Foley Artist, Doppler on Wheels, Celebrity Designer, Islamist Authority, Choreographer, Bestselling Author, Yale Scholar, Extraordinary Hero, Athlete, My Brother: The 2015 Radnor High Hall of Fame Inductees

Yesterday and now again today: the celebration of the Radnor High 2015 Hall of Famers.

I was privileged to attend yesterday's ceremony—to watch my brother teach a master class to exceptionally bright young mathematicians (and to see him reunite with his favorite high school math teacher, Mrs. Swanson), to listen to the appreciative crowd as the inductees were named in that glossy gymnasium, to see my classmate Josh Wurman after so many years, and to thank some of the many people who make these two days what they are.

This year's inductees are remarkable—Jeffrey Bilhuber, a top designer whose clients include David Bowie and Anna Wintour, the best-selling author Kelly Corrigan, the military hero Mark Gibbons, the essential world affairs analyst and Islamist expert Shadi Hamid, the charming, internationally acclaimed choreographer Austin Hartel, the Yale scholar Maria Rosa Menocal, the multiple Academy Award winning Foley Artist John Roesch (more than a dozen of the films he has worked on have won Academy Awards), the uber athlete Jenepher Shillingford, and the acclaimed scientist, meteorologist, and Discovery Channel storm chaser Josh Wurman.

But the Radnor High students are equally remarkable. Their eagerness to go into the thick of Pascal's Triangle, their respect for Shadi's knowledge, their roar when John's "Dark Knight" and "Frozen" were mentioned, their interest in process, their questions about careers.

Yesterday I asked Shadi if part of his felt responsibility was to offer hope in his analysis of ISIS and great discontent. The act of understanding, Shadi said, is a form of hope—a beautiful response in difficult days. But the students of Radnor High are also a form of hope—their connection to those who have gone before, their appreciation for a couple of hours spent with those who were once rising, questioning, wondering, too.

In a few hours, the second half of the program will commence. I'm dashing down to Penn to give a mini talk, then hurrying back to watch more greatness unfold.

A huge thank you to Mr Skip Shoemaker, Jeanne Lynam, Sharon Reardon, and the many others who create these immeasurable moments.

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When YA and A are valued equally, with thanks to Main Line Today and Main Point Books

Anybody who knows me knows how I feel about labels. Applied to people. Applied to literature.

Still, those of us who write young adult fiction must, at times, face those who suggest that it is a lesser form, not nearly as important as the work written expressly for adults—a problem I discussed in a story for Publishing Perspectives titled, "Removing the YA Label: A Proposal, A Fantasy."

(Those of us who write quote-unquote literary contemporary YA fiction must also endure the suggestion that John Green has singlehandedly ushered in this genre's golden era, but that's a topic for another conversation, and we must be careful not to blame John Green for what is written about him.)

The problem with the YA-is-lesser assessment is that the YA writers I respect aren't writing down, aren't writing in haste, aren't writing with any less literary ambition than those who write novels for adults. We're just writing stories that happen to have younger protagonists at their heart; often we're writing "whole family" tales. Always, if we're serious about this stuff, if we're writing not toward known trends but toward felt story, we're writing as best as we can.

And so I will admit to feeling equal measures of joy and peace at finding Going Over on the Main Line Today list of 10 great beach reads by local authors. Not 10 YA books. Just ten books by authors ranging from Robin Black and Jennifer Weiner to Kelly Corrigan and Ken Kalfus. Ten books curated by Cathy Feibach of Main Point Books, who has made it her business, in this, the first year of her store's existence, to get to know who is writing what and to evaluate each book on its own terms.

I am honored. And I am looking forward to next Saturday, when I will drive down Lancaster Avenue and stop in Bryn Mawr and spend an hour signing both Going Over and Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir in Cathy's store. My signing caps a full day of signings, the details for which are here. And when I'm not signing, you can be sure that I'll be buying the books I want, seeing straight past their labels.

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