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Showing 1–15 of 15 books

  • Award year: 2000
  • Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child

    Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child

    By Elva Trevino Hart

    "My whole childhood, I never had a bed," begins Hart's bittersweet recollections about growing up one of six children in a migrant family that made the circuit from Texas to Minnesota each year. Her stories about her family, especially her stern but caring father, and about breaking away only to return home, show the moving struggle of an immigrant population, but also the universal personal struggle of finding, then acknowledging, oneself.
  • Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year

    Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year

    By Esmé Raji Codell

    This is a story about frustrations in the workplace, about refusing to conform, about taking a stand against mediocrity. The journal of a first-time teacher, her year with her fifth grade class, & her success teaching them reading & creative writing.
  • Ender's Shadow

    Ender's Shadow

    By Orson Scott Card

    An urchin is picked off the street by a nun and sent to war school to become a brilliant space-war strategist. An accomplished storyteller, Card weaves the everyday experiences of adolescence into broader narratives, addressing universal questions about humanity and society.
  • Hard Love

    Hard Love

    By Ellen Wittlinger

    With funning, fast-paced dialogue and vivid, off-beat characters, this story of love, friendship and a fractured family, is rooted in the contemporary zine scene.
  • High Exposure: An Enduring Passion for Everest and Unforgiving Places.

    High Exposure: An Enduring Passion for Everest and Unforgiving Places.

    By David Breashears

    Admittedly stubborn and driven, Breashears recounts his life story-recollections of his abusive father and tumultuous childhood; his discovery and dedication to mountain climbing, which he has always equated with humankind's belief in hope; and his entry into filmmaking. His account of his 1996 Everest IMAX Filming Expedition, during which he and his crew sought to rescue survivors and reclaim the bodies of the people caught in the well-publicized Everest calamity, is a natural link to Jon Krakauer's 1998 Alex winner, Into Thin Air. The danger, the audacity, the adventure will keep teens enthralled, and send them to the shelves to find similar titles.
  • The Hungry Ocean: A Swordboat Captain's Journey

    The Hungry Ocean: A Swordboat Captain's Journey

    By Linda Greenlaw

    Greenlaw, the captain of the Hanna Boden, sister ship to the Andrea Gail, whose loss was portrayed in 1998 Alex winner The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger, tells a different but equally fascinating story of life at sea. Hers is a record of a typical month-long swordfishing trip--the backbreaking work, the danger, the uncertainty of the weather, and the thrill of a gritty job that makes the sea a home. Writing has proven to be hard work, often painful, she says. I can honestly say I'd rather be fishing.
  • Imani All Mine

    Imani All Mine

    By Connie Rose Porter

    This deceptively simple first-person novel takes readers into the heart and mind of 15-year-old Tasha, whose love for her baby, Imani, is as plain as her fear of the rapist who fathered the child. In the stark language of a tough urban neighborhood, Tasha comes alive on the page as she struggles to reconcile her love and hope for her daughter with the violence that resulted in Imani's conception. A sad though ultimately hopeful novel, compelling from its very first page.
  • Monster

    Monster

    By Walter Dean Myers

    While waiting for his trial, Steve Harmon recounts the events that lead to his arrest.

  • Plainsong

    Plainsong

    By Kent Haruf

    They were always connected, in the way people in small towns are: the elderly McPheron brothers, unschooled but wise in other ways; high school teacher Tom Guthrie and his mischievous sons, Bobby and Ike; and Victoria Roubideaux, 17 and pregnant, with nowhere to go. In this plainspoken yet graceful story that is at once complex and elemental, Haruf deftly brings his characters together, slowly turning them into a family ready to face private fears with a renewed sense of hope, connection, and even joy.
  • The Reappearance of Sam Webber

    The Reappearance of Sam Webber

    By Jonathon Scott Fuqua

    There's a strong sense of place in this ultimately warm, reassuring novel set in a poor, racially tense Baltimore neighborhood. Sam Webber doesn't like his new home, a smelly apartment light years away from the middle-class area where he spent his first 11 years. Since his father's disappearance, he's felt responsible for protecting his mother, but he's so sad and scared he can't even help himself: druggies and muggers patrol the streets; bullies hound him in school. His only friend is the school's black janitor, who turns out to need Sam as much as Sam needs him. Themes of racism, urban violence, depression, and family structure threaded through the story make the book effective for discussion as well as for independent reading.
  • River, Cross My Heart

    River, Cross My Heart

    By Breena Clarke

    Strong-willed Alice Bynam is convinced that by moving to Georgetown, her family will have more economic and educational opportunity. That's true, but whites still rule the roost in the 1920s, and they've barred 10-year-old Johnnie Mae and her friends from swimming in a local pool. When Johnnie Mae opts for the river, instead, her younger sister, Clara, drowns, leaving her family and community behind to struggle with the personal loss and the legacy of racial injustice.
  • Skellig

    Skellig

    By David Almond

    A boy discovers a fragile, mysterious winged being sheltered in his garage in Skellig, edited by Lawrence David, and tries to help coping with anxiety and grief about his baby sister's critical illness.
  • Speak

    Speak

    By Laurie Halse Anderson

    Melinda, a teenage outcast at school, works through her trauma to find her voice.

  • Stardust

    Stardust

    By Neil Gaiman

    Many teens will already know Gaiman from his Sandman graphic novels and Neverwhere (1997). In this book, which makes fantasy accessible to a wide audience, 17-year-old Tristran Thorn pledges to fetch for his beloved a star that has fallen on the far side of the wall that marks the edge of the village where he lives. His quest takes him into the land of Fairie, where nothing along the way is really what it seems. Fantasy fans will see in this the work of many of their favorite writers; teens new to the genre will have a fine first reading experience; all will be charmed by the warmth and creativity of Gaiman's wonderful combination of comedy, romance, and energetic adventure.
  • Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

    Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

    By Chris Crutcher

    A six-time ALA Award winner, Crutcher writes novels that revolve around school, sports, friends and family. "His stories bring to life the contemporary teen world, including its darker side