Summary
Winner of the 2024 Michael L. Printz Award
A National Bestseller
From Michael L. Printz Award winner A.S. King and an all-star team of contributors including Anna-Marie McLemoreand Jason Reynolds, an anthology of stories about remarkable people and their strange and surprising collections.
From David Levithan's story about a non-binary kid collecting pieces of other people's collections to Jenny Torres Sanchez's tale of a girl gatheringtypes of fire while trying not to get burnedto G. Neri's piece about 1970's skaters seeking opportunities to go vertical-anything can be collected and in the hands of these award-winning and bestselling authors, any collection can tell a story. Nine ofthe best YA novelists working today have written fiction based on a prompt from Printz-winner A.S. King (who also contributes astory) and the result is itself an extraordinary collection.
M. T. Anderson, e. E. Charlton-Trujillo, A.S. King, David Levithan, Cory McCarthy, Anna-Marie McLemore, G. Neri, Jason Reynolds, Randy Ribay, and Jenny Torres Sanchezhave each penned a surprising and provocative tale.
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Author Notes
A. S. (Amy Sarig) King is an award-winning author of both YA and adult fiction. She was born on March 10, 1970, in Reading, PA., and obtained a degree in traditional photography from the Art Institute of Philadelphia.
King wrote her first novel in 1994, but it took her 15 years and more than seven novels to finally get published. Since then, her books have garnered many accolades. Ask the Passengers won the 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Award for Young Adult Literature. Please Ignore Vera Dietz was a 2011 Michael L. Printz Honor Book, an Edgar Award Nominee, a Junior Library Guild selection and a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults pick. Her first YA novel, The Dust of 100 Dogs, was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, and a Cybil Award finalist.
Her other titles include: I Crawl Through it, Glory O'Brien's History of the Future, Reality Boy, and Everybody Sees the Ants. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous collections and anthologies, including: Monica Never Shuts up, One Death, Nine stories, Losing It, Break These Rules, and Dear Bully.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Excerpts
Introduction Here is an incomplete list of things one can collect: crystals, lies, math tests, kittens, scraps of paper with things written on them, books, antiques, enemies, punctuation, friends, rumors, cars, feelings, baseballs, stepmothers, trophies, knowledge, joys, earbuds, anger, office supplies, judgments, conquests, opinions, insults, prophecies, dryer lint. Collections are everywhere in human culture. Humans collect a lot of things. But why? Why do we collect things? I woke up from a dream with this question one day in 2021, and it followed me around until I did something with it. I started with research, but then I had to trust my gut. There is science here--a psychology of collecting that has been studied by industry and academia through the lenses of economics and marketing to anthropology to neuropsychology and social psychology. Science tells us that collecting is ubiquitous, usually harmless, and normal, not to mention profitable. It tells us that a majority of children are collectors, as well as about 40 percent of adults, and it draws lines between healthy collecting and hoarding and other concerning behaviors. When asked, Why do we collect things? the data give us many answers depending on what's being collected, how it's being collected and shared, and in what culture the collecting is taking place. It's all very logical and tidy. But it doesn't feel true. While science is awesome, it lacks the nuance of artistic meaning, and that's part of why I think people collect things. I believe we collect what makes us feel good or what we're attracted to. Collections are beautiful to their collectors. Even the most disgusting collection is a glimpse of magic to the right person. Same as the most boring collection can excite. Essentially, every collection is extraordinary and impossible to duplicate, because even if I have the same exact baseball cards as you do, mine hold a meaning for me that's different from yours. That individual meaning highlights the creative component--which tells me that collections are art, and the act of collection, artistry. Emotion trumps logic here. If you collect buttons/thimbles/rocks and you don't logically know why, I can tell you. You collect those buttons/thimbles/rocks because you're an artist and they somehow give life an extra layer of meaning for you. They make you happy. I collect weird ideas. I collect weird stories. I collect weird questions. I write them on sticky notes and display them on my walls. For a few months, there was a blue sticky note above my desk. Why do we collect things? Next to it was a note from a year earlier that read, Weird Short Story Collection . You know what came next. You're holding it. There is currency in weirdness that no one told me about when I was a young weird person. There is a freedom in it too. Once an artist can block out any suggestion to conform and let go of their own fear of failure, they have found a new place where dreams can come true. Additionally, when an artist allows themselves to get weird, they give permission to everyone else in the room to get weird with them. This anthology of stories is the result of me asking nine of my favorite YA writers to write me a story about a collection and its collector, and asking them to toss out conventions, as there were no rules, there was no "normal," and they could be as weird as they wanted. There is currency in weirdness, I said. Be defiantly creative, I said. What they've created here is a new, beautiful collection of curiosity and hurting and growing up and healing and loving and living. As you begin your journey through their words, I want to extend the same invitation to you, reader, for living your life and dreaming your dreams. There are no rules. There is no normal. You can be as weird as you want. Be defiantly creative. Make art of your life, especially if you don't consider yourself an artist--collect all the little pieces of you and make your story. When you look back many years from now, you will see something extraordinary and impossible to duplicate. You will see you . - A.S. King Excerpted from The Collectors: Stories by A. S. King, M. T. Anderson, E. E. Charlton-Trujillo, David Levithan, G. Neri, Cory McCarthy, Jason Reynolds, Randy Ribay, Jenny Torres Sanchez, Anna-Marie McLemore All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
