Friday, February 25, 2011

2011 Alex Awards

The Alex Awards are given to ten books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18. The winning titles are selected from the previous year's publishing. The Alex Awards were first given annually beginning in 1998 and became an official ALA award in 2002. Link to this page using its short URL, www.ala.org/yalsa/booklists/alex 

2011 Winners

The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to HarvardGirl in TranslationThe House of Tomorrow
The Lock ArtistThe Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: A Novel The Radleys The Reapers Are the Angels: A Novel
Room: A Novel The Vanishing of Katharina Linden: A Novel
  • The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To by DC Pierson
  • Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard by Liz Murray
  • Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok
  • The House of Tomorrow by Peter Bognanni
  • The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton
  • The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: A Novel by Aimee Bender
  • The Radleys by Matt Haig
  • The Reapers Are the Angels: A Novel by Alden Bell
  • Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue
  • The Vanishing of Katharina Linden: A Novel by Helen Grant

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

Nailer lives in a world where oil is scarce and melting ice caps have submerged coastal cities.  His father is an unreliable alcoholic so Nailer must earn a living by scavenging grounded oil tankers for copper wiring and scrap metal.  After a hurricane sweeps the coastal region, Nailer and his crewmate Pima discover a beached but luxurious clipper ship as well as the ship’s lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl called Nita.  Now Nailer must make a choice: strip the ship’s resources to become rich and please his father or rescue the girl and perhaps find a way out of the world of ship-breaking.

Ship Breaker recently won the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in Young Adult Literature.


Kimberly

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Anti-Valentine's Day Books

Feeling unromantic or cynical this time of year?  Check out some of these great titles about the not-so-glamorous side of love:

Prom  by Laurie Halse Anderson
Twisted  by Laurie Halse Anderson
Paper Towns by John Green
Thirty Days to Getting Over the Dork You Used to Call Your Boyfriend by Clea Hantman

From YALSA

Kimberly

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Exit Strategy by Ryan Potter

Seventeen year old Zach Ramsey has a plan to escape Blaine, Michigan, the factory town where he has spent his whole life. He hopes to attend college after his senior year, but his summer activities end up getting him very far off track. Among other bad decisions, Zach takes money from his boss at the liquor store to spy on his best friend Tank’s dad, develops an uncontrollable crush on Tank’s sister, figures out a way to steal liquor from the store and sell it to his underage friends, and decides to start an investigation into a local steroid ring that Tank and Blaine’s much heralded football coach just might be a part of. Exit Strategy is a harsh, edgy novel filled with risky and questionable behavior, but the book is also filled with darkly comic, suspenseful scenes. Zach might not learn typical lessons by novel’s end, but he survives his summer of poor thinking and lives to tell about it.
John