The Illustrated YA Novel is Coming of Age

I've written a YA futuristic novel that I'm putting final polishes on. I'm also an artist, so I'm experimenting with doing ten illustrations for this novel. No can do, you say? Not for YA? I'm happy to report this is no longer the case! The age of the illustrated YA is coming of age. Pictured here is a peek at my image of a scary cult that my main characters run into in the Great Chihuahua Desert. Yup, these cowled creeps are raising the net on my guys. Oh, and those rock formations that look like... well, stay tuned. In fact, stay tuned in general, as I may post another picture soon.

Examples of lushly-illustrated YAs are popping up all over the place. Scott Westerfield's Leviathan, with art by Keith Thompson comes to mind. A Monster Calls, inspired by Siobhan Dowd, written by Patrick Ness and illustrated by Jim Kay is another shining example. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, a novel by Ransom Riggs and chock full of vintage photos, takes the already eerie novel about a 16 year-old boy sent to a crumbling, abandoned home for dangerous youth to a whole other layer of strange. Beth Kephart, a YA author posted on September 29th about this very subject, and she's excited to say that an upcoming book of hers will be illustrated.

So, who says teens shouldn't enjoy evocative images! There's no reason that gorgeously illustrated novels should only exist for the picture book and middle grade set. N. C. Wyeth and Albrecht Durer are two classic picture-makers for adult and crossover novels. With the rise of the graphic novel and the text art hybrid that Brian Selznick introduced with The Inventions of Hugo Cabret, this is fast-changing, and I, for one, am hugely excited about it.

That said, I do think that illustrations for teens need a sophistication that allows for one's imagination to paint in the main characters. Good illustration, as good fiction allows for this breathing room.

That's why, in my pictures, I'll have no images of the main characters (Or maybe one, from the side view??) and precious few of the other players. That's why I won't be giving away any big gun surprises in them either. No spoilers, only images that fuel a sharper, more fierce imagining.

I firmly believe that images in YA novels can enrich and elevate prose. Seems like the perfect time to break away from old formulas and invent fresh, new templates. What do you think? (Should I do my main players in profile?) Please share any more good examples of this phenomenon. What kinds of illustrations would you not want to see, or really love to see? Dish here.

Text, Art and the Virtual World--new directions in novels

Graphic novels, manga and video games have infused popular culture so completely that kids today are born making the connection between text, images and the virtual world.

This does not make them “bad” readers, nor should one assume that kids are any less literate or have shorter attention spans. These are the sort of paranoid, knee-jerk assumptions that the older set has, those of us who have vivid memories as a kid of going to the library to pick out summer books for vacation reading. When the Commodore 64 was too coded for anyone but programmers to figure out, the only sanctuaries for those hungry for story were libraries and "ye olde" neighborhood bookstores.

Kids have more options now. This is a good thing. They are adapting very quickly to eBooks as they will to interactive and enhanced eBooks—those with embedded online links and video. As I said, the younger-than-twenty-set were practically born with keyboards in their paws. Authors, rather than fear the new technology, think of the many opportunities it presents for us to create content: enhanced eBooks, interactive eBooks, such as my recently penned A Girl’s Best Friend, from American Girl for the Innerstar University series, which has an online gaming component. Or the 39 Clues series from Scholastic (various authors), where a child goes from book to online game, and back to the book to solve the mystery.

In a similar vein, until recently, including pictures with text was a no-no with any fiction above a chapter book. Not any longer! In addition to the straight-on graphic novel, we now have the pleasure of reading all stripes of art-text hybrids. The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick was among these first wave of hybrids. It caused a major stir in 2007 with its innovative drawings that oozed from one page to the next, and peeped out from corners, only to explode into full-blown drawings on the next page. Scott Westerfield’s YA steampunk series Leviathan and Behemoth is another example of this growing trend of art/text hybrids in fiction, in this case for teens.

Why not infuse YA and even adult fiction with brilliant, color-saturated illustrations? Why should the chapter book set have all the fun? I am thrilled, especially as an illustrator, to know that we can look forward to more and more novels, rich with illustration on the level of a Gustave Doré or an N.C. Wyeth.

Have you stumbled upon any new YA that’s filled with gorgeous illustration? A middle-grade fantasia of art and text? Tell us all about it! What do you think about these growing trends?