2008 Alex Award Winners

A LONG WAY GONE: MEMOIRS OF A BOY SOLDIER
by Ishmael Beah
This is how wars are fought now by children, hopped up on drugs, and wielding AK-47s. In the more than fifty violent conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. How does one become a killer? How does one stop?

GENGHIS: BIRTH OF AN EMPIRE
by Conn Iggulden
He was born Temujin, the son of a khan, raised in a clan of hunters migrating across the rugged steppe. Temujin’s young life was shaped by a series of brutal acts but Temujin endured—and from that moment on, he was driven by a singular fury: to survive in the face of death, to kill before being killed and to conquer enemies who could come without warning from beyond the horizon.

MISTER PIP
by Lloyd Jones
On a tropical island shattered by war, only one teacher chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from the Charles Dickens classic Great Expectations.

THE GOD OF ANIMALS
by Aryn Kyle
Sixth grader Alice Winston is having a rough year. Her older sister elopes. Her depressed mother won't get out of bed. Her father struggles to save their faltering horse ranch. And Alice's school pal drowns. Caught in a dizzying adult world, Alice soon faces challenges that threaten to shatter her dreams and her family.

THE SPELLMAN FILES
by Lisa Lutz
Meet Isabel "Izzy" Spellman, private investigator. This twenty-eight-year-old may have a checkered past but the upshot is she's good at her job as a licensed private investigator with her family's firm, Spellman Investigations. But when Izzy's parents hire her sister Rae to follow her (for the purpose of ascertaining the identity of Izzy's new boyfriend), Izzy snaps and decides that the only way she will ever be normal is if she gets out of the family business. But there's a hitch: she must take one last job before they'll let her go.

THE NIGHT BIRDS
by Thomas Maltman
Prefigured by the twin ravens Hunin and Munin, Memory and Understanding, 14-year-old Asa Senger learns that the past is as close as his own heartbeat. Without understanding that past he can neither know who he is, nor who he may become.

AMERICAN SHAOLIN: FLYING KICKS, BUDDHIST MONKS, AND THE LEGEND OF IRON CROTCH: AN ODYSSEY IN THE NEW CHINA
by Matthew Polly
Growing up a ninety-pound weakling tormented by bullies in the schoolyards of Kansas, young Matthew Polly dreamed of one day journeying to the Shaolin Temple in China to become the toughest fighter in the world, like Caine in his favorite 1970s TV series, Kung Fu. While in college, Matthew decided the time had come to pursue this quixotic dream before it was too late. Much to the dismay of his parents, he dropped out of Princeton to spend two years training with the legendary sect of monks who invented kung fu and Zen Buddhism.

THE NAME OF THE WIND
by Patrick Rothfuss
The tale of Kvothe from his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, to years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-riddled city, to his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a difficult and dangerous school of magic. In these pages you will come to know Kvothe as a notorious magician, an accomplished thief, a masterful musician and an infamous assassin.

BAD MONKEYS
by Matt Ruff
Jane Charlotte claims to be a member of a secret organization–the Bad Monkeys–devoted to ridding the world of especially evil people. As Jane's tale grows increasingly bizarre, a psychiatrist tries to sort truth from lies. Is she lying or crazy, or is her tale unbelievably true?

The American Library Association's Alex Awards page