Novels
Castellucci's first novels were published by Candlewick Press. She has also been published by Scholastic Press, DC Comics and Roaring Brook Press
Boy Proof is a 2005 novel about a girl in Los Angeles named Victoria Jurgen, who insists on being called "Egg" after a character in her favorite movie, a (fictional) post-apocalyptic, science fiction film called Terminal Earth. Her mother is a washed-up actress and her father is special-effects designer. She is a card-carrying geek and considers herself "boy proof", and proud of it. However, her outlook on life is challenged when a boy named Max Carter comes to her school and she finds herself reluctantly drawn to him.
It was named to the 2006 Best Books for Young Adults list by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) of the American Library Association (ALA) as well as to the Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers list (also by YALSA).
Castellucci's 2006 novel The Queen of Cool centers on Libby Brin, one of the most popular girls in her school, whose life revolves around parties and boys. Deciding one day that she is bored with her glamorous lifestyle, she signs up for an internship at the local zoo, where she meets up with Tina, a dwarf with a huge personality, and a boy named Sheldon, which give her cause to question her priorities. As she spends more time with unpopular people, she realizes that they are actually good friends and that she has more fun with them instead of her regular friends.
The 2007 novel Beige, focuses on Katy, a French-Canadian girl who is forced to spend a summer with her estranged father, Beau "The Rat" Ratner, member of Los Angeles's most infamous punk band-that-never-made-it, Suck. Suck is about to come off its hiatus, and the Rat hopes he can use the band as an opportunity to bond with his daughter, a decision made difficult by her dislike of music.
The 2010 novel Rose Sees Red is set in New York in the 1980s, and centers on two ballet dancers (one American, one Russian), recounting the unforgettable night they spend in the city, and celebrating the friendship they form despite their cultural and political differences.
In the 2011 novel Grandma's Gloves, a young girl and her grandmother bond over gardening. A story about a child who loses a beloved grandparent and finds comfort in carrying on the activities they shared. It won the California Book Award Gold Medal for Juvenile category.
In the 2011 novel First Day on Earth, a man named Mal thinks he's been abducted by aliens and starts going to an alien abduction support group where he meets Hooper, who may or may not be a traveler from another world.
Read more about this topic: Cecil Castellucci
Famous quotes containing the word novels:
“Every reader of the Dreiser novels must cherish astounding specimens—of awkward, platitudinous marginalia, of whole scenes spoiled by bad writing, of phrases as brackish as so many lumps of sodium hyposulphite.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Write about winter in the summer. Describe Norway as Ibsen did, from a desk in Italy; describe Dublin as James Joyce did, from a desk in Paris. Willa Cather wrote her prairie novels in New York City; Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn in Hartford, Connecticut. Recently, scholars learned that Walt Whitman rarely left his room.”
—Annie Dillard (b. 1945)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)