01. Mock Printz Award Winner

Monster By Walter Dean Myers Annotation: Jurors must determine if Steve Harmon is a monstrous menace to society or an innocent victim of it. He’s young, Black and on trial. What else do they need to know? Recommendation: HAMLET: Denmark's a prison. ROSENCRANTZ: Then is the world one. HAMLET: A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons.              -- Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act II, scene ii Part screenplay, part diary, part philosophical fable -- Walter Dean Myers has crafted a truly novel courtroom drama in the creation of his Monster. The story of Steve Harmon's murder trial is told from the 16-year-old African American photographer’s own shattered perspective:...

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02. Graphic Novel

American Born Chinese By  Gene Luen Yang Annotation: The separate and simultaneous self-discovery journeys of Jin Wang, an Asian American middle school student growing up in a White suburb, and ancient Chinese folk hero . . . the magical Monkey King! Recommendation: It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what Gene Yang’s cosmic, coming-of-age comic book is – or why American Born Chinese is so great. Yang’s multi-story, multicultural graphic novel draws on traditions as varied as Ancient Chinese mythology and bad TV situation comedy to create an entirely new kind of contemporary fantasy. Unlike its protagonist, Jin Wang -- the teenage son of Chinese immigrants who is desperate to fit in at his predominantly White school...

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03. Coming of Age · Search for Identity

How I Live Now By Meg Rosoff Annotation:A journey. A statue. A feeling. A war. A soul mate. A day. A difference. A phone ringing. A garden. A chance. Recommendation: This is one of the things I most dislike about nature,namely that the rules are not at all precise. Art, it has been said, is anything you can get away with. If so, Meg Rosoff has gotten away with a novel for young people that has violence, incest, war and . . . cigarette smoking! Rosoff even gets away with murder in her novel, How I Live Now, as she has penned a truly brilliant work of literary art. When a book is really good, you're compelled to keep turning its pages. When the writing is exquisite, you're forced to pause, and sometimes grab a bookmark and stop reading for...

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04. General Nonfiction Text

Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case  By  Chris Crowe Annotation:In August 1955, two White men kidnapped and killed a Black child in the Mississippi Delta but were acquitted at trial by an all-White jury – sparking such national outrage, the story became a cause célèbre of the civil rights movement. Recommendation: Looking at its well-designed cover -- Brigham Young University English professor, Chris Crowe, is listed as the writer responsible for Getting Away with Murder. Positioned beneath the dramatic title is a sepia-fashioned photo collage, and a subtitle: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case. The book is unambiguously billed as a work of nonfiction on the outside jacket flap. What's actually inside,...

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05. Multicultural Work

Sons By  Alphonso Morgan Annotation: Aaron is an African American teenager living in Brooklyn NY. While attempting to come to terms with his secret homosexuality, he must come to terms with survival in a world where people routinely disappear, or go to prison, or turn up dead. Recommendation: As is the case with every fine work of young adult literature, Sons by Alphonso Morgan, captures the intensity of adolescence -- but his novel is unique in many ways. Minnesota-born Morgan uses unique plot, language, structure and character development to evoke a seldom examined type of coming of age intensity: urban, Black and gay. Sons introduces us to the hidden humanity of the bold, Black and gold, larger-than-life thugs...

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06. Supernatural · Horror Title

Queen of the Cold-Blooded Tales Stories by Roberta Simpson Brown Annotation:A collection of stories about scary people, haunted places and creepy things.Recommendation: Roberta Simpson Brown has every right to call herself Queen of the Cold-Blooded Tales. The twenty-three chilling stories in her collection are macabre and marvelous. Well-written and well-paced, each yarn is a quick, five to ten pages in length. Though original, they are patterned in a well-known oral literary tradition. Roberta Simpson Brown's tales are set in familiar, normal places: living rooms, schoolyards, campgrounds, shops, farm houses. The students, housewives, hotel clerks and other characters in Brown’s stories are all familiar people – but that’s where "normal"...

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07. Science Fiction · Fantasy Work

Black Juice by  Margo Lanagan Annotation: Ten glimpses into the darkness of the human condition. Recommendation: Black Juice, by Margo Lanagan, is a disturbing and disturbingly difficult read. I have repeatedly forced myself back through the slog and slap of the book’s ten (mercifully) short stories, and yet they still remain foreign to me. I cannot fully determine the meaning or the mission of this phantasmic fiction. That isn’t to say Ms. Lanagan's writing is of low quality – but rather, that I am unable to read it. The inability to read a text is a stark and humbling kind of horror. Along with feelings of personal inadequacy and shame, there is a sense of futility, and a frustration that prompts anger -- or potentially,...

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08. Challenged · Censored Text

The Bluest Eye By Toni Morrison Annotation:Claudia MacTeer recalls Lorain, Ohio in the summer of 1941, and the psychological devastation of a young African American girl, Pecola Breedlove, who believed life would be better if she only had blue eyes.Recommendation: Toni Morrison is considered by many to be one of the preeminent novelists of our day. Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, is not a book one is ever finished reading. Like all great works of art, the initial encounter with this text mainly conveys the sense that there is more on the page than meets the eye. Just as a great piece of sculpture cannot be absorbed in a single viewing, the first read of Morrison’s novel is only the beginning of a conversation. The Bluest Eye is a complex...

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09. ALEX Award · Adult Book for YA

Tunneling to the Center of the Earth By Kevin Wilson Annotation:A sorter at a Scrabble factory worries he will spontaneously combust; brothers come to blows over an origami contest; three bored college grads decide to dig a tunnel beneath their town . . .Recommendation: Kevin Wilson has created a work of the highest literary quality with his collection of short stories, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth. Mr. Wilson's razor sharp observations capture the broad bizarreness of the human experience. These are the universal and timeless works of a fantastically funny and imaginative literary genius! Although not directly marketed to teenagers, the fast-paced, free-form fiction in this book will have wide adolescent appeal. All of the stories...

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10. Audio Book

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian By Sherman Alexie Annotation:Junior Spirit journeys “off the rez,” and going beyond the cycle of impoverished hope and desecrated dreams -- learns to navigate the river of the world. Recommendation: Sherman Alexie’s absolutely tremendous, absolutely transcendent, Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a triumph of vision and voice. Determined to live out his dreams, protagonist, Arnold "Junior" Spirit, leaves his friends and his failed school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend all-white, Reardan High. Through words and drawings, Junior shares the ugly - beautiful lessons learned on his journey “off the rez,” out of the cultural comfort zone, and into manhood. With Alexie’s...

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11. Challenged · Censored Text

Speak By Laurie Halse Anderson Annotation:Melinda Sordino is outcast. Nobody in her high school has spoken to her since summer when she called police and broke up a neighborhood party. There's more to the story, but nobody will listen -- and Melinda refuses to speak.Recommendation: While not original or ground-breaking, Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak is a solid effort. What's lacking in character, pacing and tone is made up for in intention. Melinda Sordino, the teenaged protagonist of Speak, is alienated from her family and socially isolated from friends. As a result, Melinda is the only flesh and blood character in the book. We only know the other characters through the caustic descriptions and sarcastic names she assigns them (Principal...

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