S - Authors from A to Z Challenge

Authors from A to Z is a posting challenge hosted by 

Heather at Proud Book Nerd. The challenge is simple: each day for the month of June (except Sundays) share your favorite authors whose last name corresponds to the letter for that day.  For more info, click the photo!

How I'm participating in the challenge:

I am trying to highlight at least three authors (YA or otherwise) per letter, some current favorites, others future favorites. If I cannot come up with three, I will substitute favorite books that start with the letter of that day. If that doesn't work, then just for fun I am going to list songs that start with the letter of that day. And if that doesn't work, well, it will be a surprise!

Today's Letter: S

R.L. Stine

There were definite fads in reading when I was growing up.  The Baby-Sitters Club, The Boxcar Children, and anything with this guy's name on it  Whether it was straight up Goosebumps or Fear Street, I loved every minute of these books.  Stine not only wrote stories that elementary age kids could relate to and turn those into the most outlandish, nightmarish situations, he made them twisty and fun to read with lots of imagery.  And the protags didn't always win outright or the villain wasn't always gone for good, which I thought was a rather realistic message considering the books contained things like living dummies, possessing ghosts, and creatures who feared coming to Earth.

Lemony Snicket

I know Snicket is technically a pseudonym for another writer (though I honestly don't know his name) but I feel like Lemony Snicket is a real person, or at least, the other name author makes Snicket seem very alive in his narrations of A Series of Unfortunate Events.  Not only is that series great for kids, but the books are also challenging with the vocabulary and wordplay, which makes them fun for older audiences as well.  I haven't made it through all the books yet, but they are always fun to read, despite them being rather unfortunate.

Michael Scott (Future Favorite)

When I first saw this name I thought it would be really cool if Michael Scott (from The Office) wrote a YA series.  How over-the-top would that be?  Anyway, I knew the two were not one-in-the-same, but I'm still definitely looking forward to reading The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel.  The first in the series, The Alchemyst, is one of the books on our never-read list in [soi] so hopefully it will get picked sooner rather than later.