Selected by the Young Adult Library Services Association’s Best Books For Young Adults Committee
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IT'S COMPLICATED: THE AMERICAN TEENAGER
by Robin Bowman
**Available from Request It with a Denver Public Library card.**
In searing and intimate photographs, presented alongside the young people’s voices of passion, pride, embarrassment, lust, pain, bewilderment, anxiety, joy, uncertainty and rage, the book charts the coming of age of the largest generation in America — 77 million strong — in every region of the country and every socioeconomic group: from a Texas debutante to teenage gang members in New York City, from a drag queen in Georgia to a coal miner in West Virginia.
WAITING FOR NORMAL
by Leslie Connor
Twelve-year-old Addie tries to cope with her mother's erratic behavior and being separated from her beloved stepfather and half-sisters when she and her mother go to live in a small trailer by the railroad tracks on the outskirts of Schenectady, New York.
MEXICAN WHITEBOY
by Matt de la Peña
Sixteen-year-old Danny searches for his identity amidst the confusion of being half-Mexican and half-white while spending a summer with his cousin and new friends on the baseball fields and back alleys of San Diego County, California.
BOG CHILD
by Siobhan Dowd
In 1981, the height of Ireland's "Troubles," eighteen-year-old Fergus is distracted from his upcoming A-level exams by his imprisoned brother's hunger strike, the stress of being a courier for Sinn Fein, and dreams of a murdered girl whose body he discovered in a bog.
THE HUNGER GAMES
by Suzanne Collins
In a future North America, where the rulers of Panem maintain control through an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss' skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister's place.
TEN CENTS A DANCE
by Christine Fletcher
In 1940s Chicago, fifteen-year-old Ruby hopes to escape poverty by becoming a taxi dancer in a nightclub, but the work has unforeseen dangers and hiding the truth from her family and friends becomes increasingly difficult.
BABY
by Joseph Monninger
Fifteen-year-old Baby's last chance at foster care is with the Potters, and while she likes them and enjoys learning to race their sled dogs, she feels she should go back on the streets with her boyfriend if she cannot find the mother who has deserted her again.
NATION
by Terry Pratchett
After a devastating tsunami destroys all that they have ever known, Mau, an island boy, and Daphne, an aristocratic English girl and heir to the British throne in this alternative history, together with a small band of refugees, set about rebuilding their community and all the things that are important in their lives.
SKIM
by Mariko Tamaki
When her classmate Katie is dumped by her boyfriend, who then kills himself, the entire school goes into mourning overdrive. The popular clique starts a club to boost school spirit, but Skim sinks into an ever-deepening depression.
THE BROTHERS TORRES
by Coert Voorhees
Sophomore Frankie finally finds the courage to ask his long-term friend, Julianne, to the Homecoming dance, which ultimately leads to a face-off between a tough senior whose family owns most of their small, New Mexico town, and Frankie's soccer-star older brother and his gang-member friends.
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