Teen Services
Top 10 Best Books for Teens in 2003
All books are listed in alphabetical order by author. Click here to see if a book is in!
Catalyst
by Laurie Halse Anderson
Eighteen-year-old Kate, who sometimes chafes at being a preacher's daughter, finds herself losing control in her senior year as she faces difficult neighbors, the possibility that she may not be accepted by the college of her choice, and an unexpected death.
Feed
by M.T. Anderson
The future in which everyone has a mini-computer with internet access implanted in his head. For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon - a chance to party during spring break and play with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy girl who has decided to fight the feed and its omnipresent ability to categorize human thoughts and desires.
Things Not Seen
by Andrew Clements
When fifteen-year-old Bobby wakes up and finds himself invisible, he and his parents and his new blind friend Alicia try to find out what caused his condition and how to reverse it.
The House of the Scorpion
by Nancy Farmer
Matteo Alacran was not Born; He was Harvested. His DNA came from El Patron, lord of a country called Opium -- a strip of poppy fields lying between the United States and what was once called Mexico. Matt is a clone, but most consider him a monster -- except for El Patron. As Matt struggles to understand his existence, he is threatened by a sinister cast of characters, including El Patron's power-hungry family, and a dangerous army of bodyguards. Escape is the only chance Matt has to survive. But escape from the Alacran Estate is no guarantee of freedom, because Matt is marked by his difference in ways he doesn't even suspect.
America
by E.R. Frank
Fifteen-year-old America has been nowhere, has been nobody. Separated from his foster mother. A runaway. A patient. Without love. Without hope. And, eventually, without the will to live. Until Dr. B. steps in. To listen. To explore. And to find within America both the story and the boy who are lost. Teenage America, a not-black, not-white, not-anything boy who has spent many years in institutions for disturbed, antisocial behavior, tries to piece his life together.
Son of the Mob
by Gordon Korman
Seventeen-year-old Vince's life is constantly complicated by the fact that he is the son of a powerful Mafia boss, a relationship that threatens to destroy his romance with the daughter of an FBI agent.
The Lightkeeper's Daughter
by Iain Lawrence
A teenage mother tries to reconcile with her lighthouse-keeping parents, despite feeling that it was their remote and lonely lifestyle that led to her brother's death.
Left for Dead: A Young Man's Search for Justice on the USS Indianapolis
by Peter Nelson
Just after midnight on July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. Those who survived the fiery sinking struggled to stay afloat in shark-infested waters as they waited for rescue. But the United States Navy did not even know they were missing. The Navy needed a scapegoat for this disaster. So it court-martialed the captain for "hazarding" his ship. The survivors of the Indianapolis knew that their captain was not to blame. For 50 years they worked to clear his name, even after his untimely death. But the navy would not budge - until an 11-year-old boy named Hunter Scott entered the picture. His history fair project on the Indianapolis soon became a crusade to restore the captain's good name and the honor of the men who served under him.
19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East
by Naomi Shihab Nye
Poetry and stories of the Middle East through the eyes of an American child, as well as of America through the eyes of Middle Easterners.
This Land Was Made For You and Me: The Life & Songs of Woody Guthrie
by Elizabeth Partridge
Before Springsteen and before Dylan, there was Woody Guthrie. With "This Machine Kills Fascists," scrawled across his guitar in big black letters, Woody Guthrie brilliantly captured in song the experience of twentieth-century America. Whether he sang about union organizers, migrant workers, or war, Woody took his inspiration from the plight of the people around him as well as from his own tragic childhood.