Jenny Han

Jenny Han was born in Richmond, Virginia, and later studied at the University of North Carolina. She now lives in New York where she works part-time as a children's librarian, in between writing her new series for teens.

Jenny Han on writing for teens

"At parties and on planes, when people ask what I do, I tell them I write young adult novels. Invariably, they will then ask if I draw my own pictures as well. After I explain that no, there are rarely pictures in young adult novels and maybe they are thinking more along the lines of a picture book, they ask if I would ever want to write books for adults. You know, real books.

I have always loved young adult literature, all the way back to when I was one myself. I grew up during somewhat of a golden age of YA—I devoured everything from Lois Duncan to The Babysitters Club to the Nancy Drew Case Files. I read adult books too, as I think all teens do and should, but the teen books, the ones written especially for me, were the ones that stayed with me.

As an adult, I tend to gravitate toward adult fiction with young narrators. To Kill a Mockingbird, I Capture the Castle, two of my favorites, but also books like Gone With the Wind and Rebecca start when the narrators are teenagers, just about to transition into adulthood. The girls are still fresh faced and innocent and haven’t yet learned how to be cynical or hard. They are in bloom.

This moment in a girl’s life was my inspiration for The Summer I Turned Pretty, which is about a girl who goes to the same summer house year after year. My main character is called Belly, short for Isabel. Even her name condescends and strains to keep her a child—it evokes jelly beans and Santa Claus and toddlers with tubby bellies that peek through their undershirts. Like Baby in Dirty Dancing, Belly has always accepted her nickname and her place as the pesky little sister in a house full of boys. Until this summer, when everything changes, much because she has. Finally, finally, she isn’t the baby anymore. Belly is almost sixteen, and it is her turn to be the one the boys look at.

I think every girl gets that one moment where all eyes are on her because almost overnight, she has grown into her body and her beauty. There is a power that young girls wield, and part of the power is not knowing the extent or depth of it. It’s a heady, intoxicating time and it is exciting, but it is also bittersweet, this saying good bye to girlhood. I think this is why books about adolescence are so compelling—coming of age is something everyone must go through, but hardly anyone fully remembers the particulars, the agony and the ecstasy of it all. We need books to remind us."