2008 Best Books for Teens
The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) has prepared the 2008 Best Books for Young Adults list. Teens, as well as publishers, authors, and librarians selected this list of recommended books. It is a diverse list that features science fiction and fantasy, nonfiction, novels in verse, cutting-edge contemporary fiction, and graphic novels. The "best books" listed below can be found in the Teen Area.
You'll find a complete list of the Best Books for Young Adults on the YALSA website.
| Fiction | |
| Alexie, Sherman | |
| The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian 2007 | |
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Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. |
| Anderson, Laurie Halse | |
| Twisted 2007 | |
| After finally getting noticed by someone other than school bullies and his ever-angry father, seventeen-year-old Tyler enjoys his tough new reputation and the attentions of a popular girl, but when life starts to go bad again, he must choose between transforming himself or giving in to his destructive thoughts. | |
| Asher, Jay | |
| Thirteen Reasons Why 2007 | |
|
When high school student Clay Jenkins receives a box in the mail containing thirteen cassette tapes recorded by his classmate Hannah, who committed suicide, he spends a bewildering and heartbreaking night crisscrossing their town, listening to Hannah's voice recounting the events leading up to her death. |
| Brande, Robin | |
| Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature 2007 | |
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Following her conscience leads high school freshman Mena to clash with her parents and former friends from their conservative Christian church, but might result in better things when she stands up for a teacher who refuses to include "Intelligent Design" in lessons on evolution. |
| Brooks, Martha | |
| Mistik Lake 2007 | |
| After Odella's mother leaves her, her sisters, and their father in Manitoba and moves to Iceland with another man, she then dies there, and the family finally learns some of the many secrets that have haunted them for two generations. | |
| Cameron, Peter | |
| Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You 2007 | |
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Eighteen-year-old James living in New York City with his older sister and divorced mother struggles to find a direction for his life. |
| Carey, Jane Lee | |
| Dragon's Keep 2007 | |
| In 1145 A.D., as foretold by Merlin, fourteen-year-old Rosalind, who will be the twenty-first Pendragon Queen of Wilde Island, has much to accomplish to fulfill her destiny, while hiding from her people the dragon's claw she was born with that reflects only one of her mother's dark secrets. | |
| Carey, Mike | |
| The Re-Gifters 2007 | |
| Cassidy, Anne | |
| Looking for JJ 2007 | |
| Seventeen-year-old Alice, released from prison with a new identity after serving six years for murdering a child, tries to keep her anonymity from the British tabloids, while haunted by memories of her past trauma. | |
| Compestine, Ying Chang | |
| Revolution is Not a Dinner Party 2007 | |
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Starting in 1972 when she is nine years old, Ling, the daughter of two doctors, struggles to make sense of the communists' Cultural Revolution, which empties stores of food, homes of appliances deemed "bourgeois," and people of laughter. |
| Cullen, Lynn | |
| I Am Rembrandt's Daughter 2007 | |
|
In Amsterdam in the mid-1600s, Cornelia's life as the illegitimate child of renowned painter Rembrandt is marked by plague, poverty, and despair at ever earning her father's love, until she sees hope for a better future in the eyes of a wealthy suitor. |
| Dowd, Siobhan | |
| A Swift Pure Cry 2007 | |
| Coolbar, Ireland, is a village of secrets and Shell, caretaker to her younger brother and sister after the death of their mother and with the absence of their father, is not about to reveal hers until suspicion falls on the wrong person. | |
| Downham, Jenny | |
| Before I Die 2007 | |
|
A terminally ill teenaged girl makes and carries out a list of things to do before she dies. |
| Doyle, Larry | |
| I Love You, Beth Cooper 2007 | |
| Recklessly announcing his love for the head cheerleader during his valedictorian commencement speech, Denis Cooverman is inducted into the wilder side of youth culture by the object of his affection, who turns out to be more than he bargained for. | |
| Ellis, Ann Dee | |
| This is What I Did 2007 | |
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Bullied because of an incident in his past, eighth-grader Logan is unhappy at his new school and has difficulty relating to others until he meets a quirky girl and a counselor who believe in him. |
| Felin, M. Sindy | |
| Touching Snow 2007 | |
| After her stepfather is arrested for child abuse, thirteen-year-old Karina's home life improves but while the severity of her older sister's injuries and the urging of her younger sister, their uncle, and a friend tempt her to testify against him, her mother and other well-meaning adults pursuade her to claim responsibility. | |
| Hale, Shannon | |
| Book of a Thousand Days 2007 | |
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Fifteen-year-old Dashti, sworn to obey her sixteen-year-old mistress, the Lady Saren, shares Saren's years of punishment locked in a tower, then brings her safely to the lands of her true love, where both must hide who they are as they work as kitchen maids. |
| Hornby, Nick | |
| Slam 2007 | |
| At the age of fifteen, Sam Jones's girlfriend gets pregnant and Sam's life of skateboarding and daydreaming about Tony Hawk changes drastically. | |
| Hosseini, Khaled | |
| A Thousand Splendid Suns 2007 | |
| Jenkins, A.M. | |
Repossessed 2007 |
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| A fallen angel, tired of being unappreciated while doing his pointless, demeaning job, leaves Hell, enters the body of a seventeen-year-old boy, and tries to experience the full range of human feelings before being caught and punished, while the boy's family and friends puzzle over his changed behavior. | |
| Jocelyn, Marthe | |
| When fifteen-year-old Annie Grey and her "clairvoyant" mother arrive in Peach Hill, New York, in 1924, each finds a reason for wanting to finally settle down, but to reach their goals they will have to do some serious lying and Annie will have to stand up for herself. | |
| Klass, David | |
| Firestorm 2006 | |
| After learning that he has been sent from the future for a special purpose, eighteen-year-old Jack receives help from an unusual dog and a shape-shifting female fighter. His mother is not his mother. His father is not his father. But if Jack hadn't broken the high school rushing record that night, he never would have known and nothing would have changed. | |
| Knox, Elizabeth | |
| Dreamquake: Book Two of the Dreamhunter Duet. 2007 | |
| Aided by her family and her creation, Nown, Laura investigates the powerful Regulatory Body's involvement in mysterious disappearances and activities and learns, in the process, the true nature of the Place in which dreams are found. | |
| Lanagan, Margo | |
| Red Spikes 2007 | |
| The meaning of life and the definition of what it means to be human is captured in a collection of intense short stories set in distant worlds. | |
| Lockhart, E. | |
| Dramarama 2007 | |
| Spending their summer at Wildewood Academy, an elite boarding school for the performing arts, tests the bond between teens Sadye and her best friend Demi. | |
| Lyga, Barry | |
| The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl 2006 | |
| A fifteen-year-old "geek" who keeps a list of the high school jocks and others who torment him, and pours his energy into creating a great graphic novel, encounters Kyra, Goth Girl, who helps change his outlook on almost everything, including himself. | |
| Lyga, Barry | |
| Boy Toy 2007 | |
| After five years of fighting his way past flickers of memory about the teacher who molested him and the incident that brought the crime to light, eighteen-year-old Josh gets help in coping with his molestor's release from prison when he finally tells his best friends the whole truth. | |
| McCaughrean, Geraldine | |
| The White Darkness 2007 | |
| Taken to Antarctica by the man she thinks of as her uncle for what she believes to be a vacation, Symone--a troubled fourteen year old--discovers that he is dangerously obsessed with seeking Symme's Hole, an opening that supposedly leads into the center of a hollow Earth. | |
| MacCready, Robin Merrow | |
| Buried 2006 | |
| When her alcoholic mother goes missing, seventeen-year-old Claudine begins to spin out of control, despite her attempts to impose order on every aspect of her life. | |
| Marillier, Juliet | |
| Wildwood Dancing 2007 | |
| Five sisters who live with their merchant father in Transylvania use a hidden portal in their home to cross over into a magical world, the Wildwood. | |
| Mieville, China | |
| Un Lun Dun 2007 | |
| Miller, Sarah | |
| Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller 2007 | |
| At age twenty-one, partially-blind, lonely but spirited Annie Sullivan travels from Massachusetts to Alabama to try and teach six-year-old Helen Keller, deaf and blind since age two, self-discipline and communication skills. | |
| Murdock, Catherine Gilbert | |
| The Off Season 2007 | |
| High school junior D.J. staggers under the weight of caring for her badly injured brother, her responsibilities on the dairy farm, a changing relationship with her friend Brian, and her own athletic aspirations. | |
| Myers, Walter Dean | |
| What They Found: Love on 145th Street 2007 | |
| Fifteen interrelated stories explore different aspects of love, such as a dying father's determination to help start a family business--a beauty salon--and the relationship of two teens who plan to remain celibate until they marry. | |
| Olmstead, Robert | |
| Coal Black Horse 2007 | |
| Peet, Mal | |
| Tamar: A Novel of Espionage, Passion, and Betrayal 2007 | |
| In England in 1995, fifteen-year-old Tamar, grief-stricken by the puzzling death of her beloved grandfather, slowly begins to uncover the secrets of his life in the Dutch resistance during the last year of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and the climactic events that forever cast a shadow on his life and that of his family. | |
| Resau, Laura | |
| Red Glass 2007 | |
| Sixteen-year-old Sophie has been frail and delicate since her premature birth, but discovers her true strength during a journey through Mexico, where the six-year-old orphan her family hopes to adopt was born, and to Guatemala, where her would-be boyfriend hopes to find his mother and plans to remain. | |
| The Restless Dead: Ten Original Stories of the Supernatural 2007 | |
| In this companion volume to "Gothic! ten original dark tales" discover why we fear the undead. | |
| Rowling, J.K. | |
| Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2007 | |
| It all comes down to this - a final faceoff between good and evil. You plan to pull out all the stops, but every time you solve one mystery, three more evolve. Do you stay the course you started, despite your lack of progress? Do you detour and follow a new lead that may not help? Do you listen to your instincts, or your friends? Lord Voldemort is preparing for battle and so must Harry. With Ron and Hermione at his side, he's trying to hunt down Voldemort's Horcruxes, escape danger at every turn, and find a way to defeat evil once and for all. How does it all end? | |
| Schmidt, Gary D. | |
| The Wednesday Wars 2007 | |
| 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. | |
| Sedgwick, Marcus | |
| My Swordhand is Singing 2007 | |
| In the dangerous dark of winter in an Eastern European village during the early seventeenth century, Peter learns from a gypsy girl that the Shadow Queen is behind the recent murders and reanimations, and his father's secret past may hold the key to stopping her. | |
| Selznick, Brian | |
| The Invention of Hugo Cabret: A Novel 2007 | |
| When twelve-year-old Hugo, an orphan living and repairing clocks within the walls of a Paris train station in 1931, meets a mysterious toyseller and his goddaughter, his undercover life and his biggest secret are jeopardized. | |
| Sharenow, Robert | |
| My Mother the Cheerleader 2007 | |
| Thirteen-year-old Louise uncovers secrets about her family and her neighborhood during the violent protests over school desegregation in 1960 New Orleans. | |
| Shusterman, Neal | |
| Unwind 2007 | |
| In a future world where those between the ages of thirteen and eighteen can have their lives "unwound" and their body parts harvested for use by others, three teens go to extreme lengths to uphold their beliefs--and, perhaps, save their own lives. | |
| Smith, Roland | |
| Peak 2007 | |
| A fourteen-year-old boy attempts to be the youngest person to reach the top of Mount Everest. | |
| Sonnenblick, Jordan | |
| Notes from the Midnight Driver 2006 | |
| After being assigned to perform community service at a nursing home, sixteen-year-old Alex befriends a cantankerous old man who has some lessons to impart about jazz guitar playing, love, and forgiveness. | |
| St. James, James | |
| Freak Show 2007 | |
| Having faced teasing that turned into a brutal attack, Christianity expressed as persecution, and the loss of his only real friend when he could no longer keep his crush under wraps, seventeen-year-old Billy Bloom, a drag queen, decides the only to become fabulous again is to run for Homecoming Queen at his elite, private school near Fort Lauderdale, Florida. | |
| Tan, Shaun | |
| The Arrival 2007 | |
| In this wordless graphic novel, a man leaves his homeland and sets off for a new country, where he must build a new life for himself and his family. | |
| Thompson, Kate | |
| The New Policeman 2007 | |
| Irish teenager JJ Liddy discovers that time is leaking from his world into Tir na nOg, the land of the fairies, and when he attempts to stop the leak he finds out a lot about his family history, the music that he loves, and a crime his great-grandfather may or may not have committed. | |
| Wizner, Jake | |
| Spanking Shakespeare 2007 | |
| Shakespeare Shapiro navigates a senior year fraught with feelings of insecurity while writing the memoir of his embarrassing life, worrying about his younger brother being cooler than he is, and having no prospects of ever getting a girlfriend. | |
| Zarr, Sara | |
| Story of a Girl 2007 | |
| In the three years since her father caught her in the back seat of a car with an older boy, sixteen-year-old Deanna's life at home and school has been a nightmare, but while dreaming of escaping with her brother and his family, she discovers the power of forgiveness. | |
| Zevin, Gabrielle | |
| Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac 2007 | |
| After a nasty fall, Naomi realizes that she has no memory of the last four years and finds herself reassessing every aspect of her life. | |
| Nonfiction | |
| Beah, Ishmael | |
| A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier 2007 | |
| "In the more than fifty violent conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them." | |
| Crisler, Curtis L. | |
| Tough Boy Sonatas 2007 | |
| Fradin, Judith Bloom and Fradin, Dennis Brindell | |
| Jane Addams: Champion of Democracy 2006 | |
| Drawn from historical documents and archival photographs, a biography of the Nobel Prize-winning social worker and civil rights activist documents her life, achievements, and contributions, revealing why she is considered an American icon. | |
| Hemphill, Stephanie | |
| Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath 2007 | |
| In 1963, young American poet Sylvia Plath died by her own hand and passed into myth. With photos and an extensive list of facts and sources, this biography-in-verse is a welcoming introduction for newcomers to Plath's work. | |
| Marrin, Albert | |
| The Great Adventure: Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of Modern America 2007 | |
| Theodore Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt is one of Americas liveliest and most influential figures. He was a scholar, cowboy, war hero, explorer, and a brilliant politician. As president, Roosevelts far-reaching policies abroad and at home forever changed both our nations place in the world and the life of every modern American. | |
| Raddatz, Martha | |
| The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family 2007 | |
| Reef, Catherine | |
| E. E. Cummings: A Poet's Life 2006 | |
| Noted nonfiction writer Reef provides a well-rounded portrait of e.e. cummings while examining the culture in which he lived as he developed his craft. Includes cummings' original sketches and paintings, quotes from friends and family, photographs, and the poetry of cummings and his peers. | |
| Sis, Peter | |
| The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain 2007 | |
| In his most personal work to date, award-winning author Peter Sis offers a brilliant graphic memoir, taking readers on an extraordinary journey as he recalls his youth growing up in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s, when his country was on the Communist side of the Iron Curtain. | |
| Tammet, Daniel | |
| Born on a Blue Day: A Memoir: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant 2007 | |
| Daniel Tammet sees numbers as shapes, colors, and textures, and he can perform extraordinary calculations in his head. He can learn to speak new languages fluently, from scratch, in a week. In 2004, he memorized and recited more than 22,000 digits of pi, setting a record. | |