2007 ALA Best Books for Young Adults (Fiction Part 2)
Discover the 2007 ALA Best Books for Young Adults (Fiction Part 2) – a curated list of top-rated novels for teens. Explore award-winning titles and must-read fiction for young adult readers.
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Terrier
by Tamora Pierce
When sixteen-year-old Beka becomes "Puppy" to a pair of "Dogs," as the Provost's Guards are called, she uses her police training, natural abilities, and a touch of magic to help them solve the case of a murdered baby in Tortall's Lower City.
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King Dork
by Frank Portman
“King Dork will rock your world.” --John Green, New York Times bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars When Tom Henderson finds his dead father’s copy of J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, his world is turned upside down. Suddenly high school gets more complicated: Tom (aka King Dork) finds himself in the middle of mysteries involving dead people, naked people, fake people, a secret code, girls, and rock and roll. As he goes through sophomore year, he finds clues that may very well solve the puzzle of his father’s death and—oddly—reveal the secret to attracting semi-hot girls. (The secret might be being in a band, if he can find a drummer who can count to four.) This unruly cult classic features song lyrics throughout and now includes a glossary and a bandography. And look for the sequel, King Dork Approximtely, available now. Praise for King Dork: “Basically, if you are a human being with even a vague grasp of the English language, King Dork will rock your world.”—John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars “[No account of high school] has made me laugh more than King Dork. . . . Grade A.”—Entertainment Weekly “Impossibly brilliant.”—Time “Provides a window into what it would be like if Holden Caulfield read The Catcher in the Rye.”—New York Post “Loaded with sharp and offbeat humor.”—USA Today “Original, heartfelt, and sparkling with wit and intelligence. This novel will linger long in readers’ memories.”—School Library Journal, Starred Review “A biting and witty high-school satire.”—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review “Tom’s narration is piercingly satirical and acidly witty.”—The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, Starred Review “King Dork is smart, funny, occasionally raunchy and refreshingly clear about what it’s like to be in high school.”—San Francisco Chronicle “King Dork: Best Punk Rock Book Ever.”—The Village Voice “I love this book as much as I hated high school, and that’s some of the highest praise I can possibly give.”—Bookslut.com
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Wintersmith
by Terry Pratchett
In the third adventure of Tiffany Aching and the Wee Free Men, Tiffany faces a new challenge: a boy who is winter itself.
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A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life
by Dana Reinhardt
You can tell what really makes Simone different just by looking at her: she doesn't resemble anyone in her family. She's adopted. She's always known it, but she's never wanted to know anything about where she came from. She's happy with her family just as it is, thank you. Then one day, Rivka calls, and Simone learns who her mother was—a 16-year-old, just like Simone. Who is Rivka? What does she want? Why is she calling now, after all these years? The answers lead Simone to deeper feelings of anguish and love than she has ever known and prompt her to question everything she has taken for granted about faith, the afterlife, and what it means to be a daughter.
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The Foreshadowing
by Marcus Sedgwick
Having always been able to know when someone is going to die, Alexandra poses as a nurse to go to France during World War I to locate her brother and to try to save him from the fate she has foreseen for him.
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Swimming In The Monsoon Sea
by Shyam Selvadurai
Although life for Amrith in 1980 Sri Lanka seems rather uneventful and orderly, things change in a hurry when his male cousin arrives from Canada and Amrith finds himself completely enamored with his new visitor. The setting is Sri Lanka, 1980, and it isthe season of monsoons. Fourteen-year-old Amrith is caught up in the life of the cheerful, well-to-do household in which he is being raised by his vibrant Auntie Bundle and kindly Uncle Lucky. He tries not to think of his life before, when his doting mother was still alive. Amrith's holiday plans seem unpromising: he wants to appear in his school's production of Othello and he is learning to type at Uncle Lucky's tropical fish business. Then, like an unexpected monsoon, his cousin arrives from Canada andAmrith's ordered life is storm-tossed. He finds himself falling in love with the Canadian boy. Othello, with its powerful theme of disastrous jealousy, is the backdrop to the drama in which Amrith finds himself immersed. Shyam Selvadurai's brilliant novels, Funny Boy and Cinnamon Gardens, have garnered him international acclaim. In this, his first young adult novel, he explores first love with clarity, humor, and compassion.
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Do Unto Otters
by Laurie Keller
Mr. Rabbit wonders if he will be able to get along with his new neighbors, who are otters, until he is reminded of the golden rule.
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Doppelganger
by David Stahler
When a sixteen-year-old member of a race of shape-shifting killers called doppelgangers assumes the life of a troubled teen, he becomes unexpectedly embroiled in human life--and it is nothing like what he has seen on television.
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Deogratias, A Tale of Rwanda
by J.P. Stassen
Deogratias is just a boy. Benina is just a girl. Teenagers just like teenagers everywhere. Only he is a Hutu, and she is a Tutsiso say their ID cards.We are in Rwanda in the days leading to a swift and gruesome genocide which the world will watch but do nothing to stop. In less than a hundred days, eight hundred thousand human beings will be hacked to death.Moment by moment, piece by piece, J.P. Stassen skillfully builds a masterpiece, an unforgettable tale that probes mans inhumanity to man. His eloquence, his storytelling power, and his sheer poetry elevate this harrowing story to the rank of a testimonial to one of the darkest chapters in recent human history.With great skill and understanding, Stassens Deogratias takes us back and forth in time, showing only before and after the killings and inexorably revealing the grip of madness and horror on one young boy and his country.Difficult, beautiful, honest, and heartbreaking, this is a masterwork by a major artist of our time.
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Knights of the Hill Country
by Tim Tharp
In a small Oklahoma town, one star linebacker must decide what kind of man he wants to be--both on and off the field. Welcome to Kennisaw--where Friday night high school football ranks right up there with God and country, and sometimes even comes in first. This year, the Kennisaw Knights are going for their fifth straight undefeated season, and if they succeed, they'll be more than the best high school team in the eastern Oklahoma hill country--they'll be legends. But the Knights' legacy is a heavy weight to carry for Hampton, linebacker and star of the team. On the field, he's so in control you'd think he was able to stop time. But his life off the field is a different story. His father walked out on him and his mom years ago, and now his mom has a new boyfriend every week. He's drawn to a smart, quirky girl at school--the type a star athlete just isn't supposed to associate with. And meanwhile, his best friend and teammate Blaine--the true friend who first introduced Hampton to football back when he had nothing else--is becoming uncomfortably competitive, and he's demanding Hampton's loyalty even as Hampton thinks he's going too far. This unforgettable novel is the story of a boy whose choices will decide the kind of man he becomes, and raises powerful questions about sportsmanship, loyalty, and the deceptiveness of legends. From the Hardcover edition.
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The King of Attolia
by Megan Whalen Turner
By scheming and theft, the Thief of Eddis has become King of Attolia. Eugenides wanted the queen, not the crown, but he finds himself trapped in a web of his own making. Attolia's barons seethe with resentment, the Mede emperor is returning to the attack, and the king is surrounded by the subtle and dangerous intrigue of the Attolian court. When a naive young guard expresses his contempt for the king in no uncertain terms, he is dragged by Eugenides into the center of the political maelstrom. Like the king, he cannot escape the difficulties he makes for himself. Poor Costis knows he is the victim of the king's caprice, but he discovers a reluctant sympathy for Eugenides as he watches the newly crowned king struggle against his fate. Fans of the Newbery Honor Book The Thief and The Queen of Attolia will recognize Megan Whalen Turner's signature plot twists and turns in the third exquisitely crafted tale about Eugenides.
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It's Kind of a Funny Story
by Ned Vizzini
A humorous account of a New York City teenager's battle with depression and his time spent in a psychiatric hospital.
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Rooftop
by Paul Volponi
Still reeling from seeing police shoot his unarmed cousin to death on the roof of a New York City housing project, seventeen-year-old Clay is dragged into the whirlwind of political manipulation that follows.
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Skin
by Adrienne Maria Vrettos
When his parents decide to separate, eighth-grader Donnie watches with horror as the physical condition of his sixteen-year old sister, Karen, deteriorates due to an eating disorder.
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The Rules of Survival
by Nancy Werlin
Seventeen-year-old Matthew recounts his attempts, starting at a young age, to free himself and his sisters from the grip of their emotionally and physically abusive mother.
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Storm Thief
by Chris Wooding
With the help of a golem, two teenaged thieves try to survive on the city island of Orokos, where unpredictable probability storms continually change both the landscape and the inhabitants.
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Winter's Bone
by Daniel Woodrell
Ree Dolly's father has skipped bail on charges that he ran a crystal meth lab, and the Dollys will lose their house if he doesn't show up for his next court date. With two young brothers depending on her, 16-year-old Ree knows she has to bring her father back, dead or alive. Living in the harsh poverty of the Ozarks, Ree learns quickly that asking questions of the rough Dolly clan can be a fatal mistake. But, as an unsettling revelation lurks, Ree discovers unforeseen depths in herself and in a family network that protects its own at any cost.
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American Born Chinese
by Gene Luen Yang
"Alternates three interrelated stories about the problems of young Chinese Americans trying to participate in the popular culture. Presented in comic book format." -- Title page verso
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The Book Thief
by Markus Zusak
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE’S 100 BEST YA BOOKS OF ALL TIME The extraordinary, beloved novel about the ability of books to feed the soul even in the darkest of times. When Death has a story to tell, you listen. It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement. In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak, author of I Am the Messenger, has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time. “The kind of book that can be life-changing.” —The New York Times “Deserves a place on the same shelf with The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.” —USA Today DON’T MISS BRIDGE OF CLAY, MARKUS ZUSAK’S FIRST NOVEL SINCE THE BOOK THIEF.