This list of Best Books for Young Adults is created by a committee from the Young Adult Library Services Association, a division of the American Library Association. Teens attend special sessions to give the committee their opinions of the nominated titles. To be on the final list of Best Books the book must be of good literary quality and be popular reading for teens, ages 12-18.
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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.
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Sherman Alexie. Flight
Flight is the hilarious and tragic story of an orphaned Indian boy who travels back and forth through time in a charged search for his true identity. With powerful, swift prose, Flight follows the troubled teenager as he learns that violence is not the answer. The journey begins as he's about to commit a massive act of violence. At the moment of decision, he finds himself shot back through time to resurface in the body of an FBI agent during the civil rights era. It's only the first stop. He continues traveling back to inhabit the body of an Indian child during the battle at Little Bighorn and then ride with an Indian tracker in the 1800s before materializing as an airline pilot jetting through the skies today. During these furious travels through time, his refrain grows: "Who's to judge?" and "I don't understand humans." When finally the young warrior comes back to his own life, he is transformed by all he has seen.
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Laurie Halse Anderson. Twisted
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.
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Jay Asher. Th1rteen R3asons Why
When high school student Clay Jenkins receives a box in the mail containing thirteen cassette tapes recorded by his classmate Hannah, who committed suicide, he spends a bewildering and heartbreaking night crisscrossing their town, listening to Hannah's voice recounting the events leading up to her death.
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Ishmael Beah. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
In the more than fifty violent conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. In a Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah, now twenty-six years old, tells a story: at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. At sixteen, he was removed from fighting by UNICEF, and through the help of the staff at his rehabilitation center, he learned how to forgive himself, to regain his humanity, and finally, to heal.
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Robin Brande. Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature
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.
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Martha Brooks. Mistik Lake
After Odella's mother leaves her, her sisters, and their father in Manitoba and moves to Iceland with another man, she then dies there, and the family finally learns some of the many secrets that have haunted them for two generations.
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Melvin Burgess. Bloodsong
The new hope of the Volson clan, Sigurd, battles a highly advanced, gold-hoarding dragon, resulting in his fall into the underworld. But hope remains as Sigurd encounters his true love, Bryony, and accepts his destiny to reunite England.
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Peter Cameron. Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You
Eighteen-year-old James living in New York City with his older sister and divorced mother struggles to find a direction for his life.
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Janet Lee Carey. Dragon's Keep
In 1145 A.D., as foretold by Merlin, fourteen-year-old Rosalind, who will be the twenty-first Pendragon Queen of Wilde Island, has much to accomplish to fulfill her destiny, while hiding from her people the dragon's claw she was born with that reflects only one of her mother's dark secrets.
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Mike Carey. The Re-Gifters
Jen Dik Seong, aka "Dixie," is dirt poor and living on the ragged edge of LA's Koreatown. Her only outlet is the ancient martial art of hapkido, and she's on the verge of winning a championship--until she falls for surfer boy Adam.
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Anne Cassidy. Looking for JJ
Seventeen-year-old Alice, released from prison with a new identity after serving six years for murdering a child, tries to keep her anonymity from the British tabloids, while haunted by memories of her past trauma.
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Cecil Castellucci. Beige
Katy, a quiet French Canadian teenager, reluctantly leaves Montréal to spend time with her estranged father, an aging Los Angeles punk rock legend.
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Judith Clarke. One Whole and Perfect Day
As her irritating family prepares to celebrate her grandfather's eightieth birthday, sixteen-year-old Lily yearns for just one whole perfect day together.
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Ying Chang Compestine. Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party
Starting in 1972 when she is nine years old, Ling, the daughter of two doctors, struggles to make sense of the communists' Cultural Revolution, which empties stores of food, homes of appliances deemed "bourgeois," and people of laughter.
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Shauna Cross. Derby Girl
When sixteen-year-old rebel Bliss Cavendar, who is miserable living in a small Texas town with her beauty pageant-obsessed mother, secretly joins a roller derby team under the name "Babe Ruthless," her life gets better, although infinitely more confusing.
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Lynn Cullen. I Am Rembrandt's Daughter
In Amsterdam in the mid-1600s, Cornelia's life as the illegitimate child of renowned painter Rembrandt is marked by plague, poverty, and despair at ever earning her father's love, until she sees hope for a better future in the eyes of a wealthy suitor.
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Siobhan Dowd. A Swift Pure Cry
Coolbar, Ireland, is a village of secrets and Shell, caretaker to her younger brother and sister after the death of their mother and the absence of their father, is not about to reveal hers until suspicion falls on the wrong person.
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Jenny Downham. Before I Die
A terminally ill teenaged girl makes and carries out a list of things to do before she dies.
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Larry Doyle. I Love You, Beth Cooper
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Ann Dee Ellis. This Is What I Did
Bullied because of an incident in his past, eighth-grader Logan is unhappy at his new school and has difficulty relating to others until he meets a quirky girl and a counselor who believe in him.
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M. Sindy Felin. Touching Snow
After her stepfather is arrested for child abuse, thirteen-year-old Karina's home life improves but while the severity of her older sister's injuries and the urging of her younger sister, their uncle, and a friend tempt her to testify against him, her mother and other well-meaning adults pursuade her to claim responsibility.
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Gayle Friesen. For Now
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Gipi. Notes for a War Story
An astonishing urban fable of life in a lawless, war-torn nation, heightened by the uncanny artwork of Italy's maestro graphic novel author.
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Christopher Grey. Leonardo's Shadow: Or, My Astonishing Life as
Leonardo da Vinci's Servant Fifteen-year-old Giacomo--servant to Leonardo da Vinci--helps his procrastinating master finish painting "The Last Supper" while also trying to find clues to his parentage and pursue his own career as an artist in late fifteenth-century Milan.
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Shannon Hale. Book of a Thousand Days
Fifteen-year-old Dashti, sworn to obey her sixteen-year-old mistress, the Lady Saren, shares Saren's years of punishment locked in a tower, then brings her safely to the lands of her true love, where both must hide who they are as they work as kitchen maids.
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Stephanie Hemphill. Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia
Plath The author interprets the people, events, influences and art that made up the brief life of Sylvia Plath.
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Gareth Hinds. Beowulf
Graphic novel adaptation of the Old English epic poem, Beowulf.
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Nick Hornby. Slam
At the age of fifteen, Sam Jones's girlfriend gets pregnant and Sam's life of skateboarding and daydreaming about Tony Hawk changes drastically.
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Khaled Hosseini. A Thousand Splendid Suns
Mariam and Laila are born a generation apart but are are brought together by war and fate. Together they endure the dangers surrounding them and discover the power of both love and sacrifice.
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A. M. Jenkins. Repossessed
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.
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Marthe Jocelyn. How It Happened in Peach Hill
When fifteen-year-old Annie Grey and her "clairvoyant" mother arrive in Peach Hill, New York, in 1924, each finds a reason for wanting to finally settle down, but to reach their goals they will have to do some serious lying and Annie will have to stand up for herself.
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Tony Johnston. Bone by Bone by Bone
In 1950s Tennessee, ten-year-old David's racist father refuses to let him associate with his best friend Malcolm, an African American boy.
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Lloyd Jones. Mister Pip
On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with almost everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens's classic Great Expectations.
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Watt Key. Alabama Moon
After the death of his father, ten-year-old Moon leaves their forest shelter home and is sent to an Alabama institution, becoming entangled in the outside world he has never known and making good friends, a relentless enemy, and finally a new life.
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David Klass. Firestorm
After learning that he has been sent from the future for a special purpose, eighteen-year-old Jack receives help from an unusual dog and a shape-shifting female fighter.
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Elizabeth Knox. Dreamquake: Book Two of the Dreamhunter Duet
Aided by her family and her creation, Nown, Laura investigates the powerful Regulatory Body's involvement in mysterious disappearances and activities and learns, in the process, the true nature of the Place in which dreams are found.
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Ron Koertge. Strays
This smart, incisive new novel from master novelist Ron Koertge is a surprising story full of wit and insight about a boy learning to run with a new pack. Sixteen-year-old Ted OUConnor's parents just died in a fiery car crash, and now he's stuck with a set of psycho foster parents. He's having pretty much the worst year of his miserable life--or so he thinks.
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Margo Lanagan. Red Spikes
A writer this startling and this original doesn't come along very often. So for anyone who likes to be surprised, touched, unsettled, intrigued, or scared senseless, prepare to be dazzled by what a master storyteller can do in a few short pages.
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Derek Landy. Skulduggery Pleasant
When twelve-year-old Stephanie inherits her weird uncle's estate, she must join forces with Skulduggery Pleasant, a skeleton mage, to save the world from the Faceless Ones.
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Lat. Town Boy
Now a teenager at boarding school, Mat explores the possibilites of town life in Malaysia.
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E. Lockhart. Dramarama
Spending their summer at Wildewood Academy, an elite boarding school for the performing arts, tests the bond between teens Sadye and her best friend Demi.
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Barry Lyga. The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl
A fifteen-year-old "geek" who keeps a list of the high school jocks and others who torment him, and pours his energy into creating a great graphic novel, encounters Kyra, Goth Girl, who helps change his outlook on almost everything, including himself.
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Barry Lyga. Boy Toy
After five years of fighting his way past flickers of memory about the teacher who molested him and the incident that brought the crime to light, eighteen-year-old Josh gets help in coping with his molestor's release from prison when he finally tells his best friends the whole truth.
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Robin Merrow MacCready. Buried
When her alcoholic mother goes missing, seventeen-year-old Claudine begins to spin out of control, despite her attempts to impose order on every aspect of her life.
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Juliet Marillier. Wildwood Dancing
Five sisters who live with their merchant father in Transylvania use a hidden portal in their home to cross over into a magical world, the Wildwood.
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Geraldine McCaughrean. The White Darkness
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.
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China Mieville. Un Lun Dun
What is Un Lun Dun? It is London through the looking glass, an urban Wonderland of strange delights where all the lost and broken things of London end up . . . and some of its lost and broken people, too - including Brokkenbroll, boss of the broken umbrellas; Obaday Fing, a tailor whose head is an enormous pin-cushion, and an empty milk carton called Curdle. Un Lun Dun is a place where words are alive, a jungle lurks behind the door of an ordinary house, carnivorous giraffes stalk the streets, and a dark cloud dreams of burning the world. It is a city awaiting its hero, whose coming was prophesied long ago, set down for all time in the pages of a talking book. When twelve-year-old Zanna and her friend Deeba find a secret entrance leading out of London and into this strange city, it seems that the ancient prophecy is coming true at last. But then things begin to go shockingly wrong.
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Sarah Miller. Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller
At age twenty-one, partially-blind, lonely but spirited Annie Sullivan travels from Massachusetts to Alabama to try and teach six-year-old Helen Keller, deaf and blind since age two, self-discipline and communication skills. Includes historical notes and timeline.
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Perry Moore. Hero
Thom Creed, the gay son of a disowned superhero, finds that he, too, has special powers and is asked to join the very League that rejected his father, and it is there that Thom finds other misfits whom he can finally trust.
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Catherine Gilbert Murdock. The Off Season
High school junior D.J. staggers under the weight of caring for her badly injured brother, her responsibilities on the dairy farm, a changing relationship with her friend Brian, and her own athletic aspirations.
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Walter Dean Myers. What They Found: Love on 145th Street
Fifteen interrelated stories explore different aspects of love, such as a dying father's determination to help start a family business--a beauty salon--and the relationship of two teens who plan to remain celibate until they marry.
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Robert Olmstead. Coal Black Horse
When 14-year-old Robey Child is sent by his mother to search for his father, a doomed soldier, he witnesses the horrors of war both on and off the battlefield. Riding a talismanic coal black horse, he embarks upon a life-altering journey that will challenge him physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
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Mal Peet. Tamar
In England in 1995, fifteen-year-old Tamar, grief-stricken by the puzzling death of her beloved grandfather, slowly begins to uncover the secrets of his life in the Dutch resistance during the last year of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and the climactic events that forever cast a shadow on his life and that of his family.
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Laura Resau. Red Glass
Sixteen-year-old Sophie has been frail and delicate since her premature birth, but discovers her true strength during a journey through Mexico, where the six-year-old orphan her family hopes to adopt was born, and to Guatemala, where her would-be boyfriend hopes to find his mother and plans to remain.
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Laura Resau. What the Moon Saw
Fourteen-year-old Clara Luna spends the summer with her grandparents in the tiny, remote village of Yucuyoo, Mexico, learning about her grandmother's life as a healer, her father's decision to leave home for the United States, and her own place in the world.
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The Restless Dead: Ten Original Stories of the Supernatural
In this companion volume to "Gothic! ten original dark tales" discover why we fear the undead.
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J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Burdened with the dark, dangerous, and seemingly impossible task of locating and destroying Voldermort's remaining Horcruxes, Harry, feeling alone and uncertain about his future, struggles to find the inner strength he needs to follow the path set out before him.
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Gary D. Schmidt. The Wednesday Wars
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.
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Marcus Sedgwick. My Swordhand is Singing
In the dangerous dark of winter in an Eastern European village during the early seventeenth century, Peter learns from a gypsy girl that the Shadow Queen is behind the recent murders and reanimations, and his father's secret past may hold the key to stopping her.
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Brian Selznick. The Invention of Hugo Cabret
When twelve-year-old Hugo, an orphan living and repairing clocks within the walls of a Paris train station in 1931, meets a mysterious toyseller and his goddaughter, his undercover life and his biggest secret are jeopardized.
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William Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet
Adapted by Richard Appignanesi. Ideally suited for the manga format, Shakespeare's classic tragedy has teenage heroes, scheming and villainous adults, heartbreaking tragedy, and the ultimate romantic plot about star-crossed lovers.
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Robert Sharenow. My Mother the Cheerleader
Thirteen-year-old Louise uncovers secrets about her family and her neighborhood during the violent protests over school desegregation in 1960 New Orleans.
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Neal Shusterman. Unwind
In a future world where those between the ages of thirteen and eighteen can have their lives "unwound" and their body parts harvested for use by others, three teens go to extreme lengths to uphold their beliefs--and, perhaps, save their own lives.
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Roland Smith. Peak
A fourteen-year-old boy attempts to be the youngest person to reach the top of Mount Everest.
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Jordan Sonnenblick. Notes from the Midnight Driver
After being assigned to perform community service at a nursing home, sixteen-year-old Alex befriends a cantankerous old man who has some lessons to impart about jazz guitar playing, love, and forgiveness.
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James St. James. Freak Show
Inspired by his own experience, adult author ("Disco Bloodbath") and media personality James St. James makes his YA debut with this novel about a young drag queen who makes a grand entrance into a conservative high school.
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Shaun Tan. The Arrival
In this wordless graphic novel, a man leaves his homeland and sets off for a new country, where he must build a new life for himself and his family.
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Kate Thompson. The New Policeman
Irish teenager JJ Liddy discovers that time is leaking from his world into Tir na nOg, the land of the fairies, and when he attempts to stop the leak he finds out a lot about his family history, the music that he loves, and a crime his great-grandfather may or may not have committed.
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Rich Wallace. One Good Punch
Eigtheen-year-old Michael Kerrigan, writer of obituaries for the Scranton Observer and captain of the track team, is ready for the most important season of his life--until the police find four joints in his school locker, and he is faced with a choice that could change everything.
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Beckie Weinheimer. Converting Kate
After moving from Arizona to Maine, sixteen-year-old Kate tries to recover from her father's death as she resists her mother's dogmatic religious beliefs and attempts to find a new direction to her life.
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Laura Wiess. Such a Pretty Girl
Haunted by flashbacks, fifteen-year-old Meredith learns that three years in prison has not changed the abusive father who molested her.
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Jake Wizner. Spanking Shakespeare
Shakespeare Shapiro navigates a senior year fraught with feelings of insecurity while writing the memoir of his embarrassing life, worrying about his younger brother being cooler than he is, and having no prospects of ever getting a girlfriend.
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Sara Zarr. Story of a Girl
In the three years since her father caught her in the back seat of a car with an older boy, sixteen-year-old Deanna's life at home and school has been a nightmare, but while dreaming of escaping with her brother and his family, she discovers the power of forgiveness.
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Gabrielle Zevin. Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac
After a nasty fall, Naomi realizes that she has no memory of the last four years and finds herself reassessing every aspect of her life.
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