YA COLFER, E.
When a twelve-year-old evil genius tries to restore his family fortune by capturing a fairy and demanding a ransom in gold, the fairies fight back with magic, technology, and a particularly nasty troll.
YA WOOD, M.
On a bike trip in Ireland trying to recover from a broken heart, sixteen-year-old Morgan is transformed, not only by the others on the tour, but by her visits to the past, where she is believed to be the legendary half-goddess Morganne, sent to help end a faery curse.
YA FALLON, L.
Instantly drawn to a mysterious, alluring boy in her class, teenaged Megan, an American living in Ireland, discovers that they are linked by a supernatural destiny that gives them powers Megan never knew she possessed.
YA THOMPSON, K.
Bobby lives a reckless life smoking, drinking, and stealing cars in Dublin. So his mother moves the family to the country. But Bobby suspects their cottage might not be as quaint as it seems. And spooky details of the history of their little cottage gradually turn Bobby into a detective of night creatures real and imagined.
YA DOWD, S.
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.
YA THOMPSON, K.
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.
YA FOLEY, J.
It’s 1993, and Generation X pulses to the beat of Kurt Cobain and the grunge movement. Sixteen-year-old Maggie Lynch is uprooted from big-city Chicago to a windswept town on the Irish Sea. Surviving on care packages of Spin magazine and Twizzlers from her rocker uncle Kevin, she wonders if she’ll ever find her place in this new world. When first love and sudden death simultaneously strike, a naive but determined Maggie embarks on a forbidden pilgrimage that will take her to a seedy part of Dublin and on to a life-altering night in Rome to fulfill a dying wish. Through it all, Maggie discovers an untapped inner strength to do the most difficult but rewarding thing of all– live.
YA LENNON, T.
Neil Byrne, a teenager in Dublin, Ireland, in the 1990s, comes to terms with the fact that he is gay and seeks acceptance from his friends and family.
YA MELLING, O.
Two teenage cousins, one Irish, the other from the United States, set out to find a magic doorway to the Faraway Country, where humans must bow to the little people.
YA SF MCKINTY, A.
Thirteen-year-old Jamie is overjoyed when a bequest sends him and his mother to live on an Irish island, where he and his newfound friend Ramsay travel back in time to help a young girl save her people from certain death.
YA DOYLE, R.
Mary O’Hara is a sharp and cheeky twelve-year-old Dublin schoolgirl who is bravely facing the fact that her beloved Gran is dying. But Gran can’t let go of life, and when a mysterious young woman turns up in Mary’s street with a message for her Gran, Mary gets pulled into an unlikely adventure.
YA NAPOLI, D.
Fifteen-year-old Melkorka, an Irish princess, is kidnapped by Russian slave traders and not only learns how to survive but to challenge some of the brutality of her captors, who are fascinated by her apparent muteness and the possibility that she is enchanted.
YA KIERNAN, C.
After their nan accidentally burns their home down, twin brothers Pat and Dom must move with their parents and baby sister to the seaside cottage they’ve summered in, now made desolate by the winter wind. Itʹs there that the ghost appears, a strange boy who cries black tears and fears a bad man, a soldier, who is chasing him. Soon Dom has become not Dom, and Pat can sense that his brother is going to die while their overwhelmed parents can’t even see whatʹs happening. Isolated and terrified, Pat needs to keep his brother’s cover while figuring out how to save him, drawing clues from his own dreams and Nan’s long ago memories, confronting a mystery that lies between this world and the next, within the Grey.
Chloe: If I Stay by Gayle Forman
Katie: The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
Movies and TV
Reese: Duck Dynasty
Chloe: Earth to Echo
Matt: Black Ops (XBOX 360)
Will: Oblivion (XBOX 360)
Reese: The Escapists (PC game)
Pick up one of this action-packed novels to get your heart racing again!
YA MARSDEN, J.
When Ellie and her friends go camping, they have no idea they’re leaving their old lives behind forever. Despite a less-than-tragic food shortage and a secret crush or two, everything goes as planned. But a week later, they return home to find their houses empty and their pets starving. Something has gone wrong–horribly wrong. Before long, they realize the country has been invaded, and the entire town has been captured–including their families and all their friends. Ellie and the other survivors face an impossible decision: They can flee for the mountains or surrender. Or they can fight.
YA GEBHART, R.
Thirteen-year-old Tyson sneaks off with his roughneck, but ill, grandpa to go on his first elk hunt, amid reports of a stalking man-eating grizzly.
YA STIEFVATER, M.
Nineteen-year-old returning champion Sean Kendrick competes against Puck Connolly, the first girl ever to ride in the annual Scorpio Races, both trying to keep hold of their dangerous water horses long enough to make it to the finish line.
YA LAYBOURNE, E.
Trapped inside a chain superstore by an apocalyptic sequence of natural and human disasters, six high school kids from various popular and unpopular social groups struggle for survival while protecting a group of younger children.
YA COLFER, E.
In Victorian London, Albert Garrick, an assassin-for-hire, and his reluctant young apprentice, Riley, are transported via wormhole to modern London, where Riley teams up with a young FBI agent to stop Garrick from returning to his own time and using his newly acquired scientific knowledge and power to change the world forever.
YA MY LANE, A.
In 1868, with his army officer father suddenly posted to India, and his mother mysteriously “unwell,” fourteen-year-old Sherlock Holmes is sent to stay with his eccentric uncle and aunt in their vast house in Hampshire, where he uncovers his first murder and a diabolical villain.
YA SMITH, R.
A fourteen-year-old boy attempts to be the youngest person to reach the top of Mount Everest.
YA SF LORE, P.
In rural Ohio, friendships and a beautiful girl prove distracting to a fifteen-year-old who has hidden on Earth for ten years waiting to develop the Legacies, or powers, he will need to rejoin the other six surviving Garde members and fight the Mogadorians who destroyed their planet, Lorien.
YA PATTERSON, J.
After the mutant Erasers abduct the youngest member of their group, the “bird kids,” who are the result of genetic experimentation, take off in pursuit and find themselves struggling to understand their own origins and purpose.
YA HOROWITZ, A.
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.
YA DEUKER, C.
Living with his alcoholic father on a broken-down sailboat on Puget Sound has been hard on seventeen-year-old Chance Taylor, but when his love of running leads to a high-paying job, he quickly learns that the money is not worth the risk.
YA CARTER, A.
A group of teenagers uses their combined talents to re-steal several priceless paintings and save fifteen-year-old Kat Bishop’s father, himself an international art thief, from a vengeful collector.
YA SF MULLIN, M
After the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano destroys his city and its surroundings, fifteen-year-old Alex must journey from Cedar Falls, Iowa, to Illinois to find his parents and sister, trying to survive in a transformed landscape and a new society in which all the old rules of living have vanished.
YA CLINE, E.
In the year 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the virtual utopia known as the Oasis. Wade’s devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world’s digital confines – puzzles that are based on their creator’s obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them. But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade’s going to survive, he’ll have to win – and confront the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape.
YA MY RITTER, W.
Newly arrived in 1892 New England, Abigail Rook becomes assistant to R.F. Jackaby, an investigator of the unexplained with the ability to see supernatural beings, and she helps him delve into a case of serial murder which, Jackaby is convinced, is due to a nonhuman creature.
YA SF MORGAN, K.
When 100 juvenile delinquents are sent on a mission to recolonize Earth, they get a second chance at freedom, friendship, and love, as they fight to survive in a dangerous new world.
YA CARRIGER, G.
In an alternate England of 1851, spirited fourteen-year-old Sophronia is enrolled in a finishing school where, she is surprised to learn, lessons include not only the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but also diversion, deceit, and espionage.
YA SF SANDERSON, B.
At age eight, David watched as his father was killed by an Epic, a human with superhuman powers, and now, ten years later, he joins the Reckoners–the only people who are trying to kill the Epics and end their tyranny.
YA SF YANCEY, R.
Cassie Sullivan, the survivor of an alien invasion, must rescue her young brother from the enemy with help from a boy who may be one of them.
YA SF CHARBONNEAU, J.
Sixteen-year-old Malencia (Cia) Vale is chosen to participate in The Testing to attend the University; however, Cia is fearful when she figures out her friends who do not pass The Testing are disappearing.
YA SF GRANT, M.
In the near future, the conjoined Armstrong twins, under the guise of the Armstrong Fancy Gifts Corporation, plot to create their own version of utopia using nanobots, while a guerilla group known as BZRK develops a DNA-based biot that can stop bots, but at risk of the host’s brain.
Yesterday morning the Youth Media Awards were held at the American Library’s Association’s Midwinter Conference. These awards are held annually and recognize some of the best books written for the year for kids and teens. Check out the recording of the awards ceremony and then take a look at the winning Teen books below!
Given for excellence in literature written for young adults.
Four Printz Honor Books also were named:
This One Summer also was named a Caldecott Honor Book: the Randolph Caldecott Medal is for the most distinguished American picture book for children.
Given for a debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens.
Four other books were finalists for the award:
Four other books were finalists for the award:
The Family Romanov was also named a Robert F. Sibert Informational Honor Book, for most distinguished informational book for children and teens:
These books, recommended for ages 12-18, meet the criteria of both quality literature and appeal to teens, while comprising a wide range of genres, styles and subjects. Click here to find the full list!
Top Ten list from the final selections:
The Crossover by Kwame Alexander
The Carnival at Bray by Jessie Ann Foley
Vango by Timothee de Fombelle
The Story of Owen Dragonslayer of Trondheim by E.K. Johnston
The Gospel of Winter by Brendan Kiely
We Were Liars by e. lockhart
The Young Elites by Marie Lu
I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
Jackaby by William Ritter
Noggin by John Corey Whaley
Coretta Scott King Honor Book: The Coretta Scott Kind Book Award recognizes an African American author and illustrator of outstanding books for children and young adults:
John Steptoe New Talent Author Award: The John Steptoe New Talent Award recognizes new talent and is determined by the Coretta Scott King Task Force:
Schneider Family Book Award’s Teen Selection: for books that embody an artistic expression of the disability experience:
Stonewall Honor Books: given annually to English-language children’s and young adult books of exceptional merit relating to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender experience:
Check out the books, movies, TV shows, and music that come highly recommended by our Teen Advisory Board Members!
Will: 1984 by George Orwell
Veronika: Empty by Suzanne Weyn
Ashley: Insurgent by Veronica Roth
Movies & TV
Will: Once Upon a Time
Julia: Law & Order
Chloe: If I Stay
Barbara: FourFiveSeconds by Rhianna, Kanye, and Paul McCartney; I Need You by M83
Kelsey: Symphony Soldier by The Cab, Pirates of the Caribbean film scores by Hans Zimmer
Julia: The Big Bang by Rock Mafia
Katie: The Heart Wants What it Wants and My Dilemma 2.0 by Selena Gomez; Sledgehammer by Fifth Harmony; Cry Me a River by Justin Timberlake; Something Big by Shawn Mendes