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THERE could not have been a more exciting beginning to the year of teenage fiction than Gary Paulsen's Sarny (Macmillan, GBP 3.99), which represented a considerable addition to his range and confirmed him as one of the leading young adult authors of the decade.
Another American novel, Storm by Suzanne Fisher Staples (Julia MacRae, GBP 9.99), set among the creeks of Chesapeake Bay, was stunningly and compulsively multi-layered in a manner which made it much more than simply a children's book.
The rest of the year has not entirely lived up to the standard set by these two exceptional books. There have been promising novels from new authors; good ones from established authors; but not too many novels that take the breath away.
Publishers really must begin to improve the quality of jacket design if teenage fiction is to become the growth area that a recent American survey indicated it has the potential to be. Scholastic Press has begun to show the way.
Love Lessons by David Belbin (Scholastic, GBP 5.99), a cautionary tale about an affair between a teacher and a pupil, was given a jacket which was sophisticated enough to tempt booksellers to display the novel with adult titles.
Belbin relishes controversial material, as shown in Victims (Scholastic, GBP 3.99), his latest book in The Beat series. A two- year-old goes missing just after a...