49 Fun Facts About YA Book

Who wrote The Hunger Games trilogy?

Suzanne Collins got the idea while channel surfing between a reality TV competition and footage of a real war.

In The Hunger Games, what are the boy and girl each district sends to the arena called?

Tributes. A yearly lottery called the reaping picks them as punishment for the districts' failed rebellion, and they fight until only one remains.

The prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes follows which Hunger Games character as a teenager?

Coriolanus Snow. At 18 the future president mentors Lucy Gray Baird, District 12's girl in the 10th Games, and secretly cheats to keep her alive.

Veronica Roth's Divergent is set in a post-apocalyptic version of which city?

Chicago. During a game of capture the flag, Tris climbs the abandoned Ferris wheel at Navy Pier to spot the other team.

In Divergent, Beatrice Prior leaves her birth faction to join which one?

Dauntless. Her brother Caleb also leaves their selfless Abnegation family, shocking their parents by choosing Erudite.

In Twilight, Bella Swan moves from Phoenix, Arizona, to which small town?

Forks, Washington. The rainy former logging town now hosts a Forever Twilight in Forks festival every September.

In which Twilight Saga book does Edward leave Bella, who turns to her friend Jacob Black?

New Moon. When a misunderstanding convinces Edward that Bella is dead, he goes to Italy to make the Volturi kill him, and she races there to stop him.

The title of John Green's The Fault in Our Stars comes from a line in which Shakespeare play?

Julius Caesar. In the novel, author Peter Van Houten writes that Shakespeare was never more wrong than when Cassius said the fault is not in our stars.

The Fault in Our Stars is dedicated to Esther Earl, a friend of the author who died of what at 16?

Thyroid cancer. Green had met Esther at a Harry Potter conference in 2009, and she inspired his narrator Hazel, who has the same cancer.

Which John Green novel once topped the American Library Association's list of most-challenged books?

Looking for Alaska. Challengers objected mainly to its offensive language and a sexually explicit scene, making it the most-challenged book of 2015.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians is a series by which author?

Rick Riordan. Percy began as a bedtime story for his son Haley, who asked for tales of Greek heroes and then told him to write it as a book.

S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders is set, though never explicitly stated, in which city?

Tulsa, Oklahoma. Francis Ford Coppola later filmed it there after a Fresno school librarian sent him her pupils' petition to adapt the book.

Why did S. E. Hinton publish The Outsiders under her initials?

So male reviewers would not dismiss a woman's book: her publisher suggested Susan Eloise Hinton go by S. E. instead.

In Lois Lowry's The Giver, what role is 12-year-old Jonas selected for?

Receiver of Memory. A recording of his father releasing a newborn twin shows Jonas that 'release', the gentle word for going Elsewhere, really means being killed.

In Speak, freshman Melinda Sordino is ostracised after doing what at a summer party?

Calling the police. No one knows she called because a senior had raped her there, so classmates shun her for breaking up the party.

Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor & Park is set in 1986-87 in which city?

Omaha, Nebraska. In 2013 a Minnesota parent's complaint about its profanity got Rowell's school and library talks there cancelled.

Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows is set mainly in Ketterdam, a city loosely inspired by which real one?

Amsterdam. Bardugo wanted an influence from the 1700s Dutch Republic, and her young criminals plot to break a scientist out of Fjerda's Ice Court.

Bardugo's debut Shadow and Bone follows orphan Alina Starkov in Ravka, a land inspired by which country?

Russia. During a monster attack on the Shadow Fold, a darkness splitting Ravka, orphan Alina discovers she is a Sun Summoner.

Angie Thomas's The Hate U Give grew from a college short story reacting to which police shooting?

Oscar Grant, killed in Oakland in 2009. Thomas first wrote the story as her Belhaven University senior project, and publishers later fought a bidding war for the novel.

Who narrates The Hate U Give?

Starr Carter. She is the only witness when a police officer shoots her childhood friend Khalil at a traffic stop, and must decide whether to speak out.

In Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why, how does Hannah Baker leave her thirteen reasons?

On cassette tapes. Seven of them arrive in the mail with orders to pass them to each person named, and Clay listens to them all in one night.

In The Maze Runner, what is the illness devastating the world outside the maze called?

The Flare. The organisation WICKED sends immune teenagers through the maze as test subjects in its hunt for a cure.

Ransom Riggs's Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children was built around what?

Vintage found photographs. Riggs collected them at flea markets and planned a picture book, until his Quirk Books editor suggested building a novel around them.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower follows Charlie's freshman year in a suburb of which city?

Pittsburgh. Chbosky drew on his own Pittsburgh memories and later shot the 2012 film there, including the Fort Pitt Tunnel ride where Charlie feels infinite.

Which teenage habit of Jenny Han's inspired her novel To All the Boys I've Loved Before?

Writing love letters to her crushes, which Han did as a teen; in the novel, Lara Jean's five secret letters are mailed without her knowing.

Becky Albertalli's debut novel, whose title parodies 'homosexual agenda', was filmed as what?

Love, Simon. Simon falls for an anonymous classmate over email, until a blackmailer threatens to out him to the school.

Tomi Adeyemi's Children of Blood and Bone follows Zélie Adebola trying to restore magic to which kingdom?

Orïsha. Adeyemi took its spell names from Yoruba with her Nigerian mother's help, and wrote the story partly in response to police brutality.

In Karen M. McManus's One of Us Is Lying, what kills the gossip-app creator during detention?

A peanut allergy. Police find his water was laced with peanut oil, and he had been about to post secrets about the classmates in detention with him.

Marissa Meyer's first Lunar Chronicles novel retells which fairy tale as science fiction?

Cinderella. Cinder is a cyborg mechanic in New Beijing, and at Prince Kai's ball she loses her ill-fitting robotic foot on the palace steps.

Marie Lu has said her dystopian novel Legend was inspired in part by which film?

Les Misérables. Lu wanted a teen version of its criminal-versus-detective chase, so military prodigy June hunts the outlaw Day.

Sarah J. Maas's Throne of Glass follows Celaena Sardothien, who has what profession?

Assassin. After a year in the slave camp of Endovier, she is offered her freedom if she beats thieves and killers to become the king's champion.

In Scott Westerfeld's Uglies, what does everyone undergo at 16 to become 'Pretty'?

Cosmetic surgery. The operation also secretly leaves brain lesions that make new Pretties docile, a truth Tally learns at the Smoke.

Eoin Colfer pitched Artemis Fowl as which action film 'with fairies'?

Die Hard. Here the hostage-taker is 12-year-old mastermind Artemis, who kidnaps fairy officer Holly Short for a ransom of gold.

Which best-selling novelist brought the self-published Eragon to Knopf?

Carl Hiaasen. On a Montana fishing trip, his stepson found the self-published book in a shop, and Hiaasen passed it to his publisher, Knopf.

In Louis Sachar's Holes, Stanley Yelnats is sent to which juvenile detention facility?

Camp Green Lake, which has no lake: it dried up long ago, and the boys must dig a hole a day in its dusty bed.

Who narrates Markus Zusak's The Book Thief?

Death. The book thief of the title, Liesel, takes her first book from the cemetery where her little brother is buried.

Which Cassandra Clare series follows Clary Fray into a hidden world of demon-hunting Shadowhunters?

The Mortal Instruments. In City of Bones, Clary watches Shadowhunters kill a demon at a New York club, though nobody else can see them.

Walter Dean Myers's Monster won which prize in 2000, its first year?

The Printz Award. Myers tells Steve Harmon's murder trial partly as a film script, which Steve writes in jail to cope.

Gary Paulsen's Hatchet is a survival novel about a boy stranded where?

The Canadian wilderness. Flying to see his father in Canada, 13-year-old Brian crash-lands in a lake after the bush plane's pilot has a heart attack.

Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War is set where?

A Catholic high school, Trinity. When freshman Jerry refuses to sell chocolates, the secret society the Vigils turns the school against him.

Go Ask Alice, the 1971 'anonymous' teen addict's diary, was later attributed to whom?

Beatrice Sparks, who published it as a real anonymous diary, went on to put out more supposedly true diaries of troubled teens.

Which 1942 novel about a teenage romance is called by some the first young adult novel?

Seventeenth Summer. Maureen Daly finished it at college and entered it in a Dodd, Mead intercollegiate novel contest, which it won.

E. Lockhart's We Were Liars centres on which wealthy family and their private island?

The Sinclairs. Cadence can't remember that she and the other Liars set fire to their grandfather's house to end a family feud, and that it killed her three friends.

Sabaa Tahir's An Ember in the Ashes is set in a fantasy world inspired by which ancient civilisation?

Rome. The Martial Empire's silver-masked elite soldiers train at Blackcliff Academy, where Scholar girl Laia goes undercover as a slave.

Tracy Deonn's Legendborn has been called a modern twist on which body of myth?

Arthurian legend. After her mother dies, Bree infiltrates a secret society at UNC, the Order of the Round Table, made up of descendants of King Arthur's knights.

Which YA novel follows 18-year-old Maddy, who is treated for 'bubble baby disease' and never leaves her house?

Everything, Everything. When the boy next door, Olly, turns up with a Bundt cake, Maddy's overprotective doctor mother sends him away.

Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. follows a sixth-grader raised without what?

Margaret Simon's parents have an interfaith marriage; the 1970 novel has been challenged for its frank talk of puberty and religion.

Madeleine L'Engle's Newbery Medal novel about Meg Murry opens which series?

The Time Quintet. Publisher after publisher rejected A Wrinkle in Time, unsure whether a science fiction story with a girl hero was for children or adults.

At which fictional Pennsylvania boarding school does The Catcher in the Rye begin?

Pencey Prep. Expelled for failing every class but English, Holden leaves early and wanders New York for days rather than go straight home.