The YA Fantasy Resilience Book List

I’m starting a book list, which I will share with you towards the bottom of this post.  Before we get to the list though, I want to think about resilience a little bit.  

I talk a lot about trauma and resilience. But who here knows what resilience means? (Raise your hand or post a comment if you have thoughts on what resilience means).  I’ve tried to define trauma in other posts, but I haven’t taken a shot at resilience yet. So here goes:    

According to Merriam-Webster on-line, resilience is “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change”  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/resilience

Hmmm...I don’t like it.  Remove the word “easily” and maybe I’ll consider it.  

“An ability to recover from or adjust to misfortune or change.”

Better, but can’t you recover from an injury and still have lots of scar tissue jamming you up?  Can’t you adjust to misfortune or change in all kinds of maladaptive, unhealthy ways? For example, my favorite coping mechanism is isolating with chocolate and TV.  Which might get me through some of it, but doesn’t really promote my overall well-being.    

Here’s another, more comprehensive definition: 

“In the context of exposure to significant adversity, resilience is both the capacity of individuals to navigate their way to the psychological, social, cultural, and physical resources that sustain their well-being, and their capacity individually and collectively to negotiate for these resources to be provided in culturally meaningful ways.”

Dr. Michael Unger https://trauma-recovery.ca/resiliency/what-is-resiliency/

I like this definition better because there is no way to recover from trauma without a focus on well-being and an emphasis on connection to, support by, and contribution to some kind of community. Being healthy around other people. (Easier said than done, but that’s a blog for another day.)   

With these notions in mind, here is the beginning of a list of YA fantasy books that I think demonstrate a more comprehensive version of resilience:

Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik (not technically YA, but I would’ve loved it as a YA)

Tess of the Road, Rachel Hartman

A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness 

Into the Spiderverse (not a book, see it if you haven’t)

The Rage (full discloser: I wrote this one)

The Moorchild, Eloise McGraw

The Girl Who Drank the Moon, Kelly Barnhill 

Bitterblue, Kristin Cashore

The Hero and the Crown, Robin McKinley

Wisechild, Monica Furlong

I just noticed that most of the books on this first draft of my resilience list feature girls as main characters.  Not all, but most. Just making a note.  

Also, no matter how high or low the fantasy in these books goes, there’s also a resonance of the real stuff real people go through, and therefore applicable insights, even if you don’t have super strength or magical powers.

I haven’t read all the books yet. I mean, I’ve read all of the books on this list, but not all of the other books. In the world.  Which is to say that there are many more books that should be on this list, and I look forward to reading them too, so let me know if you come across any of them.

This week’s assignment:  Think about some of the ways you have been resilient in your life. Think about how other people have helped with that resiliency.  And maybe write a story or essay about it and submit it to regentstreetpress.com to be published online.