Honor roll:Recent Young Adult books

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Each of these Young Adult books has received at least one award nomination within the last 3 years. They are ranked by honors received.

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How I Live Now

Meg Rosoff

“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…

 

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Volume 1. The Pox Party

M.T. Anderson

It sounds like a fairy tale. He is a boy dressed in silks and white wigs and given the finest of classical educations. Raised by a group of rational philosophers known only by numbers, the boy and his mother — a princess in exile from a faraway land — are the only persons in their household assigned names. As the boy’s regal mother, Cassiopeia, entertains the house scholars with her beauty and wit, young Octavian begins to question the purpose behind his guardians’ fanatical studies. Only after he dares to open a forbidden door does he learn the hideous nature of…

 

A Northern Light

Jennifer Donnelly

Mattie Gokey has a word for everything. She collects words, stores them up as a way of fending off the hard truths of her life, the truths that she can’t write down in stories. Yet when the drowned body of a young woman turns up at the hotel where Mattie works, all her words are useless. But in the dead woman’s letters, Mattie again finds her voice, and a determination to live her own life.

 

The White Darkness

Geraldine McCaughrean

Captain Oates, hero of the Antarctic, has been dead for nearly a century. But not in Sym’s head. In there, he is her constant companion, her soul mate, her adviser. It is as if he walked out of the Polar blizzard and into her mind. In fact, if it were not for Titus, life might be as bleak a place as the Antarctic wilderness.

Then a short family expedition makes her ask the question she has long been avoiding: who but the mad trust for happiness to someone or something that isn’t there?

 

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian: A Novel

Sherman Alexie, Ellen Forney

In his first book for young adults, bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author’s own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by acclaimed artist Ellen Forney, that reflect the character’s art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live.

 

Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread

Kate Dicamillo

Welcome to the story of Despereaux Tilling, a mouse who is in love with music, stories, and a princess named Pea. It is also the story of a rat called Roscuro, who lives in the darkness and covets a world filled with light. And it is the story of Miggery Sow, a slow-witted serving girl who harbors a simple, impossible wish. These three characters are about to embark on a journey that will lead them down into a horrible dungeon, up into a glittering castle, and, ultimately, into each other’s lives. And what happens then? As Kate DiCamillo would say: Reader, it is…

 

The New Policeman

Kate Thompson

Who knows where the time goes? There is never enough of it in Kinvara, or anywhere else in Ireland for that matter. When Helen Liddy is asked what she wants for her birthday, she says, “Time. That’s what I want. Time.” When JJ sets out to buy his mother some time he discovers the answer as well as some truly remarkable things about music, myth and magic. And more.

 

The River Between Us

Richard Peck

The whole country is changing in 1861 - even the folks from a muddy little Illinois settlement on the banks of the Mississippi. Here, fifteen-year-old Tilly Pruitt frets over the fact that her brother is dreaming of being a soldier and that her sister is prone to supernatural visions.

 

Chasing Vermeer

Blue Balliett, Brett Helquist

When a book of unexplainable occurrences brings Petra Andalee and Calder Pillay together, strange things start to happen: Seemingly unrelated events connect, an eccentric old woman seeks their company, and an invaluable Vermeer painting disappears. Before they know it, the two find themselves at the center of an international art scandal, where no one—neighbors, parents, teachers—is spared from suspicion.

As Petra and Calder are drawn clue by clue into a mysterious labyrinth, they must draw on their powers of intuition, their problem-solving skills, and their…

 

Just in Case

Meg Rosoff

The day David Case saves his brother’s life, his whole world changes. Suddenly, every moment is fizzing with significance, full of what ifs? He must hide; become an entirely new person to escape Fate… if he can. Will changing his name, befriending an astrophysicist and gaining an imaginary pet be enough? Bewildered and obsessive, he'll try anything to survive.

Just in Case is a daring, powerful and compelling read bringing the spirit of the film Donnie Darko to the heart of middle England.

 
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