Lists and Suggestions


Category: teens

List: Realistic Fiction

Barnes, John,

In September 1973, as the school year begins in his depressed Ohio town, high-school senior Kurt Sho...

Elkeles, Simone.

When wealthy, seemingly perfect Brittany and Alex Fuentes, a gang member from the other side of town...

Korman, Gordon.

Homeschooled by his hippie grandmother, Capricorn (Cap) Anderson has never watched television, taste...

Anderson, Laurie Halse.

A traumatic event near the end of the summer has a devastating effect on Melinda's freshman yea...

Marchetta, Melina,

Abandoned by her drug-addicted mother at the age of eleven, high school student Taylor Markham strug...

Abrahams, Peter,

After a knee injury destroys sixteen-year-old Cody's college hopes, he drops out of high school...

Jarzab, Anna.

After the death of his ex-girlfriend Carly, northern California high school student Neily joins forc...

Meyerhoff, Jenny.

Fifteen-year-old Essie Green, an orphan who has been raised by her secular Jewish grandparents in Mi...

Alexie, Sherman,

Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an ...

Berk, Josh.

When Will Halpin transfers from his all-deaf school into a mainstream Pennsylvania high school, he f...

Crawford, Brent.

Awkward freshman Will Carter endures many painful moments during his first year of high school befor...

Fredericks, Mariah.

Four students, who have formed a study group to prepare for the SAT exam, sustain each other through...

Petrucha, Stefan.

Caleb Dunne, the quintessential slacker, is pressured by his girlfriend to join a high school club b...

Preble, Laura.

Seeking more of their own kind and wanting to shake things up at school, fifteen-year-old Shelby and...

Standiford, Natalie.

After moving to Baltimore and enrolling in a private school, high school senior Beatrice befriends a...

Trigiani, Adriana.

When fourteen-year-old Viola is sent from her beloved Brooklyn to boarding school in Indiana for nin...

Volponi, Paul.

Arrested on a minor offense, a New York City teenager attends high school in the jail facility on Ri...

Zadoff, Allen.

Fifteen-year-old Andrew Zansky, the second fattest student at his high school, joins the varsity foo...

Efaw, Amy.

In complete denial that she is pregnant, straight-A student and star athlete Devon Davenport leaves ...

Freymann-Weyr, Garret,

When seventeen-year-old Leigh changes high schools his senior year to help his stepsister, he finds ...

Supplee, Suzanne.

When she is almost sixteen years old, Rosemary decides she is sick of being overweight, mocked at sc...

Nelson, Blake,

Through assignments for English class, seventeen-year-old James Hoff rants against consumerism and h...

Madigan, L. K.

"Telephoto lens. Zoom. In a shutter release millisecond, Blake's world turns upside down. ...

Myers, Walter Dean,

If Harlem high school senior Drew Lawson is going to realize his dream of playing college, then prof...

LaCour, Nina.

As Caitlin struggles to cope with her best friend Ingrid's suicide, she turns inward and quiet,...

Halpern, Julie,

When high school sophomore Jessie's long-term best friend transforms herself into a punk and go...

Williams-Garcia, Rita.

The lives of Leticia, Dominique, and Trina are irrevocably intertwined through the course of one day...

Stork, Francisco X.

Marcelo Sandoval, a seventeen-year-old boy on the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum, fac...

Hernandez, David,

Isabel and Carlos, both seventeen, find themselves growing closer after an unexpected accident force...

Korman, Gordon.

Lonely after a midsummer move to a new town, sixteen-year-old high-school quarterback Marcus Jordan ...

McKissack, Fredrick,

Jomo Rogers, a naturally talented athlete, starts taking performance enhancing drugs in order to be ...

Summers, Courtney.

Regina, a high school senior in the popular--and feared--crowd, suddenly falls out of favor and beco...

Skovron, Jon.

Sammy wants to be a musician, as was his grandfather, but while the band he is in is self-destructin...

Calame, Don.

"Fifteen-year-old Matt Gratton and his two best friends, Coop and Sean, always set themselves a...

Cantor, Jillian.

Throughout her freshman year of high school, fourteen-year-old Melissa struggles to hold onto memori...

Asher, Jay.

When high school student Clay Jenkins receives a box in the mail containing thirteen cassette tapes ...

Brown, Jennifer,

Sixteen-year-old Valerie, whose boyfriend Nick committed a school shooting at the end of their junio...

Awards

  • Abraham Lincoln Award
  • Awarded annually to the author of the book voted as most outstanding by Illinois high school students
  • Alex Award
  • Adult books that appeal to teen readers
  • Coretta Scott King Award
  • Outstandingly inspirational books that promote understanding and appreciation of the culture of all people
  • YALSA Book Awards and Booklists
  • The American Library Association’s Young Adult Library Services Association presents annual awards and puts out annual lists for various types of genres and materials