50 YA Books We Want Adapted to the Big or Small Screen

Cover to Half Bad by Sally Green. Image via Viking Books for Young Readers.

44. Half Bad

Admittedly, heroines tend to dominate the landscape — but there’s room for heroes, too, and we certainly have a space for the hero of Sally Green’s completed Half Bad trilogy.

It’s a pretty simple idea: Nathan lives in an England where there are White witches and Black ones. Never the twain shall meet, right? Well, not so much. He’s both, and his father wants him to survive to his seventeenth birthday in order to obtain three gifts.

There’s just one problem: he can’t find his father. With no one to trust, it’s time for Nathan to play a game of survival, and maybe he’ll even find time for romance along the way in the form of Gabriel.

Since Half Bad, Half Wild, and Half Lost all have made their way onto bookshelves everywhere, they could very well exist as a miniseries, since there’s a lot of appeal here with the modern magic idea even if The Magicians may have cornered that market just for now. However, yours truly prefers Half Bad for its fascinating look at the balance between good and evil, and all the shades of grey between the two.

Additionally, Fox 2000 purchased the rights to Half Bad way back in 2013, but beyond that there’s not much in the form of buzz.