10 Best Young Adult Books Depicting the Power of Art
Alright, young readers! Let's talk art. Not as pictures hanging on gallery walls but about the stunning artistic power that's hidden inside the colorful pages of a novel. Yes, I'm talking about the art of storytelling. There's a certain kind of magic when a young, creative mind dives into a universe brilliantly crafted through words. In this list, we're going to unveil 10 of the best young adult books that have masterfully captured the power and influence of art.
Now, when I say 'art', I mean it in a broad sense. These aren't just books about painters or sculptors. Instead, these are tales where art is a medium of expression, a form of rebellion, a tool for self-discovery, and sometimes, even a lifeline. They inspire, they ignite imagination and they beautifully remind us of how art can shape and transform lives.
Get ready to witness the transformative power of art in unexpected corners, unconventional styles, and unforgettable narratives. These exceptional novels - teeming with memorable characters, complex emotions, and strikingly poignant art references – are a testament to the fact that art is not just about creating, it's about living. So buckle up, young minds, and let's dive into this aesthetically pleasing literary journey.
『The Picture of Dorian Gray』
An astounding novel of decadence, debauchery, and secrecy from one of Ireland's greatest writers. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to sell his soul in exchange for eternal youth and beauty. Under the influence of Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, where he is able to indulge his desires while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only Dorian's picture bears the traces of his decadence. A knowing account of a secret life and an analysis of the darker side of late Victorian society. The Picture of Dorian Gray offers a disturbing portrait of an individual coming face to face with the reality of his soul. Shocking in its suggestion of unspeakable sin, this novel was later used as evidence against Wilde when he was tried for indecency in 1895. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Author | Oscar Wilde |
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Price | unknown |
Publisher | Penguin |
Release Date | Feb 04, 2003 |
Source | Google Books |
『To the Lighthouse』
The novel that established Virginia Woolf as a leading writer of the twentieth century, To the Lighthouse is made up of three powerfully charged visions into the life of one family living in a summer house off the rocky coast of Scotland. As time winds its way through their lives, the Ramseys face, alone and simultaneously, the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumph-the human capacity for change. A moving portrait in miniature of family life, it also has profoundly universal implications, giving language to the silent space that separates people and the space that they transgress to reach each other.
Author | Virginia Woolf |
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Price | unknown |
Publisher | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
Release Date | Jan 01, 1981 |
Source | Google Books |
『Together We Caught Fire』
“Captivating and fluid…An addictive page-turner.” —Kirkus Reviews “A book that doesn’t hold back…I loved this gritty, bold debut.” —Rachel Lynn Solomon, author of You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone and Today, Tonight, Tomorrow A forbidden attraction grows even more complicated when the guy Lane Jamison has crushed on for years suddenly becomes her stepbrother in this sexy and gorgeously written debut novel about the lines between love, desire, and obsession. What happens when the boy you want most becomes the one person you can’t have? Lane Jamison’s life is turned upside down the week before her senior year when her father introduces her to his new fiancée: the mother of Grey McIntyre, Lane’s longtime secret crush. Now with Grey living in Lane’s house, there’s only a thin wall separating their rooms, making it harder and harder to deny their growing mutual attraction—an attraction made all the more forbidden by Grey’s long-term girlfriend Sadie Hall, who also happens to be Lane’s friend. Torn between her feelings for Grey and her friendship with Sadie—not to mention her desire to keep the peace at home—Lane befriends Sadie’s older brother, Connor, the black sheep of the strict, evangelical Hall family. Connor, a metalworking artist who is all sharp edges, challenges Lane in ways no one else ever has. As the two become closer and start to open up about the traumas in their respective pasts, Lane begins to question her conviction that Connor is just a distraction. Tensions come to a head after a tragic incident at a party, forcing Lane to untangle her feelings for both boys and face the truth of what—and who—she wants, in this gripping and stunningly romantic debut novel.
Author | Eva V. Gibson |
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Price | unknown |
Publisher | Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers |
Release Date | Mar 16, 2021 |
Source | Google Books |
『The Agony and the Ecstasy』
Author | Irving Stone |
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Price | unknown |
Publisher | Random House (UK) |
Release Date | Sep 01, 2000 |
Source | Google Books |
『Girl with a Pearl Earring』
The New York Times bestselling novel by the author of A Single Thread and At the Edge of the Orchard Translated into thirty-nine languages and made into an Oscar-nominated film, starring Scarlett Johanson and Colin Firth Tracy Chevalier transports readers to a bygone time and place in this richly-imagined portrait of the young woman who inspired one of Vermeer's most celebrated paintings. History and fiction merge seamlessly in this luminous novel about artistic vision and sensual awakening. Girl with a Pearl Earring tells the story of sixteen-year-old Griet, whose life is transformed by her brief encounter with genius . . . even as she herself is immortalized in canvas and oil.
Author | Tracy Chevalier |
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Price | unknown |
Publisher | Penguin |
Release Date | Jan 01, 2001 |
Source | Google Books |
『Five Feet Apart』
Seventeen-year-olds Stella and Will, both suffering from cystic fibrosis, realize the only way to stay alive is to stay apart, but their love for each other is slowly pushing the boundaries of physical and emotional safety.
Author | Rachael Lippincott |
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Price | unknown |
Publisher | Simon and Schuster |
Release Date | Mar 01, 2022 |
Source | Google Books |
『The Birth of Venus』
Alessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous cloth merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family’s Florentine palazzo. A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the painter’s abilities. But their burgeoning relationship is interrupted when Alessandra’s parents arrange her marriage to a wealthy, much older man. Meanwhile, Florence is changing, increasingly subject to the growing suppression imposed by the fundamentalist monk Savonarola, who is seizing religious and political control. Alessandra and her native city are caught between the Medici state, with its love of luxury, learning, and dazzling art, and the hellfire preaching and increasing violence of Savonarola’s reactionary followers. Played out against this turbulent backdrop, Alessandra’s married life is a misery, except for the surprising freedom it allows her to pursue her powerful attraction to the young painter and his art. The Birth of Venus is a tour de force, the first historical novel from one of Britain’s most innovative writers of literary suspense. It brings alive the history of Florence at its most dramatic period, telling a compulsively absorbing story of love, art, religion, and power through the passionate voice of Alessandra, a heroine with the same vibrancy of spirit as her beloved city.
Author | Sarah Dunant |
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Price | $11.99 |
Publisher | Random House |
Release Date | Nov 30, 2004 |
Source | Google Books |
『The Goldfinch』
A young New Yorker grieving his mother's death is pulled into a gritty underworld of art and wealth in this "extraordinary" and beloved Pulitzer Prize winner from the author of The Secret History that "connects with the heart as well as the mind" (Stephen King, New York Times Book Review). Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by a longing for his mother, he clings to the one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into a wealthy and insular art community. As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love — and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle. The Goldfinch is a mesmerizing, stay-up-all-night and tell-all-your-friends triumph, an old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention. From the streets of New York to the dark corners of the art underworld, this "soaring masterpiece" examines the devastating impact of grief and the ruthless machinations of fate (Ron Charles, Washington Post).
Author | Donna Tartt |
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Price | $13.99 |
Publisher | Little, Brown |
Release Date | Oct 22, 2013 |
Source | Google Books |
『Starfish』
A William C. Morris Award Finalist A New York Public Library Best Book for Teens of 2017 A Junior Library Guild Selection “An empowering novel that will speak to many mixed-race teens.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Dazzling.” —Bustle “One of the most compelling reads of the year.” —Paste Magazine “This book is a gem.” —BookRiot A half-Japanese teen grapples with social anxiety and her narcissist mother in the wake of a crushing rejection from art school in this “stunningly beautiful, highly nuanced debut” (Booklist, starred review). Kiko Himura has always had a hard time saying exactly what she’s thinking. With a mother who makes her feel unremarkable and a half-Japanese heritage she doesn’t quite understand, Kiko prefers to keep her head down, certain that once she makes it into her dream art school, Prism, her real life will begin. But then Kiko doesn’t get into Prism, at the same time her abusive uncle moves back in with her family. So when she receives an invitation from her childhood friend to leave her small town and tour art schools on the west coast, Kiko jumps at the opportunity in spite of the anxieties and fears that attempt to hold her back. And now that she is finally free to be her own person outside the constricting walls of her home life, Kiko learns life-changing truths about herself, her past, and how to be brave. From debut author Akemi Dawn Bowman comes a luminous, heartbreaking story of identity, family, and the beauty that emerges when we embrace our true selves.
Author | Akemi Dawn Bowman |
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Price | $9.99 |
Publisher | Simon and Schuster |
Release Date | Sep 26, 2017 |
Source | Google Books |
『Girl Reading』
This stunningly original, kaleidoscopic novel is an inspired celebration of women reading and the artists who have caught them in the act—“a vivid portrait of a timeless subject” (Minneapolis Star Tribune). A young orphan poses for a Renaissance maestro in medieval Siena. A servant girl in seventeenth-century Amsterdam snatches a moment away from her work to lose herself in tales of knights and battles. An eighteenth-century female painter completes a portrait of a deceased poetess for her lover. A Victorian medium poses with a book in one of the first photographic studios. A girl suffering her first heartbreak witnesses intellectual and sexual awakening during the Great War. A young woman reading in a bar catches the eye of a young man who takes her picture. And in the not-so-distant future a woman navigates a cyber-reality that has radically altered the way people experience art and life. Each chapter of Katie Ward’s novel immerses readers into the intimate tales behind the creation of seven portraits by artists, ranging from Simone Martini to Pieter Janssens Elinga to a Flickr photographer. In gorgeous prose, Ward explores our points of connection, our relationship to art, the history of women, and the importance of reading. Dazzlingly inventive, this is “a fascinating testament to the universal themes of art and literature and the spirit of femininity” (BookPage).
Author | Katie Ward |
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Price | $11.99 |
Publisher | Simon and Schuster |
Release Date | Feb 07, 2012 |
Source | Google Books |
Ladies and gentlemen, we've arrived at the end of our colourful journey through the powerfully pen-marked pages of young adult novels glorifying art. These books, in their own unique style, have portrayed art as more than just a hobby or a leisure activity – it's a lifeline, a form of self-expression, and a tool for transcending societal norms and pressures. They've shown situations where individuals have found solace and serenity in art, enabling them to tap into their deepest emotions. In essence, these stories have demonstrated that art can influence emotions and spark change, impacting individuals and society at large. Ultimately, it’s the celebration of the transformative power of art that makes these books compelling reads.
In examining the vast beauty that art and literature can accomplish together in this fashion, we hope to raise awareness and understanding of the profound impacts and potential that art can possess, from expressing to transgressing. So, go on, pick one (or two, or ten) of these books, cozy up on your favourite reading spot, and let the vibrant narratives paint a striking landscape in your imagination. It's time to explore a world where the artist's canvas and the writer's pen dance together in beautiful harmony. Here's to celebrating art in every aspect of life – profoundly, intensely, beautifully. Happy reading or should we say, happy artistic journey!
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