about | Brigit Young

Brigit was raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan and now lives with her husband, daughters, gecko, and dog in the lovely (and underrated!) land of New Jersey. Her debut middle grade novel, Worth a Thousand Words, was a Junior Library Guild selection as well as a Best Book of 2019 from The Bank Street College of Education. The Italian translation was the recipient of the Andersen Prize for Best Book for 12-14 year olds. Her sophomore novel, The Prettiest, received multiple starred reviews and was featured on several reading lists including Best Books of 2020 from the Chicago Public Library, Seventeen Magazine's 50 Books for Teens That You Won't Be Able to Put Down, and NBC News' 9 Books to Help Young Girls Build a Positive Image. She is also the author of the recently published Bright, inspired by her own experience of struggling academically in middle school, an experience she details in a piece for School Library Journal here. Her next middle grade novel, Banned Books, Crop Tops, & Other Bad Influences, is forthcoming in September, 2024. Additionally, Ms. Young has published short fiction and poetry in journals like The North American Review, 2 River View, Eclectica Magazine, and Burrow Press, among others. She has taught creative writing to kids of all ages in settings ranging from a library to a hospital.

When Brigit isn't working, she loves playing pretend with her kiddos, reading (and often crying over) poetry, going overboard for holidays, practicing yoga when it's convenient, forcing her husband to do impressions, and singing at the top of her lungs when no one else is around.

Picture books: Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold, The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch, A Penguin Story by Antoinette Portis, Herschel and the Hanukkah Goblins by Eric Kimmel, The Mole Sisters by Roslyn Schwartz, Herman and Rosie by Gus Gordon, Corduroy by Don Freeman, and The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

Books for kids: When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, New Kid by Jerry Craft, Matilda by Road Dahl, Charlotte's Web by E.B. White, The Giver by Lois Lowry, When Stars Are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor, Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson, and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Books for former kids: Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, East of Eden by John Steinbeck, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, Linden Hills by Gloria Naylor, Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami, The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick, and The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley

Movies for Kids of All Ages: Ponyo, Kiki's Delivery Service, A League of Their Own, Cinderella starring Brandy, Coco, Lilo and Stitch, Matilda the Musical, School of Rock, Spellbound, and Mrs. Doubtfire

Poems: "somewhere i have never travelled" by e.e. cummings, "Instructions for Not Giving Up" by Ada Limon, "Brother" by Octavio Paz, "Her Kind" by Anne Sexton, "Sorrow Is Not My Name" by Ross Gay, "A Meeting" by Wendell Berry, "On Finding an Old Photograph" by Wendy Cope, "Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines" by Pablo Neruda, "Song" by Adrienne Rich, "Poem" by Charles Simic, "I, Too, Sing America" by Langston Hughes, "Good Bones" by Maggie Smith, "First Love" by Christine Garren, "The Thing Is" by Ellen Bass, "Childhood" by. Kate Baer, "In Blackwater Woods" by Mary Oliver, ""Although the Wind" by Izumi Shikibu, "Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong" by Ocean Vuong, "Advice" by Langston Hughes, and anything by Lucille Clifton

Quotes:

“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”

- Mary Oliver

"Be like a tree,

Let the dead leaves

Drop."

- Rumi

"Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards."

- Vladimir Nabokov

"Do not be daunted

by the enormity

of the world's grief.