2006 ALA Best Books for Young Adults (Fiction Part 1)
Discover the top fiction picks from the 2006 ALA Best Books for Young Adults list (Part 1). Explore award-winning titles perfect for teens and young adult readers.
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The Diary of Pelly D
by L. J. Adlington
Toni V is a teenager working for the City Five demolition crew. While drilling through concrete he unearths a battered water can containing a parcel wrapped in faded brown paper. Though he's supposed to turn over anything he salvages, Toni V smuggles the package back to his room, unwraps it, and finds a notebook. This is the diary of Pelly D. It's totally secret, so if you're reading it I hate you already. Toni V figures there's no harm in paging through it since he doesn't even know this Pelly D. I'm not being arrogant. That's just the way it is at school. . . . I'm Pelly D. It's pretty simple. I RULE! The more Toni V reads, the more he thinks Pelly D is rich, stupid, and petty. Yet he can't help starting to care for her, especially as her words slowly reveal the chilling state of her world. I know it doesn't matter what gene tag you have -- Mum's made that clear again & again like a stuck CD. It's just . . . How can I face everyone at school if . . . What happened to Pelly D? Toni V needs to know. And he has one clue: Dig -- dig everywhere.
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Spacer and Rat
by Margaret Bechard
Jack's predictable existence on Freedom space station is transformed when Kit, the Earthie rat, enters his life and enlists him and a sensitive robot in an effort to outwit the Company.
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Valiant
by Holly Black
When seventeen-year-old Valerie Russell runs away to New York City, she's trying to escape a life that has utterly betrayed her. Sporting a new identity, she takes up with a gang of squatters who live in the city's labyrinthine subway system. But there's something eerily beguiling about Val's new friends. Impulsive Lolli talks of monsters in the subway tunnels they call home and shoots up a shimmery amber-colored powder that makes the shadows around her dance. Severe Luis claims he can make deals with creatures that no one else can see. And then there's Luis's brother, timid and sensitive Dave, who makes the mistake of letting Val tag along as he makes a delivery to a woman who turns out to have goat hooves instead of feet. When a bewildered Val allows Lolli to talk her into tracking down the hidden lair of the creature for whom Luis and Dave have been dealing, Val finds herself bound into service by a troll named Ravus. He is as hideous as he is honorable. And as Val grows to know him, she finds herself torn between her affection for an honorable monster and her fear of what her new friends are becoming. Bestselling author Holly Black follows her breakout debut, Tithe, with a rich, harrowing, and compulsively readable parable of betrayal, abuse, friendship, and love.
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Code Talker
by Joseph Bruchac
Throughout World War II, in the conflict fought against Japan, Navajo code talkers were a crucial part of the U.S. effort, sending messages back and forth in an unbreakable code that used their native language. They braved some of the heaviest fighting of the war, and with their code, they saved countless American lives. Yet their story remained classified for more than twenty years. But now Joseph Bruchac brings their stories to life for young adults through the riveting fictional tale of Ned Begay, a sixteen-year-old Navajo boy who becomes a code talker. His grueling journey is eye-opening and inspiring. This deeply affecting novel honors all of those young men, like Ned, who dared to serve, and it honors the culture and language of the Navajo Indians.
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Upstate
by Kalisha Buckhanon
A powerful coming-of-age novel, in the vein of "The Color Purple," is filled with tragedy, struggle, love, and triumph.
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Boy Proof
by Cecil Castellucci
What happens when an aloof and antisocial cinephile meets a new boy savvy enough to see through her cool, impenetrable disguise? Castellucci's smart and vulnerable heroine will please teen readers struggling with identity, choices, and relationships. Young Adult.
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Love Sick
by Jake Coburn
After an accident seems to end his college and athletic dreams, Ted is offered a second chance at school if he agrees to spy on a classmate and help her father monitor her bulimia.
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Red Kayak
by Priscilla Cummings
Brady loves life on the Chesapeake Bay with his friends J.T. and Digger. But developers and rich families are moving into the area, and while Brady befriends some of them, like the DiAngelos, his parents and friends are bitter about the changes. Tragedy strikes when the DiAngelos' kayak overturns in the bay, and Brady wonders if it was more than an accident. Soon, Brady discovers the terrible truth behind the kayak's sinking, and it will change the lives of those he loves forever. Priscilla Cummings deftly weaves a suspenseful tale of three teenagers caught in a wicked web of deception.
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The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch
by Joseph Delaney
Capturing witches Binding boggarts Driving away ghosts For years, Old Gregory has been the Spook for the county, ridding the local villages of evil. Now his time is coming to an end. But who will take over for him? Twenty-nine apprentices have tried–some floundered, some fled, some failed to stay alive. Only Thomas Ward is left. He's the last hope; the last apprentice. Can Thomas succeed? Will he learn the difference between a benign witch and a malevolent one? Does the Spook's warning against girls with pointy shoes include Alice? And what will happen if Thomas accidentally frees Mother Malkin, the most evil witch in the county ... ?
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Every Man for Himself
by Nancy E. Mercado
An anthology of ten original short stories about such things as family problems, sexuality, and courage, written by well-known authors of children's books.
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Bang!
by Sharon Flake
Mann is only thirteen, yet he has already had to deal with more than most go through in a lifetime. His family is still reeling from the tragic shooting death of his little brother, Jason, each person coping with grief in his or her own way. Mann's mother has stopped eating and is obsessed with preserving Jason's memory, while his father is certain that presenting a hard edge is the only way to keep his remaining son from becoming a statistic. Mann used to paint and ride horseback, but now he's doing everything he can to escape his emotions: getting involved in fights at school, joyriding at midnight, and much worse. His father, at his wit's end, does the only thing he thinks will teach his son how to be a man he abandons him and his friend Kee Lee in the woods, leaving them to navigate their way home, alone.
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Zap
by Paul Fleischman
A comic drama which combines famous scenes from well-known plays to create something to keep the audience guessing to the very end.
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Wrecked
by E. R. Frank
Anna wasn't drunk--but she had been drinking--and now she feels guilty for an accident that leaves her brother's girlfriend dead. Therapy reveals her dreams, memories, fears, and precarious sense of self.
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Anansi Boys
by Neil Gaiman
One of fiction's most audaciously original talents, Neil Gaiman now gives us a mythology for a modern age -- complete with dark prophecy, family dysfunction, mystical deceptions, and killer birds. Not to mention a lime. Anansi Boys God is dead. Meet the kids. When Fat Charlie's dad named something, it stuck. Like calling Fat Charlie "Fat Charlie." Even now, twenty years later, Charlie Nancy can't shake that name, one of the many embarrassing "gifts" his father bestowed -- before he dropped dead on a karaoke stage and ruined Fat Charlie's life. Mr. Nancy left Fat Charlie things. Things like the tall, good-looking stranger who appears on Charlie's doorstep, who appears to be the brother he never knew. A brother as different from Charlie as night is from day, a brother who's going to show Charlie how to lighten up and have a little fun ... just like Dear Old Dad. And all of a sudden, life starts getting very interesting for Fat Charlie. Because, you see, Charlie's dad wasn't just any dad. He was Anansi, a trickster god, the spider-god. Anansi is the spirit of rebellion, able to overturn the social order, create wealth out of thin air, and baffle the devil. Some said he could cheat even Death himself. Returning to the territory he so brilliantly explored in his masterful New York Times bestseller, American Gods, the incomparable Neil Gaiman offers up a work of dazzling ingenuity, a kaleidoscopic journey deep into myth that is at once startling, terrifying, exhilarating, and fiercely funny -- a true wonder of a novel that confirms Stephen King's glowing assessment of the author as "a treasure-house of story, and we are lucky to have him."
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Looking for Alaska
by John Green
The award-winning, genre-defining debut from John Green, the #1 international bestselling author of Turtles All the Way Down and The Fault in Our Stars Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award • A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist • A New York Times Bestseller • A USA Today Bestseller • NPR’s Top Ten Best-Ever Teen Novels • TIME magazine’s 100 Best Young Adult Novels of All Time • A PBS Great American Read Selection • Millions of copies sold! First drink. First prank. First friend. First love. Last words. Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words—and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet François Rabelais called “The Great Perhaps.” Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young, who will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps. Looking for Alaska brilliantly chronicles the indelible impact one life can have on another. A modern classic, this stunning debut marked #1 bestselling author John Green’s arrival as a groundbreaking new voice in contemporary fiction.
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Where I Want to be
by Adele Griffin
Two teenaged sisters, separated by death but still connected, work through their feelings of loss over the closeness they shared as children that was later destroyed by one's mental illness, and finally make peace with each other.
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Dark Sons
by Nikki Grimes
Alternating between biblical times and contemporary Brooklyn, Grimes masterfully tells the stories of two boys separated by time, geography, and culture in this novel about love and forgiveness, and the comfort brought by faith during difficult times.
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The Witch's Boy
by Michael Gruber
In his first novel for young readers, the author of the acclaimed thriller "Tropic of Night," creates a world that is at once deceptively familiar and stunningly original in this collection of ingenious retellings of classic fairy tales.
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Siberia
by Ann Halam
After spending two years at a prison school, thirteen-year-old Sloe sets off on a trek across frozen wastelands, tending to the secret "seeds" of wild animals her mother left in her care, trying to reach a new life for all of them.
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Stripes of the Sidestep Wolf
by Sonya Hartnett
Satchel O'Rye, devoted son of an impoverished couple in a dying rural town, must weigh in balance the life of his most cherished dog and the freedom of a rare striped tiger.
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Invisible
by Pete Hautman
Doug and Andy are unlikely best friends--one a loner obsessed by his model trains, the other a popular student involved in football and theater--who grew up together and share a bond that nothing can sever.
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The Minister's Daughter
by Julie Hearn
Set during the tumultuous era of the Civil War in England, this stunning debut by a student of Philip Pullman ("His Dark Materials") captures the superstition, passion, madness, and magic of a vanished age.
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Flush
by Carl Hiaasen
With their father jailed for sinking a floating casino, Noah Underwood and his younger sister must gather evidence that the casino's owner is illegally flushing raw sewage into the protected waters around their Florida Keys home.
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An Innocent Soldier
by Josef Holub
A sixteen-year-old farmhand is tricked into fighting in the Napoleonic Wars by the farmer for whom he works, who secretly substitutes him for the farmer's own son.
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Stained
by Jennifer Richard Jacobson
Jocelyn has two boys in her life. And a priest. Gabe has shared fourteen years of growing up next door. He's "a golden boy, an all-star." Yet now, in the spring of 1975, he's missing, disappeared on the brink of senior year at Weaver High. The whole town is set to go searching for him. Benny has only been in New Hampshire since January, yet for Joss, he's the answer to a long-held prayer to be someone in somebody's eyes. She loves them both. Father Warren -- hair turning white and "kind of cool in his black clothes" -- is a link between the three of them. Or a wedge. Or a threat. For Joss, the priest holds power over her sense of herself; for Benny, power over his soul; for Gabe, so mysterious and alluring, he holds the power of destiny. In a story shot with suspense, these four characters, and the lives of others they've touched in their small town, intermingle with unforgettable force.
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13 Little Blue Envelopes
by Maureen Johnson
When Ginny receives thirteen little blue envelopes and instructions to buy a plane ticket to London, she knows something exciting is going to happen. What Ginny doesn't know is that she will have the adventure of her life and it will change her in more ways than one. Life and love are waiting for her across the Atlantic, and the thirteen little blue envelopes are the key to finding them in this funny, romantic, heartbreaking novel.
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Real Time
by Pnina Kass
Sixteen-year-old Thomas Wanninger is on a mission: to find out what his grandfather, a Nazi officer, did during World War II. Thomas is going to Israel to work on a kibbutz, where he will have access to a Jerusalem archive that may hold the information he seeks. His life is one of many to be affected by a terrorist attack that occurs at 11:47 A.M. on the day he arrives. Kibbutz members, a doctor, "the boss” of a diner, two Palestinian teenagers and their families, a bus driver, policemen, a news correspondent, an Israeli soldier, a Holocaust survivor . . . these and others add their voices to the minute-by-minute account of a catastrophic incident that changes everything, while at the same time renewing a deadly cycle of sacrifice and destruction. Pnina Kass, who lives in Israel, delivers an even-handed and powerful portrayal of the complex world her characters inhabit. Chilling, suspenseful, and frighteningly real, this novel could be the back story behind tomorrow’s news.
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Daisy Kutter
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Daisy Kutter, notorious bandit of the New West, takes one last train heist before leading a normal life. But this job will alter her life more drastically than she realizes. Full of action and romance, this trade paperback collects the very first Daisy adventure into one complete volume.
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Heavy Metal and You
by Christopher Krovatin
High schooler Sam begins losing himself when he falls for a preppy girl who wants him to give up getting wasted with his best friends and even his passion for heavy metal music in order to become a better person.
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Black Juice
by Margo Lanagan
As part of a public execution, a young boy forlornly helps to sing his sister down. . . . A servant learns about grace and loyalty from a mistress who would rather dance with Gypsies than sit on her throne. . . . A terrifying encounter with a demonic angel gives a young man the strength he needs to break free of his oppressor. . . . On a bleak and dreary afternoon a gleeful shooting spree leads to tragedy for a desperate clown unable to escape his fate. In each of Margo Lanagan's ten extraordinary stories, human frailty is put to the test by the implacable forces of dark and light, man and beast. black juice offers glimpses into familiar, shadowy worlds that push the boundaries of the spirit and leave the mind haunted with the knowledge that black juice runs through us all.
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Magic Or Madness
by Justine Larbalestier
From the Sydney, Australia home of a grandmother she believes is a witch, fifteen-year-old Reason Cansino is magically transported to New York City, where she discovers that friends and foes can be hard to distinguish.
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Absolutely, Positively Not
by David LaRochelle
Chronicles a teenage boy's humorous attempts to fit in at his Minnesota high school by becoming a macho, girl-loving, "Playboy" pinup-displaying heterosexual.
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Day of Tears
by Julius Lester
Through flashbacks, foreshadowing, and shifting first-person points of view, readers will travel with Emma and others through time and space. They come to discover that every decision has its consequences, and final judgment is passed down not by man, but by his maker.
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Are We There Yet?
by David Levithan
Sixteen-year-old Elijah is completely mellow and his 23-year-old brother Danny is completely not, so it's no wonder they can barely tolerate one another. So what better way to repair their broken relationship than to trick them into taking a trip to Italy together? Soon, though, their parents' perfect solution has become Danny and Elijah's nightmare as they're forced to spend countless hours together. But then Elijah meets Julia, and soon the brothers aren't together nearly as much. And when Julia suddenly decides that maybe it's Danny she's really interested in, Danny has a decision to make: does he honor his relationship with the brother he thinks hates him, or does he follow his heart, which sorely needs some repairing of its own?
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Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie
by David Lubar
While navigating his first year of high school and awaiting the birth of his new baby brother, Scott loses old friends and gains some unlikely new ones as he hones his skills as a writer.
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Inexcusable
by Chris Lynch
High school senior and football player Keir sets out to enjoy himself on graduation night, but when he attempts to comfort a friend whose date has left her stranded, things go terribly wrong.
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The Highest Tide
by Jim Lynch
A mesmerizing, allegorical, and beautifully wrought first novel about one boy’s fascination with the sea during the summer that will change his life. One moonlit night, thirteen-year-old Miles O’Malley slips out of his house, packs up his kayak and goes exploring on the flats of Puget Sound. But what begins as an ordinary hunt for starfish, snails, and clams is soon transformed by an astonishing sight: a beached giant squid. As the first person to ever see a giant squid alive, the speed-reading Rachel Carson-obsessed insomniac instantly becomes a local curiosity. When he later finds a rare deepwater fish in the tidal waters by his home, and saves a dog from drowning, he is hailed as a prophet. The media hovers and everyone wants to hear what Miles has to say. But Miles is really just a teenager on the verge of growing up, infatuated with the girl next door, worried that his bickering parents will divorce, and fearful that everything, even the bay he loves, is shifting away from him. While the sea continues to offer up discoveries from its mysterious depths, Miles struggles to deal with the difficulties that attend the equally mysterious process of growing up. In this mesmerizing, beautifully wrought first novel, we witness the dramatic sea change for both Miles and the coastline that he adores over the course of a summer—one that will culminate with the highest tide in fifty years.
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Gil's All Fright Diner
by A. Lee Martinez
Earl and Duke help Loretta with her on-going zombie problem.