Embracing the Modern Female Heroine – In All Her Forms

Ann Dye gives insight on diversity in YA books.

As a children’s publishing professional, I will openly confess that the YA genre can sometimes exhaust me. Of course there are many great, original, and incredible voices in the world of YA fiction, but as I’m entrenched in so many YA manuscripts day in and day out in the world of marketing, it’s rare that a book will stand out among the masses and connect to me on a real, personal level. After all, you have to admit there are so very many YA books out there about the imperfectly perfect heroine encountering a series of struggles in her journey toward true love (occasionally amongst the threat of a dystopian apocalypse…naturally), that it can be overkill after a while. And then this week I read Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl (I’m very late on the Rowell bandwagon, but I’m so there now). And I fell in literary love.