2012 Top Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers

ENCLAVE
by Ann Aguirre
In a post-apocalyptic future, fifteen-year-old Deuce, a loyal Huntress, brings back meat while avoiding the Freaks outside her enclave, but when she is partnered with the mysterious outsider, Fade, she begins to see that the strict ways of the elders may be wrong – and dangerous.

PAVEMENT CHALK ARTIST: THE THREE-DIMENSIONAL DRAWING OF JULIAN BEEVER
by Julian Beever
Beever writes that weather and the police were his main obstacles to drawing his chalk art on pavements worldwide. The British artist introduces his drawings as anamorphic, i.e., distortions that can be best viewed from a particular perspective, which in this case is that of a camera.

BRONXWOOD
by Coe Booth
Tyrell's father is just out of jail, and Tyrell doesn't know how to deal with that. It's bad enough that his brother Troy is in foster care and that his mother is no help whatsoever. Now there's another thing up in his face, just when he's trying to settle down. Tyrell's father has plans of his own, and doesn't seem to care whether or not Tyrell wants to go along with them. Tyrell can see the crash that's coming – with his dad, with the rest of his family, with the girls he's seeing – but he's not sure he can stop it. Or if he even wants to.

A STOLEN LIFE
by Jaycee Dugard
The memoir of Jaycee Dugard, who was kidnapped on June 10, 1991, when she was 11 years old, and was missing – held prisoner by a registered sex offender – for over 18 years before her reappearance in 2009.

CHAIN REACTION
by Simone Elkeles
When he returns to Illinois and the gang culture on the south side of Fairfield after six years in Colorado, high school senior Luis Fuentes, who dreams of becoming an astronaut, falls for a girl and enters a dark world after learning some disturbing news about his family.

MIDDLE SCHOOL, THE WORST YEARS OF MY LIFE
by James Patterson and Chris Tebbetts
When Rafe Khatchadorian enters middle school, he teams up with his best friend, "Leo the Silent," to create a game to make school more fun by trying to break every rule in the school's code of conduct.

DC COMICS: THE ULTIMATE CHARACTER GUIDE
by Brandon T. Snider
This compact, informative guide takes you alphabetically through the heroic and villainous characters that make up the DC Universe, shedding new light on your favorite heroes but also covering lesser-known characters. Learn more fascinating details about their powers, weaknesses, enemies, and more!

GHOSTOPOLIS
by Doug TenNapel
Imagine Garth Hale's surprise when he's accidentally zapped to the spirit world by Frank Gallows, a washed-out ghost wrangler. Suddenly Garth finds he has powers the ghosts don't have, and he's stuck in a world run by the evil ruler of Ghostopolis, who would use Garth's newfound abilities to rule the ghostly kingdom. When Garth meets Cecil, his grandfather's ghost, the two search for a way to get Garth back home, and nearly lose hope until Frank Gallows shows up to fix his mistake.

More about the YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers.