Teens

Tayshas Book List 2008-2009 To find out if Houston Public Library owns a copy of these titles, please click on a title.

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Last Updated March 15, 2009

• B B224 - Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood by Ibtisam Barakat
  Barakat tells the story of her childhood, filled with more war than peace. Never having a lasting physical home, she finds peace and stability in words and language.
• B B365 - A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ismael Beah
  At 12 years of age, Ishmael, is forced to join Sierra Leone's army in their brutal civil war or starve to death. A journey from a normal boy to a drug addicted killing machine and back.
• HOSSE - A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
  After her mother commits suicide, the fifteen-year-old, illigetimate daughter of an Afghan merchant is married off to a man in his forties and moved hundreds of miles from home to live in Kabul, Afghanistan.
• MCCAR - The Road by Cormac McCarthy
  In the future, a father and his young son travel through the burned out country looking for food and avoiding other humans who could be cannibalistic.
• PICOU - Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
  The people of Sterling, New Hampshire, are forever changed after a shooting at the high school leaves ten people dead, and the judge presiding over the trial tries to remain unbiased, even though her daughter witnessed the events and was friends with the assailant.
• SETTE - The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
  A compelling emotional mystery about family secrets and the magic of books and storytelling. A dying writer bids a young bookshop assistant to write her biography.
• YA 616.85263 S558 - Inside Out by Nadia Shivack
  The author describes living with "Ed," her eating disorder.
• YA 741.5973 C348 - The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci
  Jane's parents make the decision to move from the city to suburbia and Jane is decidedly unhappy about it. Especially since everyone knows that suburbs are a gaping void of cultural activity. So she does what any girl would do in her situation, create her own guerilla art group to shake things up.
• YA ALEXI - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
  Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Native American is the school mascot.
• YA ANDER - Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson
  Tyler, who has always been an unpopular nobody, gains stature the summer before his senior year when he pulls off an impressive prank. Unfortunately his notoriety as a "bad boy" leads to false accusations that get him in serious trouble during an out-of-control party.
• YA BINGH - Shark Girl by Kelly Bingham
  After a shark attack causes the amputation of her right arm, fifteen-year-old Jane, an aspiring artist, struggles to come to terms with her loss and the changes it imposes on her day-to-day life and her plans for the future.
• YA BROOK - Being by Kevin Brooks
  It was just a routine examination, or it was supposed to be. What the doctors found inside Robert Smith was anything but normal. Escaping with a stolen gun and a video of silver filaments and moving metal parts in his stomach, Robert goes in search of who--or what--he is.
• YA CALET - The Nature of Jade by Deb Caletti
  Seattle high school senior Jade's life is defined by her anxiety disorder and dysfunctional family, until she spies a mysterious boy with a baby who seems to share her fascination with the elephants at a nearby zoo.
• YA CASTE - Beige by Cecil Castellucci
  Katy, a quiet French Canadian teenager, reluctantly leaves Montréal to spend time with her estranged father, an aging Los Angeles punk rock legend.
• YA COLE - Thieves Like Us by Stephen Cole
  A mysterious benefactor hand-picks a group of teen geniuses to follow a set of clues leading to the secrets of everlasting life, secrets which they must steal and for which they risk being killed.
• YA COLLI - Star-Crossed by Linda Collison
  When her father’s death forces her to leave her boarding school, Patricia stowaways on a ship in eighteenth century England in order to travel to Barbados to seek her inherited plantation.
• YA COMPE - Revolution is Not a Dinner Party by Ying Chang Compestine
  A young girl’s life changes dramatically when her family lives through the cultural revolution in China during the 1970’s.
• YA COONE - Enter Three Witches by Caroline B. Cooney
  The Shakespearean play Macbeth comes alive in this historical fantasy fiction with new characters and old grievances.
• YA CRUTC - Deadline by Chris Crutcher
  After being given the medical diagnosis of just one year to live, high school senior Ben Wolf decides to fulfill his greatest fantasies, ponders his life's purpose and legacy, and converses through dreams with a spiritual guide known as "Hey-Soos."
• YA DAVIS - Not Like You by Deborah Davis
  When she and her mother move once again in order to make a new start, fifteen-year-old Kayla is hopeful that her mother will be able to stop drinking and begin a better life, as she has been promising for years
• YA DEVIT - The Silenced by James DeVita
  Three teens attend their futuristic, military-type high school where books and paper are taken away, the government policies become the daily curriculum, and creating an underground resistance group become their only hope.
• YA ELLSW - In Search of Mockingbird by Loretta Ellsworth
  On the eve of her sixteenth birthday, Erin receives her long-dead mother's diary, which reveals that she too revered Harper Lee's "To kill a Mockingbird" and wanted to be a writer. Erin impulsively decides to take the Greyhound bus from St. Paul Minnesota to Monroeville, Alabama, to visit the reclusive author.
• YA FROST - The Braid by Helen Frost
  Two Scottish sisters, living on the western island of Barra in the 1850s, relate, in alternate voices and linked narrative poems, their experiences after their family is forcibly evicted and separated.
• YA FULLE - Walking on Glass by Alma Fullerton
  A teenage boy writes in his journal in response to events that lead to his mother's comatose state. As he deals, he spirals out of control with his friends, actions, and feelings.
• YA HALE - Dark Water Rising by Marian Hale
  Looking for work, Seth and his family move to Galveston before the 1900 storm devastates the island and changes their lives forever.
• YA HARAZ - Blood Brothers by S.A. Harazin
  When his best friend collapses into a coma after an apparent drug overdose, Clay investigates what happened although he himself may be a suspect in drugging his friend.
• YA HOFFM - Incantation by Alice Hoffman
  During the Spanish Inquisition, sixteen-year-old Estrella, brought up a Catholic, discovers her family's true Jewish identity, and when their secret is betrayed by Estrella's best friend, the consequences are tragic.
• YA JANSE - Over a Thousand Hills I Walk With You by Hanna Jansen
  In 1994 over one million Tutsis were murdered by their Hutu neighbors in Rwanda. This novel was inspired by the experiences of a young Rwandan girl during the genocide.
• YA JOHNS - Accidents of Nature by Harriet McBryde Johnson
  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.
• YA JOHNS - Devilish by Maureen Johnson
  Jane Jarvis, a senior at a Catholic girl's school in Providence, Rhode Island, tries to save her best friend by making a pact with a demon--in the form of a cupcake-eating, very friendly teenage girl.
• YA KLEIN - Ophelia: A Novel by Lisa Klein
  Everyone who has read Hamlet knows Ophelia goes mad and drowns herself in the river. But what if that isn’t really what happened? What if Shakespeare got it all wrong?
• YA LASKA - The Miner’s Daughter by Gretchen Moran Laskas
  Willa Lowell lives in a coal-mining town in West Virginia and helps to take care of her family during the Great Depression and Roosevelt's New Deal that might just save them all.
• YA LEAVI - Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt
  When Lord Death comes to claim sixteen-year-old Keturah while she is lost in the King's Forest, she charms him with her story and is granted a twenty-four hour reprieve in which to seek her one true love.
• YA LEWIS - The Killing Sea by Richard Lewis
  Native Indonesian boy Ruslan and American tourist teenager Sarah survive the tsunami in December of 2004, but must find a doctor for Sarah's sick younger brother Peter before locating both of their missing fathers.
• YA LIPSY - Raider’s Night by Robert Lipsyte
  Matt Rydeck, co-captain of his high school football team, endures a traumatic season as he witnesses the rape of a rookie player by teammates and grapples with his own use of performance-enhancing drug.
• YA LYGA - The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl by Barry Lyga
  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.
• YA MARR - Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr
  Aislann has seen fairies all of her life but kept it a secret. Now she's been chosen to be the new Summer Queen and the fairies are flocking to her, including the king's mother who wants her dead.
• YA MCCLI - Tell by Norah McClintock
  In poker, a "tell" is a sign that someone is bluffing. However, the police aren't bluffing when they start questioning David about his involvement in his stepfather's murder. Only by discovering his stepfather's "tell" can David prove his innocence.
• YA MCNEA - The Decoding of Lana Morris by Laura and Tom McNeal
  Sixteen-year-old Lana Morris wants her life to be different. When she stumbles into Miss Hekkity’s mysterious shop she realizes she might actually have the power to change things and finds out that wishes can be dangerous.
• YA MOORE - Hero: A Novel by Perry Moore
  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.
• YA MORIA - The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie by Jaclyn Moriarty
  Class brain Bindy Mackenzie has alienated her entire high school but when she realizes someone is trying to kill her, she has to make friends in order to get help.
• YA NA - Wait for Me by An Na
  As her senior year in high school approaches, Mina yearns to find her own path in life but working at the family business, taking care of her little sister, and dealing with her mother’s impossible expectations are as stifling as the southern California heat, until she falls in love with a man who offers a way out.
• YA PAUSE - Dark Hours by Gudrun Pausewang
  Pausewang draws on her personal experience to dramatize what it was like for German children at the end of WWII, when the Russians and the Allies were bombing their country. Gisel, 15, flees her village home. Separated from her mother and grandmother in the crowds of refugees, she must care for herself and her younger siblings after all are trapped under the rubble of a bombed building.
• YA PEET - Tamar by Mal Peet
  Fifteen-year-old Tamar inherits a box from her grandfather and namesake, containing a series of clues and coded messages that lead her to find out his story of life as an undercover operative in Nazi-occupied Holland.
• YA RABB - Cures for Heartbreak by Margo Rabb
  As she navigates adolescence, ninth-grader Mia must deal with her mother's recent death and her father's illness while she searches for friendship and love in the world around her.
• YA RESAU - Red Glass by Laura Resau
  Sixteen-year-old Sophie feels afraid of almost everything, but when her family takes in a young Mexican boy whose parents died while trying to cross the Arizona border, she discovers an inward strength she never knew she had.
• YA RYAN - Saving Grace by Darlene Ryan
  After giving her baby up for adoption, Evie has second thoughts and kidnaps the baby before running away with her boyfriend.
• YA SANDE - Song of the Sparrow by Lisa Ann Sandell
  Elaine of Ascolat better known as the Lady of Shalot is the daughter of one of King Arthur's supporters. Her mother died when she was young so she lives with her father and brothers in the traveling military camps. She is the only girl in a camp full of men until Gwynivere arrives and Elaine's dream of a female companion are realized. That is until Elaine realizes that the man she loves, Lancelot, loves the new lady in the camp.
• YA SANDE - The Weight of the Sky by Lisa Ann Sandell
  A sixteen-year-old girl travels to Israel to spend the summer on a kibbutz and discovers who she is and what she wants out of life.
• YA SMITH - Tantalize by Cynthia Leitich Smith
  When multiple murders in Austin, Texas, threaten the grand re-opening of her family's vampire-themed restaurant, seventeen-year-old, orphaned Quincie worries that her best friend-turned-love interest, Keiren, a werewolf-in-training, may be the prime suspect.
• YA SONNE - Notes from the Midnight Driver by Jordan Sonnenblick
  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.
• YA THARP - Knights of the Hill Country by Tim Tharp
  In his senior year, high school star linebacker Hampton Greene finally begins to think for himself and discovers that he might be interested in more than just football.
• YA VOLPO - Rucker Park Setup by Paul Volponi
  While playing in a crucial basketball game on the very court where his best friend was murdered, Mackey tries to come to terms with his own part in that murder and decide whether to maintain his silence or tell J.R.'s father and the police what really happened.
• YA VRETT - Skin by Adrienne Maria Vrettos
  Fourteen year old Donnie's life is falling apart. His parents split up over the summer, he is the school leper, and his sisters anorexia is killing her.
• YA YEOMA - Rubber Houses by Ellen Yeomans
  A novel in verse that relates seventeen-year-old Kit’s experiences as her younger brother is diagnosed with and dies of cancer and as she withdraws into and gradually emerges from her grief.
• YA ZARR - Story of a Girl by Sara Zarr
  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.
• YA ZEVIN - Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin
  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.
• YA N/A - Glass Houses: The Morganville Vampires, Book I by Rachel Caine 16-year-old Claire Danvers is one of the youngest students at the Morganville College. When Claire moves into her dorm, she is singled out for bullying by the a vicious group of girls who threaten to kill her. Claire decides to move out before they get their chance and ends up renting a room at Glass House. Claire soon discovers however, it not just these girls who are out to kill her, it seems to be the whole, crazy town.
• YA N/A - Echo by Kate Morgenroth Justin witnesses his brother's accidental death. A year later we find Justin's life completely different - his friends have changed, his attitude is bad, and his relationship with his parents is different. The most bizarre thing is he seems to be reliving the same day over and over, but the outcome does not change or improve. Is it possible he could be responsible for the death of two people?
• YA N/A - Set in Stone by Linda Newbery
  In Victorian England, a young artist begins tutoring a wealthy man’s daughters and is soon pulled into a mystery of family deceptions.