YA Book Trivia
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99 free YA Book trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 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 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who wrote The Hunger Games trilogy?
Suzanne Collins
Suzanne Collins got the idea while channel surfing between a reality TV competition and footage of a real war.
Q 02In The Hunger Games, what are the boy and girl each district sends to the arena called?
Tributes
Tributes. A yearly lottery called the reaping picks them as punishment for the districts' failed rebellion, and they fight until only one remains.
Q 03The prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes follows which Hunger Games character as a teenager?
Coriolanus Snow
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.
Q 04Veronica Roth's Divergent is set in a post-apocalyptic version of which city?
Chicago
Chicago. During a game of capture the flag, Tris climbs the abandoned Ferris wheel at Navy Pier to spot the other team.
Q 05In Divergent, Beatrice Prior leaves her birth faction to join which one?
Dauntless
Dauntless. Her brother Caleb also leaves their selfless Abnegation family, shocking their parents by choosing Erudite.
Q 06In Twilight, Bella Swan moves from Phoenix, Arizona, to which small town?
Forks, Washington
Forks, Washington. The rainy former logging town now hosts a Forever Twilight in Forks festival every September.
Q 07In which Twilight Saga book does Edward leave Bella, who turns to her friend Jacob Black?
New Moon
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.
Q 08The title of John Green's The Fault in Our Stars comes from a line in which Shakespeare play?
Julius Caesar
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.
Q 09The Fault in Our Stars is dedicated to Esther Earl, a friend of the author who died of what at 16?
Thyroid cancer
Thyroid cancer. Green had met Esther at a Harry Potter conference in 2009, and she inspired his narrator Hazel, who has the same cancer.
Q 10Which John Green novel once topped the American Library Association's list of most-challenged books?
Looking for Alaska
Looking for Alaska. Challengers objected mainly to its offensive language and a sexually explicit scene, making it the most-challenged book of 2015.
Q 11Percy Jackson & the Olympians is a series by which author?
Rick Riordan
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.
Q 12S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders is set, though never explicitly stated, in which city?
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Tulsa, Oklahoma. Francis Ford Coppola later filmed it there after a Fresno school librarian sent him her pupils' petition to adapt the book.
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
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.
Q 22In The Maze Runner, what is the illness devastating the world outside the maze called?
The Flare
The Flare. The organisation WICKED sends immune teenagers through the maze as test subjects in its hunt for a cure.
Q 23Ransom Riggs's Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children was built around what?
Vintage found photographs
So male reviewers would not dismiss a woman's book: her publisher suggested Susan Eloise Hinton go by S. E. instead.
Q 14In Lois Lowry's The Giver, what role is 12-year-old Jonas selected for?
Receiver of Memory
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.
Q 15In Speak, freshman Melinda Sordino is ostracised after doing what at a summer party?
Calling the police
Calling the police. No one knows she called because a senior had raped her there, so classmates shun her for breaking up the party.
Q 16Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor & Park is set in 1986-87 in which city?
Omaha, Nebraska
Omaha, Nebraska. In 2013 a Minnesota parent's complaint about its profanity got Rowell's school and library talks there cancelled.
Q 17Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows is set mainly in Ketterdam, a city loosely inspired by which real one?
Amsterdam
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.
Q 18Bardugo's debut Shadow and Bone follows orphan Alina Starkov in Ravka, a land inspired by which country?
Russia
Russia. During a monster attack on the Shadow Fold, a darkness splitting Ravka, orphan Alina discovers she is a Sun Summoner.
Q 19Angie Thomas's The Hate U Give grew from a college short story reacting to which police shooting?
Oscar Grant
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.
Q 20Who narrates The Hate U Give?
Starr Carter
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.
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.
Q 24The Perks of Being a Wallflower follows Charlie's freshman year in a suburb of which city?
Pittsburgh
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.
Q 25Which teenage habit of Jenny Han's inspired her novel To All the Boys I've Loved Before?
Writing love letters to her crushes
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.
Q 26Becky Albertalli's debut novel, whose title parodies 'homosexual agenda', was filmed as what?
Love, Simon
Love, Simon. Simon falls for an anonymous classmate over email, until a blackmailer threatens to out him to the school.
Q 27Tomi Adeyemi's Children of Blood and Bone follows Zélie Adebola trying to restore magic to which kingdom?
Orïsha
Orïsha. Adeyemi took its spell names from Yoruba with her Nigerian mother's help, and wrote the story partly in response to police brutality.
Q 28In Karen M. McManus's One of Us Is Lying, what kills the gossip-app creator during detention?
A peanut allergy
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.
Q 29Marissa Meyer's first Lunar Chronicles novel retells which fairy tale as science fiction?
Cinderella
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.
Q 30Marie Lu has said her dystopian novel Legend was inspired in part by which film?
Les Misérables
Les Misérables. Lu wanted a teen version of its criminal-versus-detective chase, so military prodigy June hunts the outlaw Day.