Siân Gaetano recently celebrated her one-year anniversary as children's and YA editor for Shelf Awareness. Before joining Shelf, she received her master's in children's literature from Simmons College and worked as assistant editor for the Horn Book Guide. She lives in Boston with a carefully curated book collection and an overweight, asthmatic cat.Favorite book when you were a child:
I read and reread Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series, Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quintet, Sherryl Jordan's Winter of Fire and Lois Lowry's The Giver. As one can tell, I liked fantasy. Still do.
On your nightstand now:
My nightstand is where I put the books I am determined to read right away; my TBR pile lives on a shelf next to my desk and in my wish list on iTunes. On my nightstand right now is The Last Cigarette on Earth by Benjamin Alire Sáenz. In my first year of sobriety, I read his YA novel Last Night I Sang to the Monster at least three times. Someone recently suggested The Last Cigarette on Earth knowing how touched I was by Monster. Also on my nightstand? Undivided by Neal Shusterman. It's been an actual decade since I read the first book and I have somehow yet to finish reading the series.
Your top five authors:
A top five of all time is impossible. So, instead, books that have recently ripped open my soul were written by Elizabeth Acevedo, April Genevieve Tucholke, Kekla Magoon, Joy McCullough and Minh Lê and Dan Santat.
Book you've faked reading:
Any and all assigned reading by Mark Twain. Also anything by the Brontës. Ugh, Jane Eyre.
Book you're an evangelist for:
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. It is a perfect middle-grade book. Everyone should read it and I promise won't be upset if you don't like it. One of my very best friends doesn't like it. He's wrong. But I'm not upset about it. Oh! And Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War by Steve Sheinkin. That man somehow makes the literal copying of paper a suspenseful and wholly engaging read.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I would guess that a lot of the fantasy I read before I entered the world of publishing was purchased because of the cover. I learned when I was younger that the books I enjoyed looked a certain way and so I always sought those covers out. Garth Nix's Abhorsen series, Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern, Diana Wynne Jones's Chrestomanci series....
Book you hid from your parents:
When I was 10 or 11, I read one of my mom's books and I cannot for the life of me remember the title or author. The protagonist was a woman detective and she was on the trail of a serial killer and I remember the book being very sexy. I didn't successfully hide reading it and my mom was... not pleased. But I refused to give up the book until I had finished. Exasperated, my mother let me finish but then went in to school with me the next day and begged my teacher to give me appropriate reading materials.
Book that changed your life:
Anything I read with a developing mind changed my life. The Dark Is Rising shaped my worldview; His Dark Materials changed the way I saw books. This is why I care so much about children's literature: any and every book given to a child or teen can change or shape a life.
Favorite line from a book:
"It is the first day of November and so, today, someone will die." --Maggie Stiefvater, The Scorpio Races. If you have not yet read The Scorpio Races, go do so immediately. It's cool--I'll wait.
Five books you'll never part with:
I would be very sad to give up my paperback box set of The Dark Is Rising because the books have been read so many times, the bindings barely hold the pages together. I brought that horribly embarrassing box to a Susan Cooper signing and asked her to sign the browning-around-the-edges title page of The Dark Is Rising. I did the same with my childhood paperback copy of The Giver and Lois Lowry. My His Dark Materials paperbacks are also pretty special to me--I bought all three of them in an English-language bookstore while I was in school in China and they got passed around what felt like the entire school. At least 15 people have held and loved those three books.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor. That book is so imaginative and powerful and the writing itself is so damn beautiful. I would eagerly hand her my heart and allow her to break it all over again.