Welcome to Introducing YASA! This series of blog posts is all about getting to know the YASA executive board members. In this entry, we chat to our Membership Manager Dr. Rebekah Fitzsimmons and envy her reading space.
What’s your research area in three keywords?
Bestseller lists lie!
What’s the most under-rated YA novel that you’ve loved?
Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness – I actually wrote about The Knife of Never Letting Go for multiple essays and trying to explain the premise and the plot of the book is nearly impossible. In theory there is a move in the works with Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley but…
Where is the best location to read?
My hammock in the backyard or my back porch
What’s your favourite beverage/snack to have while reading?
When it is hot, iced tea or one of the beers from my husband’s brewery. When it is cold, a frothy latte.
What is your favourite YA tv/movie adaptation?
I don’t know if it is properly YA, but the new The Babysitter’s Club adaptation on Netflix had me in absolute tears because it was so lovely. It captured all the heart and joy of the original books (which I consumed like candy when I was a young reader) but updated them in a careful and lovely way. Plus, Alicia Silverstone as Kristy’s mom felt very much like a nod to the original 90s fangirls of the series.
What’s a YA on your TBR that you’re excited to read?
I’m just finishing The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow. Next up is A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown which has come highly recommended from a couple of reader friends that I trust.
What would your teen-self think of your current research, in a few words?
“You figured out how to get paid to read books?!?!?”
What’s one YA that you’d love every teenager to read?
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Lainin Taylor. That trilogy gives me goosebumps every time I read it.
If you weren’t a YA scholar, what other kind of YA practitioner would you be? (librarian, bookseller, author, publisher etc…)
Recently I’ve been secretly dreaming of owning a children’s/YA bookstore in another life (maybe retirement?)
What is your favourite YA trope?
I’m honestly still a big fan of the coming-of-age awakening of super powers – maybe it was all those formative years watching Buffy, but I love the idea that the liminal space of adolescence is also this magical moment where teens can discover their own secret strengths.
Thanks for chatting, Rebekah!
Contact Rebekah at Fitzsimmons@CMU.edu or via Twitter at @DrFitzPhD.
Dr. Rebekah Fitzsimmons is an Assistant Teaching Professor at the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. She specializes in the social and intellectual history of children’s literature, especially markers of prestige and popularity, such as prizes, bestseller lists, and “best of” lists. Her most recent project uses Digital Humanities approaches to examine early lists of texts that formed the earliest discussions of a children’s literature canon. Her recently released co-edited collection Beyond the Blockbusters: Themes and Trends in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction brings together essays about the many subgenres, themes, and character types in YA fiction. Her contribution to that collection “Exploring the Genre Conventions of the YA Dystopian Trilogy as Twenty-First Century Utopian Dreaming” examines patterns and themes across a broad range of dystopian trilogies published between 2005 and 2015. Rebekah is also a member of the Children’s Literature Association’s Membership Committee.
