2007

Sherman Alexie.  The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.

2006

M. T. Anderson.  The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor

to the Nation, Vol. One:  The Pox Party Various diaries, letters, and other manuscripts chronicle the experiences of Octavian, a young African American, from birth to age sixteen, as he is brought up as part of a science experiment in the years leading up to and during the Revolutionary War.

2005

Jeanne Birdsall.  The Penderwicks

While vacationing with their widowed father in the Berkshire Mountains, four lovable sisters, ages four through twelve, share adventures with a local boy, much to the dismay of his snobbish mother.

2004

Pete Hautman.  Godless

When sixteen-year-old Jason Bock and his friends create their own religion to worship the town's water tower, what started out as a joke begins to take on a power of its own.

2003

Polly Horvath.  The Canning Season

Thirteen-year-old Ratchet spends a summer in Maine with her eccentric great-aunts Tilly and Penpen, hearing strange stories from the past and encountering a variety of unusual and colorful characters.

2002

Nancy Farmer.  The House of the Scorpion

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.  El Patron loves Matt as he loves himself, because Matt is himself. As Matt struggles to understand his existence, he is threatened by a sinister cast of characters, including El Patron's power-hungry family, and he is surrounded by 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.

2001

Virginia Euwer Wolff.  True Believer

Living in the inner city amidst guns and poverty, fifteen-year-old LaVaughn learns from old and new friends, and inspiring mentors, that life is what you make it--an occasion to rise to.

2000

Gloria Whelan.  Homeless Bird

When thirteen-year-old Koly enters into an ill-fated arranged marriage, she must either suffer a destiny dictated by India's tradition or find the courage to oppose it.

1999

Kimberly Willis Holt.  When Zachary Beaver Came to Town

During the summer of 1971 in a small Texas town, thirteen-year-old Toby and his best friend Cal meet the star of a sideshow act, 600-pound Zachary, the fattest boy in the world.

1998

Louis Sachar.  Holes

As further evidence of his family's bad fortune, which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.

1997

Han Nolan.  Dancing on the Edge

A young girl from a dysfunctional family creates for herself an alternative world which nearly results in her death but which ultimately leads her to reality.

1996

Victor Martinez.  Parrot in the Oven:  Mi Vida

Manny relates his coming of age experiences as a member of a poor Mexican American family in which the alcoholic father only adds to everyone's struggle.

1983--Hardcover Fiction

Jean Fritz.  Homesick:  My Story

The author's fictionalized version, though all the events are true, of her childhood in China in the 1920's.

1983--Paperback Fiction

Joyce Carol Thomas.  Marked by Fire

1983--Nonfiction

James Cross Giblin.  Chimney Sweeps

Traces the history and folklore of the chimney -sweeping profession from the fifteenth century to the present day, emphasizing the plight of the often abused climbing boys of past centuries.

1983--Hardcover Picture Book

William Steig.  Doctor De Soto

Dr. De Soto, a mouse dentist, copes with the toothaches of various animals except those with a taste for mice, until the day a fox comes to him in great pain.

1983--Hardcover Picture Book

Barbara Cooney.  Miss Rumphius

As a child Great-aunt Alice Rumphius resolved that when she grew up she would go to faraway places, live by the sea in her old age, and do something to make the world more beautiful--and she does all those things, the last being the most difficult of all.

1983--Paperback Picture Book

Mary Ann Hoberman.  A House Is a House for Me

Lists in rhyme the dwellings of various animals and things.

1982--Hardcover Fiction

Lloyd Alexander.  Westmark

A boy fleeing from criminal charges falls in with a charlatan, his dwarf attendant, and an urchin girl, travels with them about the kingdom of Westmark, and ultimately arrives at the palace where the king is grieving over the loss of his daughter.

1982--Paperback Fiction

Ouida Sebestyen.  Words by Heart

A young black girl struggles to fulfill her papa's dream of a better future for their family in the southwestern town where, in 1910, they are the only blacks.

1982--Nonfiction

Susan Bonners.  A Penguin Year

An introduction to the physical characteristics, habits, and natural environment of the Adelie penguins of Antarctica.

1982--Hardcover Picture Book

Maurice Sendak.  Outside Over There

With Papa off to sea and Mama despondent, Ida must go outside over there to rescue her baby sister from goblins who steal her to be a goblin's bride.

1982--Paperback Picture Book

Peter Spier.  Noah's Ark

Retells in pictures how a pair of every manner of creature climbed on board Noah's ark and thereby survived the Flood.

1981--Hardcover Fiction

Betsy Byars.  The Night Swimmers

With their mother dead and their father working nights, Retta tries to be mother to her two younger brothers but somehow things just don't seem to be working right.

1981--Paperback Fiction

Beverly Clearly.  Ramona and Her Mother

Ramona at 7 1/2 sometimes feels discriminated against by being the youngest in the family.

1981--Nonfiction

Alison Cragin Herzig & Jane Lawrence Mali.  Oh, Boy!  Babies

A photo essay of a class in infant care given to fifth and sixth grade boys with the help of mothers and real babies.

1979

Katherine Paterson.  The Great Gilly Hopkins

An eleven-year-old foster child tries to cope with her longings and fears as she schemes against everyone who tries to be friendly.

1978

Judith & Herbert Kohl.  The View from the Oak

Attempts to enable us to view the world of ticks, flies, birds, jelly fish, and other animals through their senses, not our own.

1977

Katherine Paterson.  The Master Puppeteer

A thirteen-year-old boy describes the poverty and discontent of eighteenth century Osaka and the world of puppeteers in which he lives.

1976

Walter D. Edmonds.  Bert Breen's Barn

A young man attempts to claim ownership to an old barn rumored to contain a hidden treasure.

1975

Virginia Hamilton.  M. C. Higgins, the Great

As a slag heap, the result of strip mining, creeps closer to his house in the Ohio hills, fifteen-year-old M.C. is torn between trying to get his family away and fighting for the home they love.

1974

Eleanor Cameron.  The Court of the Stone Children

Aided by the journal of a young woman who lived in nineteenth-century France, Nina solves a murder mystery dormant since the time of Napoleon.

1973

Ursula Le Guin.  The Farthest Shore

A young prince joins forces with a master wizard on a journey to discover a cause and remedy for the loss of magic in Earthsea.

1972

Donald Barthelme.  The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine

1971

Lloyd Alexander.  The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian

When he loses his place as fourth fiddler in a noble household, Sebastian sets out into the world to seek his fortune.

1970

Isaac Bashevis Singer.  A Day of Pleasure:  Stories of a Boy

Growing Up in Warsaw   Nineteen autobiographical stories about the author's childhood in Poland from 1908 to 1918.

1969

Meindert DeJong.  Journey from Peppermint Street