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Book Summary and Reviews of The Collectors by A.S. King

The Collectors by A.S. King

The Collectors

Stories

by A.S. King

  • Critics' Consensus (3):
  • Published:
  • Sep 2023, 272 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

From Michael L. Printz Award winner A.S. King and an all-star team of contributors including Anna-Marie McLemore and 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 gathering types of fire while trying not to get burned to 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 of the best YA novelists working today have written fiction based on a prompt from Printz-winner A.S. King (who also contributes a story) and the result is itself an extraordinary collection.

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Book Awards

  • award image Michael Printz Award, 2024

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Ten acclaimed YA authors explore the artistry and emotion behind the human instinct to collect. This anthology centers around the question: 'Why do we collect things?' ... An eclectic, poignant, and introspective treasure trove." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"King's argument in the introduction that all collections are art and collectors are artists certainly holds true here; masterfully collected and worth slowing down to absorb." —School Library Journal (starred review)

"King proclaims, in an introduction, that 'there is currency in weirdness'; by turns darkly cheeky and piercingly perceptive, this moody and existential grouping of stories lives up to the statement." —Publishers Weekly

This information about The Collectors was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

A.S. King

A.S. King is the award-winning author of many acclaimed books for young readers. Her novel Dig won the 2020 Michael L. Printz Award, and Ask The Passengers won the 2013 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The New York Times called her "one of the best YA writers working today." She is the recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for her contribution to young adult literature. King lives with her family in Pennsylvania, where she returned after living on a farm and teaching adult literacy in Ireland for more than a decade.

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