This week's TTT theme is "Auto-buy," authors whose books you buy automatically. As names began to pour into my head, I started to think I would have to make two lists, a middle grade and young adult list. As I clicked around the linky thing on Broke and Bookish, I realized that many of the listed authors were authors of series and so were many of mine so I decided to limit my list to authors who write mostly stand-alone novels...
I know!
There are A LOT of series out there!
Okay, here goes:
Jerry Spinelli
Sharon Creech
Avi
Gary Paulsen
Walter Dean Myers
Patricia MacLachlan
Nancy Farmer
What's that you say? D'uh? Yes, these are tried and true authors and all have been around for awhile and won multiple awards. Okay, I'll make a new list.
In (mostly) alphabetical order:
Laurie Halse Anderson: searing contemporary fiction (Speak; Wintergirls; Twisted) and superb historical fiction (Fever, 1793; Chains; Forge), not to mention picture books and series. Seriously. What can't this woman write?
Libba Bray: this is more an automatic purchase for me rather than my library, since most of her stuff is a bit sophisticated for middle school. This woman is brilliant with a dash of insane. I do occasionally have that sophisticated eighth grade reader ready for Bray's mind-bending.
Carl Deuker: when students want an intelligent sports novel, I hand them Deuker.
Frances O'Roark Dowell: Chicken Boy; Dovey Coe; The Secret Language of Girls; The Kind of Friends We Used to Be; Shooting the Moon, Falling In; Phineas L. MacGuire to name a few. Great fiction for middle grade.
Shannon Hale: Goose Girl remains one of my all time faves. My go-to gal for my girls who love intelligent fairy tale type stories.
Carl Hiaasen: I adore his stuff for grown-ups as well as his books for kids. His books are hardly ever on the shelf.
Wendy Mass: her books are wildly popular in my library. I haven't read everything she has written, but have loved everything I've read by her. Another middle grade dream author.
Matt de la Peña: another author that pushes the readiness of my particular audience, but man, this kid can write.
Jordan Sonnenblick: no one gets into the head of a middle school character the way Jordan does.
Sherman Alexie: Yeah, I know Alexie belongs at the top, alphabetically, but the guy has written only one YA book! I believe I heard rumors of a sequel to The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian a few years back. He WOULD be an automatic purchase if he wrote some more YA. I did read some of his "grown-up" stuff after reading Absolutely True Diary, but it's really grown-up!
Honorable mentions: No less worthy, but had to choose 10.
Gordon Korman
Chris Crutcher
Terry Pratchett
Nora Raleigh Baskin
Suzanne LaFleur
Michelle Kwasney
Non-Fiction auto-purchases: can't leave informational literature out!
Nic Bishop
Tonya Bolden
The Fradens
Russell Freedman
Kathleen Krull
Steve Jenkins
Sy Montgomery
Jim Murphy
Steve Sheinkin
Tanya Lee Stone
Honorable mention: The Scientist in the Field series by various authors, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
So, okay, a top 25 plus one series.
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