
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Katherine Paterson
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Patrick Ness
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Maria V. Snyder
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Richelle Mead
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Avi
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John Green
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Mark Haddon
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Madeleine L'Engle
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Rachel Caine
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M.T. Anderson
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Sharon Creech
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Chris Crutcher
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Simone Elkeles
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Jennifer Echols
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Nicholas Sparks
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Lauren Oliver
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Gary Paulsen
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Paul Zindel
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Robin McKinley
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If you wish to print out a friendlier version of this list, follow this link.
17 comments:
this it's amazing, thanks for organizing this
I just wanted to add my thanks for undertaking this enormous task. Your efforts are appreciated.
This was great! Thank you for doing this. I can't imagine all the work it took to compile this huge list and sort through everything, but it is very appreciated. It is a wonderful list of some of the best titles in YA Lit. Thank you!
absolutely loved this! thanks so much for tackling this project!
What a fascinating list! Thanks for braving typos, computer glitches and other technological and human mishaps and taking the time to compile it. Will definitely be doing so more YA reading.
this has been so awesome. just loved it (and ordered 3 books b/c of it :)
i can imagine how huge the whole endeavour was and think it's a really important and cool list.
i love seeing what books have meant so much to people - am astounded just how strong Sarah Dessen went with all her novels. she's obviously touched a lot of lives :)
looking forward to the next one - i know a few books i've read that will change in my list.
also, was conflicted when compiling my original list as a few titles i love i know are internationally obscure and are essentially a waste of a vote as i'm sure my few points is not counting towards anything - was tempted to make it a top ten of my faves that are more well known in an effort to boost some titles i love (but aren't necessarily my own personally very most favourite-ist books - if you get what i mean?).
thanks again Adele - hope you enjoyed it all too :)
You've done an awesome job compiling this list! I'm glad to see some Aussie authors on the list, and was especially glad to see my favourite YA author John Marsden on there.
Awesome to see people are still reading the Westing Game. I really should find a copy of that to re-read.
Awesome list!
I clearly have some reading to do! This is a great list!
Terrific list! I've written more of my thoughts about it on my blog.
oh my god!!! thanks so much.. its maddeningly pleasant to have such a list... thanks sooo very much!!
Wow - I didn't realize how far behind I was! Here is my list!
A great list, Adele, and very interesting information about the participants. Confirms that male reader opinion is harder to tap into than female.
This is a very interesting list. Thanks so much for putting it together.
I ran into it on a couple of blogs and was curious as to the process for creating the list and the criteria that went into it.
I love that it spans centuries (a quick glance reveals work from the 1800s to 2010, which is cool) as well as a variety of themes (supernatural, sci-fi, high school/teen drama, family/friend interactions and more).
Not having read all of these books, this is a great list for future reading. :)
The only thing that I dislike (and I have this problem with many/most lists like this) is the splitting out of individual books from a particular series...especially when the books are intrinsic to that series.
Granted, a lot of "series" novels can stand alone on their own merit but in many cases they are either more powerful when coupled with the whole series or it is vital to read them as part of the series.
I do see that one "series" was lumped together completely (Lord of the Rings), but that others were broken apart even though they could be less effective as a stand alone (for example, jumping right into Breaking Dawn).
Still, as I mention this is a problem with any list of this type and is a difficult one to work around. So I am in no way criticizing your particular list...just making an observation.
Thanks again for the huge amount of work that went into this. I look forward to seeing future lists and to following your reviews/blog.
this list of novels is abstrusely ignorant to the preceding authors of this generation, including various classics such as catcher in the rye, as well as many novels subject to exemption and negligence, for i do not notice them existing on this list. many others feel as follows and further more this is insulting to literary giants within history for their absence is ludicrous.
Ahh thanks for the feedback? I wonder if you voted?
As for the results, sure they are a varied bunch but teens actually voted. So did professionals and the results are a mix of what both groups think are worthy reads.
Using a thesaurus when writing a comment does not mean you are more intelligent, better read or that your opinions holds more weight. Reading is ultimately subjective and we can't all like what other people do.
Thanks for commenting!
I printed this out last year, taped it to my refrigerator and read as much of the list as I could (which I hadn't read already). Introduced me to a lot of really fun YA books xD Wanted to drop by and say thanks :D
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