50 free YA Book trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This YA book trivia quiz runs from the earliest young adult novels to the shelves of today. It starts with Seventeenth Summer, The Outsiders, The Chocolate War and Go Ask Alice, moves through The Giver, Speak, Holes and Looking for Alaska, and lands on the blockbusters: The Hunger Games, Twilight, Divergent, The Maze Runner, Percy Jackson, The Fault in Our Stars, Six of Crows, The Hate U Give and Children of Blood and Bone. The questions are about the books, not the films: who wrote what, where the stories are set, which titles won the Printz or the Newbery, which ones topped the banned-books lists, and the odd fact behind a title or a pen name. About a third are easy for anyone who reads YA, a third are medium, and the rest will test book-club regulars and school librarians. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and publisher and award pages, and each question carries the sentence that establishes it. If you think one is wrong, use the report button and we will look again.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who wrote The Hunger Games trilogy?
Suzanne Collins
The trilogy has sold more than 100 million copies and placed second only to Harry Potter in NPR's 2012 poll of the top 100 teen novels.
Q 02In The Hunger Games, how many districts must each send two children to the arena?
12
The Capitol frames the annual games as punishment for a past rebellion; the last child standing is named victor.
Q 03The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is set how many years before the first Hunger Games novel?
64
The book had a virtual launch because of the pandemic; the film adaptation followed in November 2023.
Q 04Veronica Roth's Divergent is set in a post-apocalyptic version of which city?
Chicago
Roth wrote it while studying creative writing at Northwestern, just north of the city she was destroying on the page.
Q 05In Divergent, Beatrice Prior leaves her birth faction to join which one?
Dauntless
There she takes the name Tris and falls for her instructor, Four.
Q 06In Twilight, Bella Swan moves from Phoenix, Arizona, to which small town?
Forks, Washington
Edward Cullen is 103 years old but frozen at 17; the novel was translated into 37 languages within three years.
Q 07Twilight was the biggest-selling book of 2008. Which book beat it to the top spot in 2009?
Its sequel New Moon
The film of New Moon came out that November, which did the sequel's sales no harm.
Q 08The title of John Green's The Fault in Our Stars comes from a line in which Shakespeare play?
Julius Caesar
Cassius tells Brutus that the fault is not in their stars but in themselves; Green's title turns the line around.
Q 09The Fault in Our Stars is dedicated to Esther Earl, a friend of the author who died of what at 16?
Thyroid cancer
The narrator Hazel has the same illness; Green was also drawing on his time as a student chaplain in a children's hospital.
Q 10Which John Green novel won the ALA's top teen prize in 2006 and topped its most-challenged list in 2015?
Looking for Alaska
The narrator Miles 'Pudge' Halter collects famous last words and goes to boarding school in search of a 'Great Perhaps'.
Q 11Percy Jackson & the Olympians is a series by which author?
Rick Riordan
By January 2022 the books had sold more than 180 million copies; the first was published by Miramax Books before Hyperion took over.
Q 12S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders is set, though never explicitly stated, in which city?
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Hinton was 15 when she started it and 18 when it was published in 1967.
Q 13Why did S. E. Hinton publish The Outsiders under her initials?
So male reviewers would not dismiss a woman's book
Q 21In Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why, how does Hannah Baker leave her thirteen reasons?
On cassette tapes
Seven double-sided tapes are mailed two weeks after her death; Clay Jensen is the ninth person to receive them.
Q 22In The Maze Runner, what is the illness devastating the world outside the maze called?
The Flare
The organisation WICKED tests immune teenagers in search of a cure; the book spent 148 weeks on the New York Times list.
Q 23Ransom Riggs's Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children was built around what?
Vintage found photographs
The initials stand for Susan Eloise; the greasers-versus-Socs story is told by Ponyboy Curtis.
Q 14In Lois Lowry's The Giver, what role is 12-year-old Jonas selected for?
Receiver of Memory
The role means holding every memory of the time before 'Sameness'; the 1993 novel won the 1994 Newbery Medal.
Q 15In Speak, freshman Melinda Sordino is ostracised after doing what at a summer party?
Calling the police
Melinda cannot say why she called, and nearly stops speaking altogether; the 1999 novel was filmed in 2004 with Kristen Stewart.
Q 16Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor & Park is set in 1986-87 in which city?
Omaha, Nebraska
The two 16-year-olds meet on a school bus and bond over comic books and mixtapes.
Q 17Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows is set mainly in Ketterdam, a city loosely inspired by which real one?
Amsterdam
The heist novel is part of the Grishaverse and was completed by Crooked Kingdom in 2016.
Q 18Bardugo's debut Shadow and Bone follows orphan Alina Starkov in Ravka, a land inspired by which country?
Russia
The trilogy continues with Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising, and became a Netflix series in 2021.
Q 19Angie Thomas's The Hate U Give grew from a college short story reacting to which police shooting?
Oscar Grant
The 2017 novel spent 50 weeks at No. 1 on the New York Times young adult list and became one of the most-challenged books of the decade.
Q 20Who narrates The Hate U Give?
Starr Carter
The 16-year-old shuttles between a poor neighbourhood and an elite private school, and code-switching between them is a central theme.
It was meant to be a picture book of photos Riggs collected until a Quirk Books editor suggested a narrative to string them together.
Q 24The Perks of Being a Wallflower follows Charlie's freshman year in a suburb of which city?
Pittsburgh
Chbosky spent five years on the 1999 novel and later wrote and directed the 2012 film himself.
Q 25Jenny Han was inspired to write To All the Boys I've Loved Before by which of her own teenage habits?
Writing love letters to her crushes
The 2014 novel was followed by P.S. I Still Love You and Always and Forever, Lara Jean, and a Netflix film in 2018.
Q 26Becky Albertalli's 2015 debut novel, whose title parodies 'homosexual agenda', was filmed in 2018 as what?
Love, Simon
The novel's title parodies the phrase 'homosexual agenda'; it won the William C. Morris Award for a debut YA book.
Q 27Tomi Adeyemi's Children of Blood and Bone follows Zélie Adebola trying to restore magic to which kingdom?
Orïsha
Adeyemi drew on West African mythology and Yoruba culture, and wrote 45 drafts over 18 months.
Q 28Karen M. McManus's One of Us Is Lying tells its story from the viewpoints of how many student suspects?
Four
The 2017 debut spent five years on the New York Times list and spawned One of Us Is Next and One of Us Is Back.
Q 29Marissa Meyer's Cinder, first of The Lunar Chronicles, retells which fairy tale in sci-fi form?
Cinderella
The later books, Scarlet, Cress and Winter, each take on another classic tale.
Q 30Marie Lu has said her dystopian novel Legend was inspired in part by which film?
Les Misérables
The 2011 novel is followed by Prodigy, Champion and Rebel.