Selected by the Young Adult Library Services Association’s Best Books For Young Adults Committee
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THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART TIME INDIAN
by Sherman Alexie
Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.
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?
BEFORE I DIE
by Jenny Downham
A terminally ill teenaged girl makes and carries out a list of things to do before she dies.
YOUR OWN, SYLVIA: A VERSE PORTRAIT OF SYLVIA PLATH
by Stephanie Hemphill
In 1963, young American poet Sylvia Plath died by her own hand and passed into myth. Hemphill interprets the people, events, influences and art that made up her brief life.
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.
SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT
by Derek Landy
When twelve-year-old Stephanie inherits her weird uncle's estate, she must join forces with Skulduggery Pleasant, a skeleton mage, to save the world from the Faceless Ones.
TAMAR
by Mal Peet
In England in 1995, fifteen-year-old Tamar, grief-stricken by the puzzling death of her beloved grandfather, slowly begins to uncover the secrets of his life in the Dutch resistance during the last year of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and the climactic events that forever cast a shadow on his life and that of his family.
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 INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET
by Brian Selznick
When twelve-year-old Hugo, an orphan living and repairing clocks within the walls of a Paris train station in 1931, meets a mysterious toy seller and his goddaughter, his undercover life and his biggest secret are jeopardized.
THE ARRIVAL
by Shaun Tan
In this wordless graphic novel, a man leaves his homeland and sets off for a new country, where he must build a new life for himself and his family.
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