AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
2011 Notable New Books for Young Adults

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2010 ALA Recommendations

ALA TOP TEN BOOKS FOR YOUNG ADULTS PUBLISHED IN 2010
POST-APOCALYPSE FICTION

Ship Breaker
by Paolo Bacigalupi

Nailer is a light crew scavenger tearing up old hulks of ships, living day to day, until a rich girl and her gleaming ship run ashore in a storm on the beach and his life gets more dangerous.

 

 

Revolution
by Jennifer Donnelly

The story centers on two girls – Andi lives in present day Brooklyn and has suffered the loss of her younger brother. Alex lived in 18th century Paris and witnessed one of the worst crimes of the French Revolution. Their stories converge when Andi travels to Paris and finds a diary hidden inside an old guitar case that belonged to Alex – the French girl.

HISTORICAL FICTION
FANTASY
REALISTIC FANTASY
REALISTIC FANTASY
DYSTOPIAN FICTION
Finnikin of the Rock
by Melina Marchetta
Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour
by Morgan Matson
Hold Me Closer, Necromancer
by Lish McBride
Trash
by Andy Mulligan
Finnikin and his fellow exiles from Lumatere wish to return to their cursed homeland. Finnikin must go on an epic journey with a mute novice named Evanjalin to return home. Amy and Roger must both learn to deal with loss while on a road trip across the country which doesn't go as expected. When Sam discovers he is a necromancer he must learn to control his power in order to defeat a powerful and corrupt rival and save his friends. Three garbage-picker boys find an item of great value to a corrupt politician on their rounds, setting off a tense hunt to see who will triumph.
REALISTIC FICTION: BURMA
REALISTIC FICTION
REALISTIC FICTION
REALISTIC FICTION

 
Bamboo People
by Mitali Perkins

The Things a Brother Knows
by Dana Reinhardt

Last Night I Sang to the Monster
by Benjamin Saenz

Revolver
by Marcus Sedgwick

Chiko, a Burmese soldier and Tu Reh, a Kerenni refugee meet on opposite sides of war and each must learn what it means to be a man of his people.

Boaz is back and hailed as the hometown hero, but he is not at all the same. Can his younger brother Levi help him truly make his way home? Weeks in therapy go by and 18-year-old Zach is still unable to remember the monstrous events that left him alone and haunted by nightmares. Sig is alone with his father’s body when the lawless man his father had managed to escape appears out of the icy wilderness.
MICHAEL L. PRINTZ AWARD BOOKS

2011 Michael L. Printz Award

The Michael L. Printz Award is for a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature. It is named for a Topeka, Kansas school librarian who was a long-time active member of the Young Adult Library Services Association.


2011 Winner
Ship Breaker

by Paolo Bacigalupi

Ship Breaker takes place near a drowned New Orleans, ravaged by hurricanes and global warming. Nailer and his young crew eke out a meager existence by scavenging materials on the ship-littered coast. “This taut, suspenseful novel is a relentless adventure story featuring nuanced characters in thought-provoking conflicts. Bacigalupi artfully intertwines themes of loyalty, family, friendship, trust and love,” said Printz Award Committee Chair Erin Downey Howerton.

2011 Printz Honor Books
REALISTIC FICTION REALISTIC FICTION

REALISTIC FICTION

REALISTIC FICTION
Stolen
by Lucy Christopher
Please Ignore Vera Dietz 
by A.S. King
Revolver
by Marcus Sedgwick
Nothing
by Janne Teller

The rugged Australian outback becomes Gemma’s prison after she is drugged and abducted by a handsome, obsessed stranger in a first novel filled with searing imagery and archetypal characters.

Vera Dietz wants to be ignored, but the ghost of her ex-best friend won’t leave her alone in this dark comedy that examines relationships, identity, grief and flowcharts.

In Sedgwick’s grim, chilling story set in the Arctic Circle, Sig finds his father’s frozen corpse as human predator Wolff arrives seeking retribution and a hidden Gold Rush treasure. 

Pierre Anthon’s nihilism causes his classmates to begin a search for life’s meaning in this bold, unsettling parable translated from Danish.

 

2011 ALEX AWARDS

The Alex Awards, through YALSA and cosponsored by Booklist and the Margaret A. Edwards Trust, honor the top 10 adult books, published during the previous year, with appeal to readers between the ages of 12 and 18.
ALEX Awards


FANTASY

FANTASY 
The Reapers Are the Angels
by Alden Bell
The Particular Sadness
of Lemon Cake

by Aimee Bender
Temple, 15, is accustomed to dealing with zombies, so she’s able to defend herself against the man who tries to assault her. But she must take to the road when his brother, Moses, comes after her. Along the way she meets Maury (slow and mute), who accompanies her during her dangerous journey through the zombie-infested landscape. Rose, 9, bites into her mother's homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother's emotions in the cake. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose.

REALISTIC FICTION

REALISTIC FICTION

MYSTERY

REALISTIC FANTASY

.

The House of Tomorrow
by Peter Bognanni
Room
by Emma Donoghue
Vanishing of Katharina Linden
by Helen Grant
The Radleys
by Matt Haig

Homeschooled teen Sebastian is forced by his grandmother's stroke to venture out of his geodesic dome habitat and befriends a chain-smoking teen who introduces him to pop culture through the punk band they form together.


Jack and his mother, kidnapped seven years earlier, celebrate his fifth birthday. They live in a tiny, 11 x 11 foot soundproofed cell in a converted shed in the kidnapper's yard. The sociopath, whom Jack has dubbed Old Nick, visits at night, grudgingly doling out food and supplies. But Ma, is planning an escape.

Pia (age ten) and her best friend are young detectives – interested in solving the mystery behind the disappearances of some local girls who disappeared many years ago.

 

The Radleys are vampires, but they confront many of the same challenges any human family faces. But when one child makes a mistake that can't be undone, family life is thrown into chaos as everyone tries to help with damage control.

REALISTIC FICTION
CULTURAL FICTION
MEMOIR
FANTASY

The Lock Artist
by Steve Hamilton
Girl in Translation
by Jean Kwok
Breaking Night
by Liz Murray
The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To
by DC Pierson

Michael (18) is no ordinary young man. Besides not uttering a single word in ten years, he discovers one thing he can do better than anyone else – he can open any lock. It's an unforgivable talent.


Kimberly Chang (11) and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn, and she begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl by day, Chinatown sweatshop worker by night. Kimberly learns to translate not just her language but herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles.

The memoir of a young woman who at age 15 was living on the streets but survived to make it to Harvard. Murray's story was featured in the Lifetime Original Movie "Homeless to Harvard."

 

Fifteen-year-old Darren, a social misfit who spends his time at school trying not to be noticed while drawing characters for a planned film series and book tie-ins, befriends Eric, another outcast who reveals that he never sleeps.

 

2011 YALSA BEST YOUNG ADULT NONFICTION

2011 WINNER

Janis Joplin:
Rise Up Singing

by Ann Angel

From her humble beginnings in a small town in Texas to her marquee life as a superstar of '60s rock, Janis Joplin remains an icon of music. Despite her short life, she left an indelible impression on the music of an era.

2011 NON-FICTION FINALISTS

KKK: AMERICAN TERRORISTS
SPIES AGAINST CIVIL RIGHTS
SPIES IN WARS
ARCHAEOLOGY

They Called Themselves the KKK
Susan Campbell Bartol
ett

Spies of Mississippi
Rick Bowers

The Dark Game
Paul Janeczko

Every Bone Tells a Story
Jill Rubalcaba and Peter Robertshaw

Bartoletti provides readers with an in-depth look at the formation  of the KKK and its subsequent evolution into a violent organization.  With  primary source material, she details  the horrific history of the Ku Klux Klan and the people who fell victim to its reign of terror.

In 1958, the state of Mississippi began an undercover operation, The Sovereignty Commission, to spy on and potentially squelch the Civil Rights movement.  Bowers' expose of this unknown organization reveals the extent to which some were willing to go to see segregation remain the law of the state. 

This compilation of different spies carries readers from the Revolutionary War through the infamous Cold War era.   Delve into stories about the Choctaw Code Talkers of WWI, Soviet moles, Mata Hari and more as you uncover just how they changed the course of history.

Through fieldwork, laboratory analysis, and scientific debate, the bones of Turkana Boy, Lapede Child, Kennewick Man and Iceman are used to tell the fascinating stories of four member of the human family tree.  Maps, photographs, and news headlines add to our understanding of archeology's cutting edge science.