Teen Books With Adult Appeal

2008 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Winner
2008-2009 Tayshas Reading List

Based on the authors own experiences, this first young adult novel by bestselling author Alexie features poignant drawings by acclaimed artist Ellen Forney that reflect the characters art as it chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy attempting to break away from the life he was destined to live.

A BookPage Notable Title
2007 Boston Globe/Horn Book Award Winner
2006 National Book Award for Youth Winner

Various diaries, letters, and other manuscripts chronicle the experiences of Octavian, a young African American, from birth to age 16, as he is brought up as part of a science experiment in the years leading up to and during the Revolutionary War.

The acclaimed author of "Psyche in a Dress" brilliantly blurs the line between what's real and what's imagined, in this collection of nine original and arresting tales of transformation.

2004 Sequoyah Young Adult Winner

Inspired by a true story, this is a book about roots, the need to be loved and discovering one's true self as a group of girls bond one fateful summer.

It's 1895, and after the suicide of her mother, 16-year-old Gemma Doyle is shipped off from the life she knows in India to Spence, a proper boarding school in England. Lonely, guilt-ridden, and prone to visions of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true, Gemma's reception there is a chilly one. To make things worse, she's been followed by a mysterious young Indian man, a man sent to watch her. But why? What is her destiny? And what will her entanglement with Spence's most powerful girls--and their foray into the spiritual world--lead to?

"From the Hardcover edition.

Advance praise for Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You
"Not since The Catcher in the Rye has a novel captured the deep and almost physical ache of adolescent existential sadness as trenchantly as the perfectly titled Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You. You don't have to be eighteen to relate to James Dunfour Sveck and his sense of alienation from a world he doesn't understand, nor to be profoundly moved by his story. Told with compassion, insight, humor, and hope, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You deserves to be read by readers of all ages for years to come. I would have loved it as a teenager, and I love it now." --James Howe, author of The Misfits
"As I drew near the end of Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, I read more and more slowly because I didn't want to leave James. With his devotion to precise Englis

Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie is navigating through the strange worlds of love, drugs, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", and dealing with the loss of a good friend and his favorite aunt.

Set in 1906 against the backdrop of the murder that inspired Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, this Printz Honor Book effortlessly weaves romance, history, and a murder mystery into something moving, real, and wholly original.

Miles "Pudge" Halter befriends some fellow boarding-school students and falls in love with Alaska Young, the razor-sharp, self-destructive nucleus of the group. When tragedy strikes, Pudge discovers the value of unconditional love. Speak

Beautifully written, impossible to put down, and meticulously researched, "Newes from the Dead" is based on the true story of the real Anne Green, who, in 17th-century England, survived a hanging only to awaken on the dissection table. Roaring Brook Press

"My parents suck ass. Banning me from the phone and restricting my computer privileges are the most tyrannical parental gestures I can think of. Don't they realize that Hope's the only one who keeps me sane? . . . I don't see how things could get any worse."
When her best friend, Hope Weaver, moves away from Pineville, New Jersey, hyperobservant sixteen-year-old Jessica Darling is devastated. A fish out of water at school and a stranger at home, Jessica feels more lost than ever now that the only person with whom she could really communicate has gone. How is she supposed to deal with the boy- and shopping-crazy girls at school, her dad's obsession with her track meets, her mother salivating over big sister Bethany's lavish wedding, and her nonexistent love life?
A fresh, funny, utterly compelling fiction debut by first-time noveli

Isabella Swan's move to Forks, a perpetually rainy town in Washington, could have been the most boring move she ever made. When she meets the mysterious, alluring Edward Cullen--a vampire--her life takes a thrilling and terrifying romantic turn.

From Death Valley, California, to the bowels of the New York City subway system, 14-year-old Max leads her feisty "family" on a journey of action, adventure, and soul-seeking in this #1 "New York Times" bestselling series debut.

Tom Henderson (a.k.a. King Dork, Chi-mo, Hender-fag, and Sheepie) is a typical American high school loser until he discovers the book, The Catcher in the Rye, that will change the world as he knows it. When Tom discovers his deceased father's copy of the Salinger classic, he finds himself in the middle of several interlocking conspiracies and at least half a dozen mysteries involving dead people, naked people, fake people, ESP, blood, a secret code, guitars, monks, witchcraft, the Bible, girls, the Crusades, a devil head, and rock and roll. And it all looks like it's just the tip of a very odd iceberg of clues that may very well unravel the puzzle of his father's death and-oddly-reveal the secret to attracting semihot girls.
Being in a band could possibly be the secret to the girl thing-but good luck finding a drummer who can count to

Lyra Belaqua is content to run wild among the scholars of Jordan College, with her daemon familiar Pantalaimon always by her side. But the arrival of her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, draws her to the heart of a terrible struggle--a struggle born of Gobblers and stolen children, witch clans and armored bears. And as she hurtles toward danger in the cold, far North, young Lyra never suspects the shocking truth: She alone is destined to win, or to lose, this more-than-mortal battle.

After her mother's death from cancer, 15-year-old Mia Perlman, her older sister, and her father must find a way to live on in the face of sudden, unfathomable loss. But even in grief, there is the chance for new beginnings in this poignant, funny, and hopeful novel.

""EVERY WAR HAS turning points and every person too."
Fifteen-year-old Daisy is sent from Manhattan to England to visit her aunt and cousins she's never met: three boys near her age, and their little sister. Her aunt goes away on business soon after Daisy arrives. The next day bombs go off as London is attacked and occupied by an unnamed enemy.
As power fails, and systems fail, the farm becomes more isolated. Despite the war, it's a kind of Eden, with no adults in charge and no rules, a place where Daisy's uncanny bond with her cousins grows into something rare and extraordinary. But the war is everywhere, and Daisy and her cousins must lead each other into a world that is unknown in the scariest, most elemental way.
A riveting and astonishing story.

Lone Star Reading List 2008-2009
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The Newbery and Printz honor-winning author of Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy delivers a wonderfully witty and compelling novel about a teenage boy's mishaps and adventures over the course of the 1967-68 school year.

Set in modern-day London, this first book in a gripping new trilogy introduces young magician's apprentice Nathaniel. Humiliated by a hotshot wizard, Nathaniel summons the not-so-tame djinni, Bartimaeus, and sends him to steal the Amulet of Samarkand.

The prim and proper world of Regency England is crossed with the wizardly doings of high fantasy in this tale, told in the correspondence of Kate and Cecelia, two young ladies who become inadvertently involved in various magical scandals in London and the country.

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Set during World War II in Germany, Zusak's groundbreaking novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing, encounters something she cant resist: books.