YALSA Best Books 2005

YALSA is the Young Adult Library Services Association. Each year, librarians and teens from across the country nominate and select the best books of the year written for young adults. Here is the Top 10 list from 2005. For the complete list of Best Books, visit http://www.ala.org/ala/yalsa/booklistsawards/bestbooksya/05bbya.htm .

All books are located in the Teen Room, unless otherwise noted. Click on the titles below to look up the book in the online catalog. If there is no link, you may go the the catalog and look the book up.

The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green by Joshua Braff (Fiction at Fairfield Woods)
Like a child, Jacob’s dad wants what he wants when he wants it and will throw a temper tantrum if he doesn't get it. In this book, Jacob shares the hilariously unthinkable thoughts he uses to survive and mentally escape life with his father.

Bucking the Sarge by Christopher Paul Curtis
Luther has got to get out of Flint, Michigan. His mother, the Sarge, milked the system to build an empire of slum housing and group homes. Luther’s just one of the many people trapped in the Sarge’s Evil Empire—but he’s about to bust out.

The Race to Save the Lord God Bird by Philip M. Hoose (Juvenile Non-Fiction 598.72)
The tragedy of extinction is explained through the dramatic story of a legendary bird, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, and of those who tried to possess it, paint it, shoot it, sell it, and, in a last-ditch effort, save it.

The Realm of Possibility by David Levithan
Meet a boy whose girlfriend is in love with Holden Caulfield; a boy with the perfect body; and a girl who writes love songs for a girl she can’t have; and the moments of love and heartbreak that go hand-in-hand with high school.

Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta
All Francesca wants is her old friends and her old school, but instead she is sent to an all-boys’ school that has just opened its doors to girls. Now she is surrounded by hundreds of boys, with few other girls for company. All of them weirdoes—or worse.

Private Peaceful by Michael Morpugo
For Private Peaceful, looking back while he is on watch in the battlefields of the First World War, his memories are full of his family, but every moment he spends thinking about his life means another moment closer to danger.

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel
Matt Cruse is a cabin boy on the Aurora, a huge airship. One night he meets a dying balloonist who speaks of beautiful creatures drifting through the skies.

Under the Wolf, Under the Dog by Adam Rapp
Burnstone Grove is a place for kids who are addicts or who attempt suicide, like Silent Starla. But Steve used to go to a gifted school. So why is he being held here?

Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood by Benjamin Alire Saenz
"Someone's gonna hurt you. And you're gonna wish you never had a heart." The warning quickly becomes reality as Sammy struggles with his girlfriend Juliana's violent death.

So B. It by Sarah Weeks (Juvenile Fiction)
Although she lives an unconventional lifestyle with her mentally disabled mother and doting neighbor, Bernadette, Heidi has a lucky streak that has a way of pointing her in the right direction.

November 21, 2006