Recommended Reading

TWISTED
by Laurie Halse Anderson
After finally getting noticed by someone other than school bullies and his ever-angry father, seventeen-year-old Tyler enjoys his tough new reputation and the attentions of a popular girl, but when life starts to go bad again, he must choose between transforming himself or giving in to his destructive thoughts.

TITHE: A Modern Faerie Tale
by Holly Black
Sixteen-year-old Kaye, who has been visited by faeries since childhood, discovers that she herself is a magical faerie creature with a special destiny.

EVOLUTION, ME, AND OTHER FREAKS OF NATURE
by Robin Brande
Following her conscience leads high school freshman Mena to clash with her parents and former friends from their conservative Christian church, but might result in better things when she stands up for a teacher who refuses to include "Intelligent Design" in lessons on evolution.

BEING
by Kevin Brooks
After having a routine exam that turns out to be anything but routine, Robert learns about the mechanical parts and plastic casings that make up his being, forcing him to flee the only world he has ever known and go on a dangerous search to find out who (and what) he is.

PRINCESS DIARIES
by Meg Cabot
Fourteen-year-old Mia, who is trying to lead a normal life as a teenage girl in New York City, is shocked to learn that her father is the Prince of Genovia, a small European principality, and that she is a princess and the heir to the throne.

JUST LISTEN
by Sarah Dessen
Isolated from friends who believe the worst because she has not been truthful with them, sixteen-year-old Annabel finds an ally in classmate Owen, whose honesty and passion for music help her to face and share what really happened at the end-of-the-year party that changed her life.

THE TRUTH ABOUT FOREVER
by Sarah Dessen
The summer following her father's death, Macy plans to work at the library and wait for her brainy boyfriend to return from camp, but instead she goes to work at a catering business where she makes new friends and finally faces her grief.

BEFORE I DIE
by Jenny Downham
A terminally ill teenaged girl makes and carries out a list of things to do before she dies.

RIGHT BEHIND YOU
by Gail Giles
After spending over four years in a mental institution for murdering a friend in Alaska, fourteen-year-old Kip begins a completely new life in Indiana with his father and stepmother under a different name, but not only has trouble fitting in, he finds there are still problems to deal with from his childhood.

ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES
by John Green
Having been recently dumped for the nineteenth time by a girl named Katherine, recent high school graduate and former child prodigy Colin sets off on a road trip with his best friend to try to find some new direction in life while also trying to create a mathematical formula to explain his relationships.

LOOKING FOR ALASKA
by John Green
Sixteen-year-old Miles' first year at Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama includes good friends and great pranks, but is defined by the search for answers about life and death after a fatal car crash.

REPOSSESSED
by A.M. Jenkins
A fallen angel, tired of being unappreciated while doing his pointless, demeaning job, leaves Hell, enters the body of a seventeen-year-old boy, and tries to experience the full range of human feelings before being caught and punished, while the boy's family and friends puzzle over his changed behavior.

THE FIRST PART LAST
by Angela Johnson
Bobby's carefree teenage life changes forever when he becomes a father and must care for his adored baby daughter.

IF I HAVE A WICKED STEPMOTHER, WHERE’S MY PRINCE?
by Melissa Kantor
When the father of high school sophomore, Lucy Norton, remarries, Lucy finds herself tormented by two bratty stepsisters and a wicked stepmother.

MAGIC OR MADNESS
by Justine Larbalestier
From the Sydney, Australia home of a grandmother she believes is a witch, fifteen-year-old Reason Cansino is magically transported to New York City, where she discovers that friends and foes can be hard to distinguish.

THE WHITE DARKNESS
by Geraldine McCaughrean
Taken to Antarctica by the man she thinks of as her uncle for what she believes to be a vacation, Symone--a troubled fourteen year old--discovers that he is dangerously obsessed with seeking Symme's Hole, an opening that supposedly leads into the center of a hollow Earth.

TWILIGHT
by Stephanie Meyer
When seventeen-year-old Bella leaves Phoenix to live with her father in Forks, Washington, she meets an exquisitely handsome boy at school for whom she feels an overwhelming attraction and who she comes to realize is not wholly human.

ECLIPSE
by Stephanie Meyer
Bella must choose between her friendship with Jacob and her relationship with Edward, both vampires, but when Seattle is ravaged by a mysterious string of killings, the three of them need to decide whether their personal lives are more important than the well-being of an entire city.

NEW MOON
by Meyer, Stephenie
When the Cullens, including her beloved Edward, leave Forks rather than risk revealing that they are vampires, it is almost too much for eighteen-year-old Bella to bear, but she finds solace in her friend Jacob until he is drawn into a "cult" and changes in terrible ways.

MONSTER
by Walter Dean Myers
While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken.

LIFE AS WE KNEW IT
by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Through journal entries sixteen-year-old Miranda describes her family's struggle to survive after a meteor hits the moon, causing worldwide tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions.

HOW I LIVE NOW
by Meg Rosoff
To get away from her pregnant stepmother in New York City, fifteen-year-old Daisy goes to England to stay with her aunt and cousins, with whom she instantly bonds, but soon war breaks out and rips apart the family while devastating the land.

THE WEDNESDAY WARS
by Gary D. Schmidt
During the 1967 school year, on Wednesday afternoons when all his classmates go to either Catechism or Hebrew school, seventh-grader Holling Hoodhood stays in Mrs. Baker's classroom where they read the plays of William Shakespeare and Holling learns much of value about the world he lives in.

TANTALIZE
by Cynthia Leitich Smith
When multiple murders in Austin, Texas, threaten the grand re-opening of her family's vampire-themed restaurant, seventeen-year-old, orphaned Quincie worries that her best friend-turned-love interest, Keiren, a werewolf-in-training, may be the prime suspect.

THE MARKET
by J.M.  Steele
When Kate Winthrop learns that she is ranked seventy-first out of 140 high school senior girls on a popularity scale called the Millbank Social Stock Market, she and her two best friends set out to change her from a "junk bond" to a "blue chip," and win some money in the process.

SKIN
by Adrienne Maria Vrettos
When his parents decide to separate, eighth-grader Donnie watches with horror as the physical condition of his sixteen-year old sister, Karen, deteriorates due to an eating disorder.

PEEPS
by Scott Westerfeld
Cal Thompson is a carrier of a parasite that causes vampirism, and must hunt down all of the girlfriends he has unknowingly infected.

UGLIES
by Scott Westerfeld
Just before their sixteenth birthdays, when they will will be transformed into beauties whose only job is to have a great time, Tally's best friend runs away and Tally must find her and turn her in, or never become pretty at all.

AMERICAN BORN CHINESE
by Gene Luen Yang
Alternates three interrelated stories about the problems of young Chinese Americans trying to participate in the popular culture. Presented in comic book format.