Booklist for Teens Grades 9-10


Fiction
Title: Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Author: Sherman Alexie
Summary: Junior leaves the Spokane Indian reservation for the opportunity of a better education at an all-white school in a nearby town, but finds he doesn't fit in there any better than on the rez.


Title: Adoration of Jenna Fox
Author: Mary Pearson
Summary: Seventeen-year-old Jenna Fox wakes up after spending over a year in a coma. Her dad’s scientific discoveries in biotechnology may have saved her life, but at what cost?


Title: Annexed
Author: Sharon Dogar
Summary: Annexed tells Peter van Pel's side of the famous Anne Frank story, imagining his life in the attic with her and then later alone at Auschwitz.


Title: Before I Fall
Author: Lauren Oliver
Summary: Samantha, a popular mean girls, is killed on Valentine's Day in a terrible car accident and forced to live her last day of life over and over until she learns compassion and kindness.


Title: Born Confused
Author: Tanuja Desai Hidier
Summary: Shy, 17-year-old Dimple Lala feels like she doesn't belong in either India or in America, but her feelings begin to change when she sees her perfectly beautiful American best friend usurping her heritage and the boy she likes.


Title: Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
Author: E. Lockhart
Summary: Excluded from an all-male secret society at her elite boarding school, sophomore Frankie Landau-Banks creates an online persona and infiltrates the group in order to have its members unknowingly carry out her own witty pranks.


Title: Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things
Author: Carolyn Mackler
Summary: As the only one who isn't glamorous, Virginia feels like an outsider in her own family.


Title: East
Author: Edith Pattou
Summary: Rose leaves home with an enchanted white bear she discovers to be a lost prince, and to save him from the evil Troll Queen, must travel east of the sun and west of the moon.


Title: Elsewhere
Author: Gabrielle Zevin
Summary: When fifteen-year-old Liz wakes up disoriented on a cruise ship, she realizes she's dead and on her way to the after-life also known as Elsewhere. In Elsewhere she meets her grandmother and discovers people there age backward.


Title: Fat Cat
Author: Robin Brande
Summary: Catherine (Cat) decides to beat her former best friend in the science fair by living a prehistoric lifestyle for seven months; no cars, no phone, no computer, and no processed foods.


Title: Fat Kid Rules the World
Author: K. L. Going
Summary: Feeling suicidal because of his weight, Troy is about to jump off a subway platform when a legendary punk rock guitarist recruits him to be the drummer in his band.


Title: First Part Last
Author: Angela Johnson
Summary: Bobby has some new rules in his life because even though he's just a teenager, he's also a single father whose life has been divided into "then" and "now."


Title: Gingerbread
Author: Rachel Cohn
Summary: Cyd Charisse, a young girl with a painful secret and a wild streak, goes to New York to stay with her biological father and finally realizes that some secrets shouldn't be kept and families, like people, are never perfect.


Title: Great and Terrible Beauty
Author: Libba Bray
Summary: While at a Victorian London boarding school, Gemma experiences visions that lead her to another realm and provide a connection to her dead mother.


Title: Knife of Never Letting Go
Author: Patrick Ness
Summary: The women in Todd Hewitt’s settlement are dead due to germ warfare and the men can hear each other’s thoughts. When Todd discovers a place of quiet in his settlement he also discovers a terrible secret and must run away, but how do you run away when those chasing you can hear your thoughts?


Title: Lockdown
Author: Walter Dean Myers
Summary: Reese struggles to stay out of trouble in juvie while he develops an unexpected friendship through his work release program and worries about his younger siblings at home.


Title: North of Beautiful
Author: Justina Chen Headley
Summary: High school senior Terra feels like an outsider because of the port-wine birthmark on her face until she meets Jacob, a cute Goth with a cleft palette scar.


Title: Numbers
Author: Rachel Ward
Summary: Jem knows when you are going to die. When she looks you in the eye she sees numbers, which are your date of death. Jem befriends geeky Spider and the two quickly become fugitives as they flee a terrorist attack that Jem predicted.


Title: Perks of Being a Wallflower
Author: Stephen Chbosky
Summary: Through a series of letters to an unknown "friend," meet Charlie and follow the triumphs and tragedies of his freshman year in high school.


Title: Pirates!
Author: Celia Rees
Summary: When Nancy Kingston is shipped off to Jamaica for an arranged marriage, she rescues a young slave girl from a violent plantation overseer, leaving them both fugitives who must turn to piracy to survive.


Title: Ship Breaker
Author: Paolo Bacigalupi
Summary: Nailer lives a hard life salvaging oil and scrap metal from grounded tankers, but when he finds a rich girl’s yacht wrecked, he must choose between saving her or making his fortune stripping her ship.


Title: Someday This Pain will be Useful to You
Author: Peter Cameron
Summary: Disillusioned idealist eighteen-year-old James struggles to find his place in a world that always disappoints, fighting back with sarcasm, wit, and far-fetched schemes—a Catcher in the Rye for the twenty first century.


Title: Speak
Author: Laurie Halse Anderson
Summary: A traumatic experience at a party renders Melinda a virtually speechless social outcast


Title: Story of a Girl
Author: Sara Zarr
Summary: Deanna Lambert's reputation goes downhill after her dad catches her having sex in the backseat of Tommy’s car. She tries to start over, but her small town won't let her forget it.


Title: Ten Cents a Dance
Author: Christine Fletcher
Summary: Fifteen-year-old Ruby attempts to escape the poverty and helplessness of her neighborhood in 1940s Chicago by secretly becoming a taxi dancer, a dangerous and sometimes seedy job.


Title: Wee Free Men: A Story of Discworld
Author: Terry Pratchett
Summary: The young witch, Tiffany Aching, sets out to rescue her brother from Fairyland and is assisted by a frying pan and the Wee Free Men: tiny, blue Scotsmen who love nothing more than 'stealin' an' drinkin' an fightin'!"


Non-Fiction
Title: Charles and Emma: The Darwin's Leap of Faith
Author: Deborah Heiligam
Summary: Science vs. Religion takes center stage in the Darwin's home life: Charles, a devoted scientist, and his wife Emma, a devoted Christian, offer a balanced examination of the controversies related to the publication of Darwin's The Origin of Species.


Title: Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case
Author: Chris Crowe
Summary: Public outrage across the country helped fuel the Civil Rights Movement in 1955 as two white men from Mississippi were found innocent, then later publicly confessed, to murdering a black youth from Chicago.


Title: Hole in My Life
Author: Jack Gantos
Summary: The highly lauded author of humorous books for youth describes how he came to be in a federal penitentiary when he was 19 years old, and how he put his life back together after he served his time.


Title: Rocket Boys
Author: Homer H. Hickam, Jr.
Summary: Now a consultant for NASA, Homer tells how it all began: blowing up his backyard and building real rockets as a teen in a dirt-poor coal-mining town.


Title: Stick Figure: A Diary of My Former Self
Author: Lori Gottlieb
Summary: After meeting her popular, slender cousin and seeing everyone's approval of her dieting, the young Lori begins her own diet and is soon on her way to becoming a stick figure.