For the Love of Award Winners

Monster: Walter Dean Myers: 281 pages
While on trial as an accomplice to murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken.

The New Policeman: Kate Thompson: 442 pages
Irish teenager J.J. Liddy discovers that time is leaking from his world into the land of the fairies, and when he attempts to stop the leak he finds out about his family history.

Speak: Laurie Halse Anderson: 197 pages
A traumatic event in the summer has a devastating effect on Melinda's freshman year of high school.

The Wednesday Wars: Gary D. Schmidt: 264 pages
During the 1967 school year, on Wednesday afternoons when all his classmates go to either Catechism or Hebrew school, seventh-grader Holling Hoodhood stays in Mrs. Baker's classroom where they read the plays of William Shakespeare and Holling learns much of value about the world he lives in.

Airborn: Kenneth Oppel: 355 pages
Matt, a young cabin boy aboard an airship, and Kate, a wealthy young girl traveling with her chaperone, team up to search for the existence of mysterious winged creatures reportedly living hundreds of feet above Earth’s surface.

The Amulet of Samarkand: Jonathan Stroud: 462 pages
Nathaniel, a magician’s apprentice, summons up the djinni Bartimaeus and instructs him to steal the Amulet of Samarkand from the powerful magician Simon Lovelace.

Downsiders: Neal Shusterman: 246 pages
A fourteen-year-old boy who lives in the subterranean world beneath New York City meets a girl from above ground. When she visits him down below, she discovers his world is not what it appears to be.

The Hollow Kingdom: Clare Dunkle: 230 pages
In nineteenth century England, a powerful sorcerer and King of the Goblins, chooses Kate, the elder of two orphan girls recently arrived at Hallow Hill, to be his bride and queen.

The House of the Scorpion: Nancy Farmer: 380 pages
In a future where humans despise clones, Matt enjoys special status as the young clone of the 142-year-old leader of a corrupt drug empire.

For more book suggestions, check out the Award-Winning Young Adult Books booklist in the Teen Corner.

What's the Most Recent Book You've Read?

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For the Love of Reading

The Most Popular Teen Books in the Library

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Ann Brashares: 294 pages During summer break, longtime friends Lena, Tibby, Carmen, and Bridget each embark on adventures that they share with each other through a pair of jeans that they have decided will be worn by all and so will absorb all of their stories.

Stormbreaker: Anthony Horowitz: 192 pages
After the death of the uncle who had been his guardian, fourteen-year-old Alex Rider is coerced to continue his uncle's dangerous work for Britain's intelligence agency, MI6.

Twilight: Stephenie Meyer: 498 pages When seventeen-year-old Bella leaves Phoenix to live with her father in Forks, Washington, she meets an exquisitely handsome boy at school for whom she feels an overwhelming attraction and who she comes to realize is not wholly human.

Uglies: Scott Westerfeld: 425 pages Just before their sixteenth birthdays, when they will be transformed into beauties whose only job is to have a great time, Tally's best friend runs away and Tally must find her and turn her in, or never become pretty at all.

Eragon: Christopher Paolini: 509 pages In Alagaèesia, a fifteen-year-old boy of unknown lineage called Eragon finds a mysterious stone that weaves his life into an intricate tapestry of destiny, magic, and power, peopled with dragons, elves, and monsters.

Holes: Louis Sachar: 233 pages
As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: J.K. Rowling: 435 pages
During his third year at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry Potter must confront the devious and dangerous wizard responsible for his parents' deaths.

The Luxe: Anna Godbersen: 433 pages
The revelation of a dark family secret exposes a great scandal that soon sends the lives of the beautiful Holland sisters into a tailspin with lies and betrayal jeopardizing their high-ranking positions in Manhattan society.

Shadowland: Meg Cabot: 245 pages
Sixteen-year-old Suze Simon can mediate between the living and the dead, and she hopes her move to California will be a fresh start, but a hot ghost named Jesse haunts her bedroom and another ghost is bent on vengeance at school.







For more popular reading selections, check out the Provo Teens' Favorites booklist in the Teen Corner.

What's your favorite book? Can't pick just one?
Tell us all your favorites!

Click on Comments. Choose Nickname and enter your FIRST NAME ONLY. Click on Publish Your Comment. After your comment appears on the blog, print it out and take it to the 1st Floor Reference Desk for a treat. One treat per person per week.

Summer Reading 2008

Register for the Teen Summer Reading program Saturday, May 31 - Monday, June 30. For more information, ask at the Reference Desk or call 852-6661.

Starting Monday, June 2 check this blog for special summer recommended reading lists and opportunities to receive treats and prizes.

Happy Reading!

New in May

The Book of Jude: Kimberley Heuston: 217 pages
In 1989, when fifteen-year-old Jude's mother wins a Fulbright fellowship to study art in Czechoslovakia, the family postpones a planned move to Utah to join her, but the political situation and the move itself are too much for Jude, who is overwhelmed by a previously undiagnosed psychological disorder.

Wake: Lisa McMann: 210 pages
Ever since she was eight years old, high school student Janie Hannagan has been uncontrollably drawn into other people's dreams, but it is not until she befriends an elderly nursing home patient and becomes involved with an enigmatic fellow-student that she discovers her true power.

The Truth about Las Mariposas: Ofelia Dumas Lachtman: 171 pages
When sixteen-year-old Caro Torres goes to help her Tia Matilda at her bed-and-breakfast in Two Sands, California, she ends up also helping her aunt fend off the attempts of her ex-husband to buy the property and steal the treasures that are hidden there.

Primavera: Mary Jane Beaufrand: 260 pages
Growing up in Renaissance Italy, Flora sees her family's fortunes ebb, but encounters with the artist Botticelli and the guidance of her nurse teach her to look past the material world to the beauty already in her life.

Shakespeare's Hamlet: The Manga Edition: Adam Sexton: 185 pages
In this fast-paced manga edition, you're instantly caught up in the conflicts and passions--the murder of the king, supernatural visitations, deception, plots, poisoned wine, revenge--that make this one of Shakespeare's most beloved tragedies.

Mythbusters: Don't Try This at Home: Mary Packard: 144 pages
Based on the popular TV show, this book presents various urban myths and legends, describes how the "Mythbusters" set out to prove the myths, explains the results, and provides instructions for how to do similar "mythbusting" at home.

Once Upon a Time in the North: Philip Pullman: 95 pages
In a time before Lyra Silvertongue was born, the tough American balloonist Lee Scoresby and the great armoured bear Iorek Byrnison meet when Lee and his hare daemon Hester crash-land their trading balloon onto a port in the far Arctic North and find themselves right in the middle of a political powder keg.

New in April

The Highwayman's Footsteps: Nicola Morgan: 354 pages
In eighteenth-century England, William runs away from his father, only to be captured by an armed highwayman who turns out to be a girl, and together they seek vengeance against William's cruel father and the soldiers who killed the girl's parents. Inspired by Alfred Noyes' poem "The Highwayman."

The Opposite of Invisible: Liz Gallagher: 153 pages
Artistic Seattle high school sophomore Alice decides to emerge from her cocoon and date a football player, which causes a rift between her and her best friend, a boy who wants to be more than just friends.

Omega Place: Graham Marks: 253 pages
After running away from home and joining a radical action group called Omega Place, Paul Hendry finds himself in the midst of something very serious when his new activist friends initiate their campaign to let the public know the type of spying the government is doing with their closed-circuit TV cameras.

Reincarnation: Suzanne Weyn: 293 pages
When a young couple dies in prehistoric times, their love--and link to various green stones--endures through the ages as they are reborn into new bodies and somehow find a way to connect.

Robot Dreams: Sara Varon: 205 pages
Tired of being alone, Dog orders a mail-order robot kit and makes himself a special friend who happily partakes in all of his new friend's adventures, in a wordless graphic novel.

Brothers, Boyfriends & Other Criminal Minds: April Lurie: 289 pages
While living on the same block as several members of the Mafia does have the advantage of a lower crime rate, fourteen-year-old April and her brother find there are times when it is also a major disadvantage.

Fight Game: Kate Wild: 279 pages
When he gets in trouble with the police, Freedom Smith, a rogue Gypsy boy, agrees to go undercover to expose a high-tech fight club that uses street children in drug-manipulated death-matches.

First Shot: Walter Sorrells: 279 pages
David Crandall, haunted by his mother's murder two years ago, uncovers a dark family secret that leads him to believe that his father, headmaster of the military school in which David is currently a senior, is the killer.

Good Enough: Paula Yoo: 322 pages
A Korean American teenager tries to please her parents by getting into an Ivy League college, but a new guy in school and her love of the violin tempt her in new directions.

Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall: Wendy Mass: 251 pages
After getting knocked out during a game of dodge ball in gym class, unhappy teen Tessa believes she has floated away to heaven and, while on her mystical journey, finally comes to terms with her past while learning to appreciate the loved ones in her life in an entirely new way.

New in March

Runemarks: Joanne Harris: 526 pages
Five hundred years after the end of the world and the destruction of gods, faeries, and goblins, Maddy is certain that some magic still exists based on the marking on her hand and so turns to the support of a mysterious traveler, One-Eye, to figure out her destiny in a world where she has been labeled an outcast.

Airman: Eoin Colfer: 412 pages
Falsely accused of murdering the king and sent off to an island prison, royal bodyguard Conor begins to plan his escape by building a glider so that he can fly to the mainland, clear his good name, and seek justifiable revenge on the real culprit, the evil Bonvilain.

Cindy Ella: Robin Palmer: 264 pages
Sophomore iconoclast Cindy's prom-bashing letter to her high school newspaper complicates her life when she develops a crush on her SAT tutor, added to the ones she has on a popular senior and a boy she has been instant messaging but has never met.

Bunker 10: J.A. Henderson: 253 pages
On a December night, a huge blast destroys a forest and remote valley where a hidden military base exists--a home to 185 people, including scientists, soldiers, and seven teenagers, who all try their best to survive what seems to be their inevitable demise.

I Heart You, You Haunt Me: Lisa Schroeder: 226 pages
When her recently deceased boyfriend, Jackson, reappears as a ghost, Ava is thrilled to have him in her life in any way she can, but when she finally begins to move on with her life, Jackson must find a way to let her go.

The London Eye Mystery: Siobhan Dowd: 322 pages
When Salim doesn't come back from his ride on the London Eye, his cousins Ted and Kat turn to the authorities for help, but when they offer no viable suggestions, the two use their sleuthing skills to figure out what actually happened.

New in February

Open Court: Carol Clippinger: 262 pages
A tennis prodigy grapples with her seemingly incompatible desires to be an exceptional athlete and a normal teenager.

Faerie Lord: Herbie Brennan: 430 pages
When a terrible plague takes over the faerie realm and causes its inhabitants to age unnaturally quickly, Henry and Blue must find a cure in order to save the realm. Book 4 of the Faerie Wars Chronicles.

General Winston’s Daughter: Sharon Shinn: 342 pages
Seventeen-year-old heiress Averie Winston travels with her guardian to faraway Chiarrin, a country her father’s army has occupied, and once she arrives and is reunited with her fiancé, she discovers that her notions about politics, propriety, the military, and even her intended have changed.

The Luxe: Anna Godbersen: 433 pages
In Manhattan in 1899, five teens of different social classes lead dangerously scandalous lives, despite the strict rules of society and the best-laid plans of parents and others.

Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow: Jessica Day George: 328 pages
A girl travels east of sun and west of the moon to free her beloved prince from a magic spell.

Teen, Inc.: Stefan Petrucha: 244 pages
Fourteen-year-old Jaiden has been raised by NECorp. since his parents were killed when he was a baby, so when he discovers that the corporation has been lying about producing illegal levels of mercury emissions, he and his two friends decide to try to do something about it.