Rare Species of the YA World

If you're a fan of Alison Cherry Books, then you'll recognise this post title. It's inspired by Alison's Mythical Creatures of New York, which is exceptionally funny and you need to check it out now.

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The YA (Young Adult) world is a unique excosystem full of the weirdest species ever. People who live in books, not reality. People whose boyfriends are fictional. People who . . . actually no, that's mostly me.

There are even more species that are so rare they're almost extinct, and they're the most interesting - the absence of things (e.g. adults) pretty much define YA - so I figured that writing about them all here would be interesting for all us obsessed naturalists. Book naturalists who are fine with trees dying so they can get their hands on stories.

Anyway . . .

The Duology (Colloquially Known as the Double-Book Series)
seriesus duplus

Books almost always grow in threes, as with the seriesus triplus breed, or alone, like the seriesus nottus. Sure, there are occasional fours (seriesus quatrus) and even sevens (serius Potterus), but duologies seem particularly rare: there may have been a common double-book species in the far-distant past - we have few records - but unknown causes led them to extinction. Lack of food, or 'readers' (a technical term) may have been involved, or shrinking publishing habitats, but it is unlikely we shall ever know.

The Non-Romance Book
libro nonromanti

In the Adult Book ecosystem, non-romantic books are much more common than we in the YA world tend to experience, and that can be exceptionally annoying to all of us who get a little sick of the whole kissy-kissy charade.

Research has shown that non-romantic books are closely related to aquiline asexual animals (ooh, alliteration, huh?) such as the starfish and sea anemone, and are usually found in the mystery genre. Some forms of non-romantic book, such as the libro somromanti or book with some romance, can be found in the adventure and fantasy genres, but non-romantic contemparies are endangered almost to the point of extinction. If you think you may have found one, tread carefully. Non-romantic blurbs are often just misleading plumage designed to attract an alienated reader-mate.

The Impolite Author
authorus impolitus

To even the most dedicated researcher focussed directly on teen books, it is very difficult to know if only YA / children's authors are so brilliantly nice, but every single one I've ever interacted with over my fascinating nine months of investigation so far was just that . . . brilliantly nice. Authorus impolitus are so rare, in fact, that experts (okay, mostly me) have been unable to pin down a natural habitat. It is my considered opinion that they probably have castles hewn out of pure obsidian, and languish within on jet-black thrones while cackling as they throw reviewers who didn't like their books into dungeons.

The Polite Authors are known live on twitter and pretty much everywhere else: you can identify them by following the trail of thankful newbie bloggers (novus crazyus), as for some reason authorus politus love to make their lives easier.

The Non-Matching Series Cover
coverus nonmatcherous

The near extinction of this species is completely the fault of the hoarding bookworm subspecies, who tend to be very particular about the appearance of their books. Non-Matching Series Covers used to cover the YA book world, but they were relentlessly hunted and gradually wiped out through sheer bookworm outrage. Their natural habitats of our shelves - where it must be admitted they look fairly annoying - have now been all but cleared of coverus nonmatcherous in favour of new editions.

This is just one case that proves how potent bookworm outrage is, and how the YA population in general would be wise to avoid it.

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In the comments: Have you read any of Alison Cherry books (I really, really love Red and For Real, personally)? And . . . rare species I've missed?

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Labels: Reading Life