Best Books of 2013: the Guardian edition.

The Guardian's Best Of list lumps children's and YA all together, which I find vaguely irritating, but I SHALL SOLDIER ON.

Then again, I'm not sure if I can take this list entirely seriously, as it INCLUDES RANDI ZUCKERBERG'S DOT. (<--Full disclosure: I'm finding myself to be incapable of separating Zuckerberg's celebrity author status—but more especially, the truly obnoxious Closing Keynote that she gave at BEA Bloggercon—from my feelings about the book. Which is unfair to the book and to the list. Moving on.) 

A few highlights! Jonathan Stroud's The Screaming Staircase, YESSSSSSSSSS. I'm sad it hasn't shown up on more lists, because it's such a super-fun read:

With that one sentence, he establishes the tone of the book as smart and slyly funny, while also promising plenty of spooky fun. By the end of the second chapter, he’d already completely delivered on that promise: Despite reading the book on a beautiful, sunny August morning, the atmosphere was so very creepy and the imagery was so DOUBLE-CREEPY that for the rest of the book, I had the whole goose bumps/chills combo going in spades.

Titles on the list that I REALLY WANT TO READ: Meg Rosoff's Picture Me Gone and Marcus Sedgwick's She Is Not Invisible.

Click on through for more, obvs.