YA girl-friendly fic recs?

[telophase]

I have a friend who works at a feminist bookstore and is trying to build up the juvenile fiction collection. She's looking for recs of girl-friendly interesting fiction for older children.

Comments

[oyceter]

My current favorites are Sarah Dessen, some of Maureen Johnson's (favs are Bermudez Triangle and Key to the Golden Firebird), Justina Chen Headley (LOVE)

Not sure how much your friend cares about POC authors, but I liked these, and all of them have heroines I like: Cynthia Leitich Smith's Tantalize (I like her heroine too), Cherry Cheva's She's So Money, Melissa de la Cruz's Fresh Off the Boat (not so much her others though), Caridad Ferrer's Adios to My Old Life, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu's Shadow Speaker and Zahrah the Windseeker, Kashmira Sheth's Keeping Corner, and Sherri Winston's The Kayla Chronicles. Have not read but heard good things about Alaya Dawn Johnson's Racing the Dark.

Books with strong white female protagonists that I like are Kristin Cashore's Graceling, Howl's Moving Castle, The Perilous Gard, Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching series (starts with Wee Free Men) and Nation, Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life as We Knew It, Scott Westerfeld's Uglies trilogy.

Am sadly too lazy to link to all my write ups, but I think I've written up most of those somewhere here.

[oyceter]

Darn it! I read "older children" as "older teens." So my age groups are totally off.

I will now shove in a rec for Angela Johnson, whose books I really love! And Sherri L. Smith's Lucy the Giant and Hot, Salty, Sour, Sweet. Cynthia Leitich Smith has also written a book for younger teens/older childern called "Rain Is Not My Indian Name" that I have not yet read but plan to after reading Tantalize. Nnedi's books are for older children as well.

[octopedingenue]

I love Sarah Dessen! On days when I've sold one too many copies of Twilight, Dessen's continued popularity at my store soothes my soul. Lock & Key is my fave so far, but overall I am happy for books that quench my thirst for Lurlene McDaniel ANGST without the side effect of making me want to punch myself in the face.

Though it's for much younger kids, have you read The Year of the Dog by Grace Lin? It's sweet and funny and simply written, with parts that go oww without pounding it in. Like how the Taiwanese-American heroine is happy when there's finally another Asian girl in her elementary school to make friends with, but she'd learned of the new girl's existence because the lunch lady got mad at her for "going through the line twice." (Oww.) ETA and just noticed there's a sequel! in my birth Year of the Rat, eeeee!

[oyceter]

I haven't read the Grace Lin books, although they are on my list (largely because of the title of the latter, big surprise there). Rats! Even metaphorical zodiac rats!