Our most recent reads, Monster and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, have a somewhat nontraditional structure: the film script and illustrations, respectively, depart from the chapter-based text form that YA novels usually take. I’ve noticed this as a trend in a whole bunch of other YA books as well, actually, including ones that I loved when I was younger. Here are some examples:

• The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick is told half in drawings (not quite like a graphic novel, since there is no accompanying dialogue) and half in text. I really loved this one because the art and prose are harmonious but also tell you a lot of different things about the characters depending on the style.
• Scattered throughout the text of Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie by David Lubar are a variety of different lists that the protagonist “writes” to understand high school and his life.
• Ransom Riggs inserted vintage photographs throughout Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children to help set the mood and supplement the characterization.
• TTYL by Lauren Myers was pretty popular when I was in middle school, and the structure was very different from all of the other books I read: it was written entirely in instant messages.

I found a compiled list of other books that fit this particular category of nontraditional formats.

Do nontraditional structures make these books more interesting for young readers? For me, it definitely made a difference – although I read virtually every book I could get my hands on, the ones I often lingered over were unusual either in story or structure.  Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie was one of my favorite books in middle school and I reread it probably half a dozen times. I also read The Absolutely True Diary several times in that same period. I can’t speak for other readers, obviously, but for me the different formats stood out from the traditional novel structure; a lot of my favorite books from my adolescence would fit in this category.