2003 ALA Best Books for Young Adults (Fiction Part 2)
Explore the 2003 ALA Best Books for Young Adults (Fiction Part 2) – a curated list of top-rated novels for teens. Discover award-winning stories and must-read fiction for young adult readers.
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Pictures of Hollis Woods
by Patricia Reilly Giff
From the author of the Newbery Honor book "Lily's Crossing" comes a warmhearted story about a tough girl's longing for home and family.
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Shattering Glass
by Gail Giles
When Rob, the charismatic leader of the senior class, turns the school nerd into Prince Charming, his actions lead to unexpected violence.
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The Green Man
by Ellen Datlow
A collection of stories and poems by a variety of authors relating to the Green Man and other myths of the forest.
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Bronx Masquerade
by Nikki Grimes
While studying the Harlem Renaissance, students at a Bronx high school read aloud poems they've written, revealing their innermost thoughts and fears to their formerly clueless classmates.
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Hoot
by Carl Hiaasen
Hiaasen's first book for young readers--a Newbery Honor Book--involves new kids, bullies, alligators, and pint-sized owls in a hilarious Floridian adventure. Now repackaged.
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Search of the Moon King's Daughter
by Linda Holeman
Included in one of the 2004 YALSA Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults lists Nominated for the White Pine Reading Program of the Durham District School Board Gentle Emmaline loves nothing more than books and flowers and her little brother Tommy. Sadly, her idyllic country life in Victorian England comes to an abrupt end when her father dies of cholera. The family is forced to move to a mill town, where Emmaline’s mother is dreadfully injured in a factory accident. To ease her pain she takes laudanum and is soon addicted, craving the drug so badly that she sells Tommy into servitude as a chimney sweep in London. Emmaline knows that a sweep’s life is short and awful. Small boys as young as five are forced to climb naked into dark chimneys, their bare feet prodded by nail-studded sticks to keep them working. If Tommy is to survive, it is up to Emmaline to find him. Linda Holeman brings a bygone period to life in a book of serious historical fiction for young adults.
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The Secret Life of Bees
by Sue Monk Kidd
After her "stand-in mother," a bold black woman named Rosaleen, insults the three biggest racists in town, Lily Owens joins Rosaleen on a journey to Tiburon, South Carolina, where they are taken in by three black, bee-keeping sisters.
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Stoner & Spaz
by Ronald Koertge
A funny, in-your-face novel starring an unlikely teenage pair - a sheltered cinemaphile with cerebral palsy and the tattooed, straight-talking stoner who steals his heart. For sixteen-year-old Ben Bancroft - a kid with cerebral palsy, no parents, and an overprotective grandmother - the closest thing to happiness is hunkering alone in the back of the Rialto Theatre watching Bride of Frankenstein for the umpteenth time. Of course he waits for the lights to dim before making an entrance, so that his own lurching down the aisle doesn’t look like an ad for Monster Week. The last person he wants to run into is drugged-up Colleen Minou, resplendent in ripped tights, neon miniskirt, and an impressive array of tattoos. But when Colleen climbs into the seat beside him and rests a woozy head on his shoulder, Ben has that unmistakable feeling that his life is about to change. With unsparing humor and a keen flair for dialogue, Ron Koertge captures the rare repartee between two lonely teenagers on opposite sides of the social divide. It’s the tale of a self-deprecating protagonist who learns that kindred spirits can be found for the looking - and that the incentive to follow your passion can be set into motion by something as simple as a human touch.
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Son of the Mob
by Gordon Korman
Seventeen-year-old Vince's life is constantly complicated by the fact that he is the son of a powerful Mafia boss, a relationship that threatens to destroy his romance with the daughter of an FBI agent.
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The Lightkeeper's Daughter
by Iain Lawrence
When, after a four-year absence, seventeen-year-old Squid returns to her childhood home on a remote lighthouse island off British Columbia with her young daughter in tow, she and her parents try to come to terms with each other and the painful events of the past, especially the death of her older brother.
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The Dollmage
by Martine Leavitt
Annakey must convince the Dollmage that she is a worthy successor.
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The Kite Rider
by Geraldine McCaughrean
They called him Gou Tian, Sky Hook, the boy who flies. Then the Jade Circus offered him a chance to escape his enemies and travel throughout Kublai Khan's empire. But can he escape so easily and can he avoid even greater danger?
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Aimee
by Mary Beth Miller
Aimee's dead, and everyone believes that her best friend helped her commit suicide. After Aimee dies, after the trial, after the move to the new town, she's completely alone-paralyzed by he loneliness, guilt and anger at everyone's suppression of the truth. Isolated, she writes in her journal, and gradually lets readers into her world. A world where parents don't listen, therapists don't help, and best friends betray you. In the end, she realizes that while she never could have saved Aimee, she might be able to save herself.
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Lamb
by Christopher Moore
The birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts, and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years -- except Biff, the Messiah's best bud, who has been resurrected to tell the story in the divinely hilarious yet heartfelt work "reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams" (Philadelphia Inquirer). Verily, the story Biff has to tell is a miraculous one, filled with remarkable journeys, magic, healings, kung fu, corpse reanimations, demons, and hot babes. Even the considerable wiles and devotion of the Savior's pal may not be enough to divert Joshua from his tragic destiny. But there's no one who loves Josh more -- except maybe "Maggie," Mary of Magdala -- and Biff isn't about to let his extraordinary pal suffer and ascend without a fight.
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Big Mouth & Ugly Girl
by Joyce Carol Oates
Big Mouth No I did not. I did not, I did not. I did not say those things, and I did not plan those things. Won't It anyone believe me? Ugly Girl All right, Ugly Girl made a mistake. I'd told my mom what I'd heard in the cafeteria, and she'd told Dad. Evidently. I'd thought for sure they would want me to speak up for the truth.
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When My Name was Keoko
by Linda Sue Park
With national pride and occasional fear, a brother and sister face the increasingly oppressive occupation of Korea by Japan during World War II, which threatens to suppress Korean culture entirely.
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Fresh Girl
by Jaira Placide
After having been sent, at a very young age, from New York to live with her grandmother in Haiti, fourteen-year-old Mardi returns to join her parents and try to shape a new life in Brooklyn.
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What Happened to Lani Garver
by Carol Plum-Ucci
Sixteen-year-old Claire is unable to face her fears about a recurrence of her leukemia, her eating disorder, her need to fit in with the popular crowd on Hackett Island, and her mother's alcoholism until the enigmatic Lani Garver helps her get control of her life at the risk of his own.
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Three Clams and an Oyster
by Randy Powell
During their humorous search to find a fourth player for their flag football team, three high school juniors are forced to examine their long friendship, their individual flaws, and their inability to try new experiences.
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Stetson
by S. L. Rottman
Stetson has a dream. He's been rebuilding an old Honda Civic working at a salvage yard, and designing T-shirts to help pay for food and parts. As long as Stet avoids his abusive, alcoholic father, he considers himself lucky. His car, his art, and a high school diploma are his tickets out of their factory town. Then his father brings home Kayla-a younger sister Stet never knew he had. His mother had been pregnant when she left, but told no one; now she's dead, and Kayla has nowhere else to go. Can these two wary siblings find anything in common, and try to build a future together?
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Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility
by Patricia Santana
A touching and funny coming-of-age novel set in 1969 with a background of family and the Vietnam war.
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Kotuku
by Deborah Savage
Still having difficulty facing the death of her best friend, Wim must deal with a difficult great-aunt and Maori visitors from New Zealand who uncover a dark family secret.
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The Lovely Bones
by Alice Sebold
Sebold's mesmerizing and luminous first novel--a #1 national bestseller--builds a tale filled with hope, humor, suspense, and even joy, following an unspeakable tragedy.
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Shattered
by Jennifer Armstrong
As bullets ring and bombs are dropped, children watch—mostly from the sidelines, but occasionally in the direct line of fire. Unaware of the political issues or power struggles behind the battle, all they know are the human, emotional consequences of this thing called war. This collection examines all of war’s implications for young people—from those caught in the line of fire to the children of the veterans of wars long past. Critically acclaimed author Jennifer Armstrong brings together 12 powerful voices in young people's literature to explore the realities of war from a child's perspective. The settings vary widely—the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, an attempted coup in Venezuela, the American Civil War, crisis in the Middle East—but the effects are largely the same. In war, no life is ever left untouched. In war, lives are shattered.
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Seven for a Secret
by Mary C. Sheppard
In Cook's Cove, a small outport village on the west coast of Newfoundland, summers are short but sweet, and fifteen-year-old Melinda expects this one to be no different. She's looking forward to two idyllic months of garden parties, socials and long talks into the night with her cousins Rebecca and Kate. The cousins have spent summers together ever since they can remember. Rebecca's the goody-goody homemaker. Studious Kate, who lives in the city, is determined not to let a boyfriend get in the way of her plans for the future. Then there's outspoken Melinda, who loves to scandalize the village biddies. The girls are like sisters; they watch out for each other, and nothing can ever come between them. But when a stranger comes to the village and invites Rebecca to go to Boston to develop her artistic talent, the cousins are suddenly exposed to the possibilities of the outside world and the chance to fulfil their latent dreams.
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Green Arrow
by Kevin Smith
Writer/director Kevin Smith (Clerks, Chasing Amy, Dogma) delivers an awe-inspiring tale which resurrects DC Comics' original Emerald Archer -- the legendary Green Arrow! Stunningly rendered by the top talents of Phil Hester and Ande Parks, Green Arrow: Quiver follows Oliver Queen through man's most uncharted realms -- life, death, and back to life again. This deluxe hardcover edition collects the first ten issues of the best-selling Green Arrow monthly series, includes the original painted covers by Matt Wagner and features a new introduction by Kevin Smith. Book jacket.
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Lucy the Giant
by Sherri L. Smith
Lucy Otswego is a big girl who towers over just about everyone and everything in her small Alaskan town, except for her father’s horrible reputation as a mean drunk. At 15, she runs away from the cruel classmates who see her only as “the Giant,” the embarrassed adults who pity her, and the abusive father whose fleeting attentiveness is worse than his indifference. When the crew of a crabbing boat assumes she’s much older than she is and invites her to join them for the season, she thrills at the possibility of escaping her teenaged life. Buoyed by the camaraderie and support of her new shipmates, Lucy quickly masters the mind-numbing cold and backbreaking work. But when her masquerade is threatened, she learns that there are no shortcuts to growing up. From the Hardcover edition.
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Surviving the Applewhites
by Stephanie S. Tolan
Jake, a budding juvenile delinquent, is sent for home schooling to the arty and eccentric Applewhite family's Creative Academy, where he discovers talents and interests he never knew he had.
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The Game
by Teresa Toten
"Dani emerges from the painful effects of substance abuse and adapts to a treatment facility. There, she must summon the strength to confront her emotional trauma" Cf. Our choice, 2002.
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Strangers and Beggars
by James Van Pelt
Contains seventeen science fiction, fantasy, and horror short stories by James van Pelt.
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Hush
by Jacqueline Woodson
Twelve-year-old Toswiah finds her life changed when her family enters the witness protection program.
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Girl in a Cage
by Jane Yolen
When her father, Robert the Bruce, becomes King of Scotland, Marjorie Bruce becomes a princess. But Edward Longshanks, the ruthless King of England, has set his sights on Robert and his family. Marjorie is captured and imprisoned in a wooden cage in the center of a town square, exposed to wind, rain, the taunts of the townspeople, and the scorn of Longshanks himself. Marjorie knows that despite her suffering and pain, she is the daughter of noble Robert the Bruce&150and she will make her father, and her country, proud. For a true princess is a princess, whether in a castle or in a cage.