I'm pretty sure most of the Charles de Lint I've read can be traced back to John Jude Palencar's gorgeous covers. I'm not exactly enamored of de Lint's writing, but I don't think he's a bad writer or anything. I like how humane he is -- there is something very kind and gentle about his storytelling style -- but there's also something essentially dorky that embarrasses me. Like when I'd go to the grocery store with my parents, and my dad would run into sixteen people he knew and then there's be a huge conversation about local politics and whatnot, and I'd just die. My dad wasn't doing anything wrong -- probably he was doing something right -- but come onnnnnn let's gooooo. Doesn't exactly speak well of me, but there you have it.

Cover for de Lint's Portraits of the Heart

Cover for de Lint's Muse and Reverie, for which he won the Hamilton King Award

Hell, the fact that Eragon has a Palencar cover was not an insignificant factor in my reading that hilarious nonsense.The Eragon covers aren't my favorite of his stuff, nor are they exactly representational. But I like how the dragon portraits have this edge of goofiness. That they're framed like traditional portraiture is a very funny choice, when you think about it. Usually dragons are depicted with their whole bodies, often in motion, whereas Saphira is side-eyeing the viewer. It's like she's in a school photo or in a light box in Sears, which is adorably awkward and almost sly. 

Palencar has covered roughly a thousand books so far in his career. I've since wised up to buying de Lint titles solely on the strength of their covers -- check the reviews first, stupid! -- but there are a lot more books out there to tempt me. The Kushiel's Dart series, for example, I know I should stay away from, but good lord do the covers tempt me. 

Damn you, John Jude Palencar. 

I give the side eye to much of the tone of these book descriptions. (For example: I am struck in bookshops by racks, newly erected in the last decade, offering "teen fiction". If walk-in, walk-through bookshops survive (not a certainty), I shall expect soon to see racks spring up labelled "old guys' novels". I believe the proper response to this is "fuck you".) HOWEVER, the listicle did inform me of a novel I am currently dying to get my hands on: a romance penned by a 10 year old in 1919 called The Young Visitors. 

I can think of a couple other novels written by the very young. There's Eragon, of course, which was started by Paolini when he was 15, and it shows. My quip about this book: not so much standing on the shoulders of giants as having a piggy back ride. There's also Strange Evil by Jane Gaskell, written when she was 14. Strange Evil was included in a list by China Mieville of the 50 sci fi and fantasy books every socialist should read. I've read about half of Gaskell's book, and it's utterly charming and wholly bizarre.

Can you guys come up with others? I think I'm looking for books written by people well under the age of 20, not just teens in general. Frankenstein was written by the 19 year old Mary Shelley, for example, but I think I'd strike her from the list, as she was already married, plus the Victorians had a very different sense of the age of majority. Novelists generally don't get points for youthful precociousness -- not like musicians or poets, anyway, like Mozart or Keats -- but it's still cute when it happens.