YA Authors You Need to Read: David Levithan

This article first appeared on the examiner on July 29, 2010.

David Levithan was born in 1972 and works as an editorial director at Scholastic and as the founding editor of the PUSH imprint. The PUSH imprint was created to find the newest voices in teen literature. Levithan is one of those voices.

Levithan has written many books on his own, but he has a real talent for collaborating with other YA authors. One of the most popular collaborations is “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist”, a book co-written with Rachel Cohn, and later made into a movie with Michael Cera. The story opens with Nick performing with his queercore band and Norah in the audience. Nick sees his ex-girlfriend Tris, panics, and asks complete stranger Norah to be his girlfriend for the next five minutes. Norah knows Tris and for a variety of reasons agrees to Nick's strange request. Five minutes turns into something much much longer. The story is told from both points of view in alternating chapters. Cohn wrote the Norah parts and Levithan wrote the Nick parts. There were no inconsistencies with two authhors, nothing sounded false or like it was just thrown together. It's actually quite amazing that both voices were as riveting and compelling as they were. For a complete review click here or here for East Greenbush YA Librarian Chrissie Morrison's review.

Other Books

“Boy Meets Boy”
“The Realm of Possibility”
“Are We There Yet?”
“Marly’s Ghost”
“Wide Awake”
“Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List” with Rachel Cohn. (Goddess Librarian review here)
“How They Met and Other Stories”
“Likely Story”
“Love is the Higher Law”
“Will Grayson, Will Grayson” with YA Author You Need to Read John Green.

You can find more information about Levithan at his website and his facebook.

******
I'm an Amazon Associate now. If you click on the Amazon links & make a purchase I might make a tiny bit of money.