Books in the News

How many of these favorite YA books have you read?
Here are the teen choice top 10 for 2007.

Go to the YALSA site to see top teen picks from previous years

	1. New Moon by Stephanie Meyer Legions of readers entranced by Twilight(Last year's Number 2) are hungry for more and they won't be disappointed. In New Moon, Stephenie Meyer delivers another irresistible combination of romance and suspense with a supernatural twist. The "star-crossed" lovers theme continues as Bella and Edward find themselves facing new obstacles, including a devastating separation, the mysterious appearance of dangerous wolves roaming the forest in Forks, a terrifying threat of revenge from a female vampire and a deliciously sinister encounter with Italy's reigning royal family of vampires, the Volturi. Passionate, riveting, and full of surprising twists and turns, this vampire love saga is well on its way to literary immortality.
	2. Just Listen by Sarah Dessen Last year, Annabel was "the girl who has everything"?at least that?s the part she played in the television commercial for Kopf ?s Department Store.This year, she?s the girl who has nothing: no best friend because mean-but-exciting Sophie dropped her, no peace at home since her older sister became anorexic, and no one to sit with at lunch. Until she meets Owen Armstrong. Tall, dark, and music-obsessed, Owen is a reformed bad boy with a commitment to truth-telling.With Owen?s help,maybe Annabel can face what happened the night she and Sophie stopped being friends. In this multi-layered, impossible-to-put-down book, Sarah Dessen tells the story of a year in the life of a family coming to terms with the imperfections beneath its perfect facade.
	3. How to Ruin a Summer Vacation by Simone Elkeles Going to Israel with her estranged father is the last thing Amy wants to do this summer. A spoiled American teenager with an attitude that matches her killer Jimmy Choo slides, she's got a serious grudge against her dad, a.k.a Sperm Donor, for showing up so rarely in her life. Now he's dragging her to a war zone to meet a family she's never known, including her ill grandmother who's the only source of comfort in this strange land. Sharing a room with her unfriendly cousin, igniting a brawl at the local disco, and having her Ferragamo sandal stolen by a mutt . . . one hilarious humiliation after another tests Amy's spirit. Finding her place in a foreign culture isn't easy, but as Amy learns to shed her tough-girl persona, she discovers that making friends, falling in love, and connecting with her family and heritage isn't impossible after all.
	4. Maximum Ride: School's Out - Forever by James Patterson "Adventure, fighting, backstabbing and love abound" (VOYA) in this action-packed follow-up to the #1 New York Times blockbuster Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment, now available in paperback. The heart-stopping quest of six winged kids--led by fourteen-year-old Max--to find their parents and investigate the mind-blowing mystery of their ultimate destiny continues when they're taken under the wing of an FBI agent and attempt, for the first time, to live "normal" lives. But going to school and making friends doesn't stop them from being relentlessly hunted by sinister spies, who lead Max to face her most frightening match yet: a new and better version of herself.
	5. Firegirl by Tony Abbott Tom Bender reflects, "On the outside it doesn't look like very much happened. A burned girl was in my class for a while. Once I brought her some homework. Then she was gone." The remainder of Firegirl considers the way outside appearances fail to portray the real story. Tom is overweight and unnoticed. Jessica Feeney, however, is impossible to ignore; a tragic fire has left horrible burns all over her body. The students at St. Catherine's avoid her, and they spread wild gossip about her. Tom's friend Jeff refuses to hold her hand during prayers. Yet Tom finds that from certain angles, Jessica almost looks like a regular girl, and by supporting her, however tentatively, he sacrifices everything he thought he wanted. In this poignant story, readers will recognize the insecurities of junior high and discover that even by doing small acts of kindness people stand to gain more than they lose.
	6. All Hallows Eve (13 Stories) by Vivian Vande Velde Creepy and gruesome, these horror stories all take place on Halloween night when high-school characters bridge the gap between the living and the dead. "He opened the door, and a body fell out, a young woman with a bloody T-shirt and a knife sticking out of her back." Bodies are sawed into pieces and packed in plastic bags while a serial killer roams free. The grisly detail is sometimes funny, whether it's the threat to suck out a teen's brains through his eye sockets, or parents dressed as vampires offering their daughter's date a drink--A, B, or O-negative. The plots also have surprising twists and turns, with the trickster often outtricked.
	7. Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer Miranda’s disbelief turns to fear in a split second when a meteor knocks the moon closer to the earth. How should her family prepare for the future when worldwide tsunamis wipe out the coasts, earthquakes rock the continents, and volcanic ash blocks out the sun? As summer turns to Arctic winter, Miranda, her two brothers, and their mother retreat to the unexpected safe haven of their sunroom, where they subsist on stockpiled food and limited water in the warmth of a wood-burning stove. Told in journal entries, this is the heart-pounding story of Miranda’s struggle to hold on to the most important resource of all--hope--in an increasingly desperate and unfamiliar world.
	8. River Secrets by Shannon Hale The kingdoms of Bayern and Tira have just completed a war, and Bayern teenager Rizzo is astonished when he is chosen to join a company of the castle's best soldiers on a diplomatic mission to Tira. Once the company arrives in Tira, he learns why he was selected: he sees and remembers everything, without "seeming to pay attention to anything beyond dinner," making him an excellent spy. Tension between the kingdoms heightens with a series of recurring, pyrotechnic murders, just as Rizzo falls for an intrepid young Tiran. The story's pace is leisurely, but Hale's accomplished writing will easily pull readers into her vividly realized world. The expertly chosen, often poetic details set and pace the story, and the fully drawn characters, whose dialogue crackles with wit, will point readers to the underlying themes of cultural prejudice and the corruption of power that touch on contemporary political debates. Suspenseful, magical, and heartfelt, this is a story that will wholly envelop its readers.
	9. Bad Kitty by Michele Jaffe Seventeen-year-old Jasmine (Jas) has wanted to be a detective since first grade, but her nose for trouble, as well as her penchant for dusting for fingerprints with eye shadow, drives her father crazy. He forces her to leave a plum police internship behind to go to Las Vegas for the family's summer vacation, but the city turns out to be "an EXCELLENT place to engage in amateur crime fighting." It isn't long before Jas and her three vacation-crashing friends are embroiled in a mystery involving a famous model, her family, and a three-legged cat. Jas, who narrates in breezy first person, is likable, quick-witted, and extremely funny.
	10. Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks Ruben Ford, 14, feels things. When his sister is murdered on the English moors, he knows she's dead even though he's home in London. He and his brother, Cole, 17, are freakishly linked by Ruben's power to feel what Cole feels. The teens travel to Dartmoor to find Rachel's killer and bring her body home. They're received by a Dickensian assortment of sadistic thugs, greasy criminals, and corrupt cops, all hiding something. Brooks's feel for mood and setting is masterful. A haunting, tense drama builds from the first line and only lets up for scenes of brutal, vivid violence that bring readers back down to earth. The murder is all but solved by the second half of the book, and the pace falters a bit as the resolution becomes obvious. However, Brooks sustains a mythical aura throughout, and rapid-fire action should keep teens engrossed.