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Email2013 Winners | 2013 Nominees | 2014 Nominees
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2013 Colorado Blue Spruce Young Adult Book Award Winner:
HEROES OF OLYMPUS BOOK ONE: THE LOST HERO
by Rick Riordan
Jason, Piper, and Leo, three students from a school for "bad kids," find themselves at Camp Half-Blood, where they learn that they are demigods and begin a quest to free Hera, who has been imprisoned by Mother Earth herself.
2nd Place:
THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS: A FABLE
by John Boyne
Bored and lonely after his family moves from Berlin to a place called "Out-With" in 1942, Bruno, the son of a Nazi officer, befriends a boy in striped pajamas who lives behind a wire fence.
3rd Place:
MATCHED
by Allyson Condie
All her life, Cassia has never had a choice. The Society dictates everything: When and how to play, where to work, where to live, what to eat and wear, when to die, and most importantly to Cassia as she turns 17, who to marry. When she is Matched with her best friend Xander, things couldn't be more perfect. But why did her neighbor Ky's face show up on her match disk as well?
DPL Teens' Choice:
MATCHED
by Allyson Condie
All her life, Cassia has never had a choice. The Society dictates everything: When and how to play, where to work, where to live, what to eat and wear, when to die, and most importantly to Cassia as she turns 17, who to marry. When she is Matched with her best friend Xander, things couldn't be more perfect. But why did her neighbor Ky's face show up on her match disk as well?
2nd Place:
THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS: A FABLE
by John Boyne
Bored and lonely after his family moves from Berlin to a place called "Out-With" in 1942, Bruno, the son of a Nazi officer, befriends a boy in striped pajamas who lives behind a wire fence.
3rd Place:
FALLEN
by Lauren Kate
Suspected in the death of her boyfriend, seventeen-year-old Luce is sent to a Savannah, Georgia, reform school where she meets two intriguing boys and learns the truth about the strange shadows that have always haunted her.
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2013 Colorado Blue Spruce Young Adult Book Award Nominees:
FROZEN FIRE
by Tim Bowler
Fifteen-year-old Dusty gets a mysterious call from a boy who says he is going to kill himself, and while he claims to have called her randomly, he seems to know her intimately.
MORTAL INSTRUMENTS BOOK FOUR: CITY OF FALLEN ANGELS
by Cassandra Clare
As mysterious murders threaten the new peace between Shadowhunters and Downworlders, only Simon, the Daylighter vampire, can help bring both groups together.
MAZE RUNNER BOOK TWO: THE SCORCH TRIALS
by James Dashner
After surviving horrific conditions in the Maze, Thomas is entrapped, along with nineteen other boys, in a scientific experiment designed to observe their responses and gather data believed to be essential for the survival of the human race.
WHAT HAPPENED TO GOODBYE
by Sarah Dessen
Following her parents' bitter divorce as she and her father move from town to town, seventeen-year-old Mclean reinvents herself at each school she attends until she is no longer sure she knows who she is or where she belongs.
CRESCENDO
by Becca Fitzpatrick
Sixteen-year-old Nora Grey struggles to face the truth while coping with having a fallen angel boyfriend named Patch and unraveling the mystery surrounding her father's death.
TOMORROW GIRLS BOOK ONE: BEHIND THE GATES
by Eva Gray
Disaster and destruction are all thirteen-year-old Louisa has ever known. But now she and her best friend Maddie, are among the lucky few being sent to boarding school, far from home. Finally, a taste of freedom! Country Manor School isn't perfect: The girls' roommates are tough to get along with, and the school is hard work. Still, Louisa loves CMS – the survival skills classes, the fresh air. She doesn't even miss not having TV, or the Internet, or any contact with home. It's for their own safety, after all. Or is it?
THE GENIUS FILES BOOK ONE: MISSION UNSTOPPABLE
by Dan Gutman
On a cross-country vacation with their parents, twins Coke and Pepsi, soon to be thirteen, fend off strange assassins as they try to come to terms with their being part of a top-secret government organization known as The Genius Files.
WITCH & WIZARD
by James Patterson
A sister and brother, along with thousands of young people, have been kidnapped and either thrown in prison or turned up missing after accusations of witchcraft were made against them, and the ruling regime will do anything in order to suppress life and liberty, music and books.
DORK DIARIES BOOK ONE: TALES FROM A NOT-SO-FABULOUS LIFE
by Rachel Renée Russell
Fourteen-year-old Nikki Maxwell writes in her diary of her struggle to be popular at her exclusive new private school, then of finding her place after she gives up on being part of the elite group.
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CHASING BROOKLYN
by Lisa Schroeder
As teenagers Brooklyn and Nico work to help each other recover from the deaths of Brooklyn's boyfriend – Nico's brother Lucca – and their friend Gabe, the two begin to rediscover their passion for life, and a newly blossoming passion for one another.
THE SCORPIO RACES
by Maggie Stiefvater
It happens at the start of every November: the Scorpio Races. Riders attempt to keep hold of their water horses long enough to make it to the finish line. Some riders live. Others die. At age nineteen, Sean Kendrick is the returning champion. He is a young man of few words, and if he has any fears, he keeps them buried deep, where no one else can see them. Puck Connolly is different. She never meant to ride in the Scorpio Races. But fate hasn't given her much of a choice. So she enters the competition – the first girl ever to do so. She is in no way prepared for what is going to happen.
THROUGH MY EYES
by Tim Tebow
One of the best quarterbacks in the history of college football traces his path to success, discussing his childhood as the son of Christian missionaries and how his faith combined with his drive to succeed have made him the person he is today.
GALAHAD 1: THE COMET'S CURSE
by Dom Testa
251 teenagers, locked inside the ship known as Galahad, on their own, with no help from Earth... from anyone. And now someone is threatening to destroy the ship and everyone on board.
THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF CHARLIE SMALL (400), NOTEBOOK 5: CHARLIE AND THE UNDERWORLD
by Nick Ward
A continuation of the purported journal of an eight-year-old adventurer, as he faces myriad strange creatures in the underground world of Subterranea.
DUSTLANDS BOOK ONE: BLOOD RED ROAD
by Moira Young
In a distant future, eighteen-year-old Lugh is kidnapped, and while his twin sister Saba and nine-year-old Emmi are trailing him across bleak Sandsea they are captured, too, and taken to brutal Hopetown, where Saba is forced to be a cage fighter until new friends help plan an escape.
Top Three Nominees from Teens at DPL:
THE HUNGER GAMES
by Suzanne Collins
HEROES OF OLYMPUS BOOK ONE: THE LOST HERO
by Rick Riordan
MATCHED
by Allyson Condie
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2014 Colorado Blue Spruce Young Adult Book Award Nominees:
BEAUTIFUL CREATURES
by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl
In a small South Carolina town, where it seems little has changed since the Civil War, sixteen-year-old Ethan is powerfully drawn to Lena, a new classmate with whom he shares a psychic connection and whose family hides a dark secret that may be revealed on her sixteenth birthday.
CITY OF LOST SOULS
by Cassandra Clare
When Jace vanishes with Sebastian, Clary and the Shadowhunters struggle to piece together their shattered world and Clary infiltrates the group planning the world's destruction.
CODE NAME VERITY
by Elizabeth Wein
In 1943, a British fighter plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France and the survivor tells a tale of friendship, war, espionage, and great courage as she relates what she must to survive while keeping secret all that she can.
COMING BACK STRONGER: UNLEASHING THE HIDDEN POWER OF ADVERSITY
by Drew Brees
Drew Brees presents the ultimate comeback story, not only of one of the NFL's top quarterbacks, but also of a city and a team that many had all but given up on. His inspiring message of hope and encouragement proves that with enough faith, determination, and heart, anyone can overcome any obstacle life throws their way and not only come back, but come back stronger.
THE DEATH CURE
by James Dashner
As the third Trial draws to a close, Thomas and some of his cohorts manage to escape from WICKED, their memories having been restored, only to face new dangers as WICKED claims to be trying to protect the human race from the deadly FLARE virus.
DIVERGENT
by Veronica Roth
In a future Chicago, sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior must choose among five predetermined factions to define her identity for the rest of her life, a decision made more difficult when she discovers that she is an anomaly who does not fit into any one group, and that the society she lives in is not perfect after all.
EVERY DAY
by David Levithan
Every morning A wakes in a different person's body, in a different person's life, learning over the years to never get too attached, until he wakes up in the body of Justin and falls in love with Justin's girlfriend, Rhiannon.
FALLOUT
by Ellen Hopkins
Written in free verse, Fallout explores how three teenagers try to cope with the consequences of their mother's addiction to crystal meth and its effects on their lives.
THE FAULT IN OUR STARS
by John Green
Sixteen-year-old Hazel, a stage IV thyroid cancer patient, has accepted her terminal diagnosis until a chance meeting with a boy at cancer support group forces her to reexamine her perspective on love, loss, and life.
HEAVEN IS FOR REAL: A LITTLE BOY'S ASTOUNDING STORY OF HIS TRIP TO HEAVEN
by Todd Burpo
When Colton Burpo made it through an emergency appendectomy, his family was overjoyed at his miraculous survival. Colton, not yet four years old, told his parents he left his body during the surgery. He talked of visiting Heaven and relayed stories told to him by people he met there whom he had never met in life, sharing events that happened even before he was born.
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THE HELP
by Kathryn Stockett
In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women—black and white, mothers and daughters—view one another.
I'LL BE THERE
by Holly Goldberg Sloan
Raised by an unstable father who keeps constantly on the move, Sam Border has long been the voice of his younger brother, Riddle, but everything changes when Sam meets Emily Bell and, welcomed by her family, the brothers are faced with normalcy for the first time.
RANGER'S APPRENTICE: THE LOST STORIES
by John Flanagan
In 1896, an archaeological dig unearths an ancient trunk containing manuscripts that confirm the existence of Araluen Rangers Will and Halt and tell of their first meeting and some of their previously unknown exploits.
THE RAVEN BOYS
by Maggie Stiefvater
Though she is from a family of clairvoyants, Blue Sargent's only gift seems to be that she makes other people's talents stronger, and when she meets Gansey, one of the Raven Boys from the expensive Aglion by Academy, she discovers that he has talents of his own—and that together their talents are a dangerous mix.
REACHED
by Ally Condie
In search of a better life, Cassia joins a widespread rebellion against Society, where she is tasked with finding a cure to the threat of survival and must choose between Xander and Ky.
THE RED PYRAMID
by Rick Riordan
After their father's research experiment at the British Museum unleashes the Egyptian god Set, Carter and Sadie Kane embark on a dangerous journey across the globe—a quest which brings them ever closer to the truth about their family, and their links to a secret order that has existed since the time of the pharaohs.
SLOB
by Ellen Potter
Picked on, overweight genius Owen tries to invent a television that can see the past to find out what happened the day his parents were killed.
SON
by Lois Lowry
Unlike the other Birthmothers in her utopian community, teenaged Claire forms an attachment to her baby, feeling a great loss when he is taken to the Nurturing Center to be adopted by a family unit.
STRANGE ANGELS
by Lili St. Crow
Sixteen-year-old Dru's psychic abilities helped her father battle zombies and other creatures of the "Real World," but now she must rely on herself, a "werwulf"-bitten friend, and a half-human vampire hunter to learn who murdered her parents, and why.
UNDER THE NEVER SKY
by Veronica Rossi
Aria and Perry, two teens from radically different societies—one highly advanced, the other primitive—hate being dependent on one another until they overcome their prejudices and fall in love, knowing they can't stay together.
The Colorado Blue Spruce Young Adult Book Award recognizes the most popular books among middle and high school students in the State of Colorado. Teens nominate their favorite titles and select the winner–adults do not vote. For more information, please visit the Colorado Blue Spruce Young Adult Book Award website.
