Best Books for Young Adults

Sixteen year old Callisto May believes she is a moon--a borrower of light, rather than a source of it. She also has an interest in astronomy. She is also pregnant.

When African-American Jemmie moves in next door, Cass's father is horrified and builds a fence separating the houses. Despite their family's prejudices, the girls form a friendship based on running and become the "chocolate milk" team.

After her sister runs away, Caitlin decides to forge her own identity and gets involved with a dramatic and mysterious guy who turns out to be abusive.

Fourteen year old Hope visits her new foster mother's Nebraska farm and through old letters, a diary, and stories, gets a vivid picture of the past in the voices of four girls her age who lived there in 1869, 1900, 1936, and 1960.

Nick Abbott makes the varsity basketball team his sophomore year, but must hone his skills as a point guard while also learning to get along with Trent Dawson, his arrogant, brutish nemesis, in order to meet the challenges of growing up and playing championship ball.

Nory, 12, lives with her motherless family on the west coast of Ireland in the mid-1800s. While her father is away fishing at sea, a blight strikes their potato crop, and their harsh English landlord begins destroying neighbors' cottages for non-payment of rent. When severe hunger threatens, Nory's resourcefulness and loyalty help those she loves to escape to a better life in America.

The lives of two young boys, two old farmers, and a pregnant teenager, intersect in this deceptively simple story about family, love, and loyalty.

A story in poems about a young girl and her seemingly perfect life told from the point of view of the people that thought they knew her.

While taking care of her sick mother and being an all-around "good girl," Ashley gets her thrills by secretly tagging neighborhood buildings until she is frightened by a stalker who watches her and sends her bizarre threatening things. She seeks help from a neighborhood tough guy, but learns she is the only one who can stop the stalker.

Imagine yourself transported to the year 1357, a time when cruel lords, power-hungry abbots, scheming ladies, and fighting knights ruled. Modern scientists find danger both in their method of transport and in the medieval past in this suspenseful adventure.