- Teens and their literature are rocking the marketplace

- If you're looking for tasty teen titles to satisfy, check out this menu

- Is young-adult fare too mature for some of its readers?

Thanks in part to new teen imprints such as Scholastic's PUSH, Simon & Schuster's Simon Pulse, Penguin's Razorbill Books and HarperCollins' HarperTEEN.

"Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation," by M.T. Anderson; "The Book Thief," by Aussie author Markus Zusak; and "Tamar," by Mal Peet.

U.S. publishers are scooping up books from Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Sweden, France and elsewhere, such as "Wildwood Dancing," by Australian fantasy writer Juliet Marilliet, and "The Killer's Tears," by Anne-Laure Bondoux, winner of the French Prix Sorcieres.

Among them are Joyce Carol Oates ("Big Mouth & Ugly Girl"), Catherine Ryan Hyde ("Becoming Chloe") and Isabel Allende ("City of the Beasts," "Forest of the Pygmies").

One example is "Crank," by Ellen Hopkins, a free-verse narrative about a teen's addiction to crystal meth..

Examples: "Eldest," by Christopher Paolini; "New Moon," by Stephanie Meyer; "Wintersmith," by Terry Pratchett; and "The Uglies Trilogy," by Scott Westerfield.

With a huge teen fan base and newfound literary respect, readers are snapping up such books as "American Born Chinese," by Gene Luan Yung, a National Book Award finalist and winner of the 2007 Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature. It's the first graphic novel to win this American Library Association honor.

Once held to 200 pages, young-adult novels grow hefty, as "Harry Potter" proves a good book can never be too long ("Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" runs 896 pages).

-- Cecelia Goodnow