Tayshas 2010 High School Reading List
A High School Reading List created by the Texas Library Association
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Reality Check After a knee injury destroys sixteen-year-old Cody's college hopes, he drops out of high school and gets a job in his small Montana town, but when his ex-girlfriend disappears from her Vermont boarding school, Cody travels cross-country to join the search. subjects: Missing Persons, Social Classes, High Schools, Dropouts, Gambling |
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Bad Girls Don't Die When fifteen-year-old Lexi's younger sister Kasey begins behaving strangely and their old Victorian house seems to take on a life of its own, Lexi investigates and discovers some frightening facts about previous occupants of the house, leading her to believe that many lives are in danger. subjects: Demoniac Possession, Sisters, Schools, Horror Tales, Haunted Houses, Horror Stories |
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Chains After being sold to a cruel couple in New York City, a slave named Isabel spies for the rebels during the Revolutionary War. subjects: Slavery, African Americans, Spies |
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Wintergirls Eighteen-year-old Lia comes to terms with her best friend's death from anorexia as she struggles with the same disorder. subjects: Anorexia Nervosa, Death |
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Freeze Frame Fifteen-year-old Kyle believes he does not deserve to live after accidentally shooting and killing his best friend. subjects: Firearms, Violence, Death, Best Friends, Friendship |
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The Boy Who Dared In October, 1942, seventeen-year-old Helmuth Hübener, imprisoned for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets, recalls his past life and how he came to dedicate himself to bring the truth about Hitler and the war to the German people. subjects: Anti-Nazi Movement, Courage, World War 1939-1945, Germany |
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Audrey, Wait! While trying to score a date with her cute co-worker at the Scooper Dooper, sixteen-year-old Audrey gains unwanted fame and celebrity status when her ex-boyfriend, a rock musician, records a breakup song about her that soars to the top of the Billboard charts. subjects: Dating (Social Customs), Fame |
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The Good Neighbors, Book One: Kin Sixteen-year-old Rue Silver, whose mother disappeared weeks ago, believes she is going crazy until she learns that the strange things she has been seeing are real, and that she is one of the faerie creatures, or Good Neighbors, that mortals cannot see. subjects: Fairies, Missing Persons, Supernatural, Magic, Graphic Novels |
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What I Saw and How I lied In 1947, with her jovial stepfather Joe back from the war and family life returning to normal, teenage Evie, smitten by the handsome young ex-GI who seems to have a secret hold on Joe, finds herself caught in a complicated web of lies whose devastating outcome change her life and that of her family forever. subjects: Coming of Age, Family Problems, Secrets, Florida |
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The Year We Disappeared Cylin and John Busby share the challenges they faced after their family was forced into hiding to protect themselves from a killer who had already shot John, a police officer, and was determined to finish the job. subjects: Violence Against Police, Fathers and Daughters |
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The Secret Life of Prince Charming Seventeen-year-old Quinn has heard all her life about how untrustworthy men are, so when she discovers that her charismatic but selfish father, with whom she has recently begun to have a tentative relationship, has stolen from the many women in his life, she decides she must avenge this wrong. subjects: Fathers, Interpersonal Relations, Family Problems, Divorce |
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Graceling In a world where some people are born with extreme and often-feared skills called Graces, Katsa struggles for redemption from her own horrifying Grace, the Grace of killing, and teams up with another young fighter to save their land from a corrupt king. subjects: Fantasy |
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Because I am Furniture The youngest of three siblings, fourteen-year-old Anke feels both relieved and neglected that her father abuses her brother and sister but ignores her, but when she catches him with one of her friends, she finally becomes angry enough to take action. subjects: Child Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse, Guilt, Problem Families, High Schools, Novels in Verse |
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The Girl in the Green Sweater In 1943, with Lvov's 150,000 Jews having been exiled, killed, or forced into ghettos and facing extermination, a group of Polish Jews daringly sought refuge in the city's sewer system. subjects: Jews-Ukraine, Jewish Holocaust, Jewish Children in the Holocaust, L'viv (Ukraine) |
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Oh. My. Gods When her mother suddenly decides to marry a near-stranger, Phoebe, whose passion is running, soon finds herself living on a remote Greek island, completing her senior year at an ancient high school where the students and teachers are all descended from gods or goddesses. subjects: High Schools, Supernatural, Greek Mythology, Remarriage, Running, Greece |
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If the Witness Lied Torn apart by tragedies and the publicity they brought, siblings Smithy, Jack, and Madison, aged fourteen to sixteen, tap into their parent's courage to pull together and protect their brother Tris, nearly three, from further media exploitation and a much more sinister threat. subjects: Brothers and Sisters, Grief, Orphans, Celebrities, Family Life, Reality Television Programs, Connecticut |
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Box Out High school sophomore Liam jeopardizes his new position on the varsity basketball team when he decides to take a stand against his coach who is leading prayers before games and enforcing team wide participation. subjects: Basketball, Prayer in the Public Sector, Church and State, High Schools |
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The Stolen One After the death of her foster mother, sixteen-year-old Kat goes to London to seek the answers to her parentage, and surprisingly finds herself invited into Queen Elizabeth's court. subjects: Elizabeth I Queen of England, Orphans, Identity (Psychology), City and Town Life, London (England), Great Britain |
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Along for the Ride When Auden impulsively goes to stay with her father, stepmother, and new baby sister the summer before she starts college, all the trauma of her parents' divorce is revived, even as she is making new friends and having new experiences such as learning to ride a bike and dating. subjects: Stepfamilies, Babies, Interpersonal Relations, Dating (Social Customs), Divorce, Change, Infants |
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Bog Child In 1981, the height of Ireland's "Troubles," eighteen-year-old Fergus is distracted from his upcoming A-level exams by his imprisoned brother's hunger strike, the stress of being a courier for Sinn Fein, and dreams of a murdered girl whose body he discovered in a bog. subjects: Political Prisoners, Bog Bodies, Political Violence, Ireland, Terrorism |
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After Before That Morning, these were the words most often used to describe straight-A student and star soccer player Devon Davenport: responsible, hardworking, mature. But all that changes when the police find Devon home sick from school as they investigate the case of an abandoned baby. Soon the connection is made—Devon has just given birth; the baby in the trash is hers. After That Morning, there’s only one way to define Devon: attempted murderer. subjects: Infanticide, Pregnancy |
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If I Stay While in a coma following an automobile accident that killed her parents and younger brother, seventeen-year-old Mia, a gifted cellist, weighs whether to live with her grief or join her family in death. subjects: Coma, Death, Medical Care, Violoncellists, Family Life, Oregon |
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Triple Shot Bettys in Love Sixteen-year-old Geena spends a winter coping with the gorgeous new girl who is after her boyfriend, Ben, her mother's return to dating, and her best friend Amber's crush on an English teacher, while continuing to serve espressos at Tripleshot Betty. subjects: Friendship, Humorous Stories |
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King of the Screwups After getting in trouble yet again, popular high school senior Liam, who never seems to live up to his wealthy father's expectations, is sent to live in a trailer park with his gay "glam-rocker" uncle. subjects: Fathers and Sons, Uncles, Behavior, Self-Esteem, Conduct of Life |
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Eon: Dragoneye Reborn Sixteen-year-old Eon hopes to become an apprentice to one of the twelve energy dragons of good fortune and learn to be its main interpreter, but to do so will require much, including keeping secret that she is a girl. subjects: Fantasy, Dragons, Sex Role, Apprentices, Magic |
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Evernight Sixteen-year-old Bianca, a new girl at the sinister Evernight boarding school, finds herself drawn to another outsider, Jared, but dark forces threaten to tear them apart and destroy Bianca's entire world. subjects: Boarding Schools, Vampires, Love, Horror Stories, Horror Tales |
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The Orange Houses Tamika, a fifteen-year-old hearing-impaired girl, Jimmi, an eighteen-year-old veteran who stopped taking his antipsychotic medication, and sixteen-year-old Fatima, an illegal immigrant from Africa, meet and connect in their Bronx, New York, neighborhood, with devastating results. subjects: Interpersonal Relations, Hearing Impaired, People With Disabilities, Veterans, Mental Illness, Illegal Aliens, Bronx (New York, N.Y.) |
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Brutal Forced to leave Los Angeles for life in a quiet California wine town with a father she has never known, rebellious sixteen-year-old Poe Holly rails against a high school system that allows elite students special privileges and tolerates bullying of those who are different. subjects: Family, High School, Parents |
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North of Beautiful Terra, a sensitive, artistic high school senior born with a facial port-wine stain, struggles with issues of inner and outer beauty with the help of her Goth classmate Jacob. subjects: Personal Beauty, Birthmarks |
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Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith Charles Darwin and his wife, Emma, were deeply in love and very supportive of each other, but their opinions often clashed. Emma was extremely religious, and Charles questioned God's very existence. subjects: Charles Darwin, Emma Darwin, Naturalists |
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The Devouring The existence of Vours, supernatural creatures who feast on fear and attack on the eve of the winter solstice, becomes a terrifying reality for fifteen-year-old Reggie when she begins to suspect that her timid younger brother might be one of their victims. subjects: Fear, Brothers and Sisters, Supernatural, Horror Stories |
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Newes From the Dead In 1650, while Robert, a young medical student, steels himself to assist with her dissection, twenty-two-year-old housemaid Anne Green recalls her life as she lies in her coffin, presumed dead after being hanged for murdering her child that was, in fact, stillborn. subjects: Death, Household Employees, Executions and Executioners, Pregnancy, Great Britain |
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War Child: A Child Soldiers Story In the mid-1980s, Emmanuel Jal was a seven year old Sudanese boy, living in a small village with his parents, aunts, uncles, and siblings. But as Sudan's civil war moved closer with the Islamic government seizing tribal lands for water, oil, and other resources Jal's family moved again and again, seeking peace. Then, on one terrible day, Jal was separated from his mother, and later learned she had been killed; his father Simon rose to become a powerful commander in the Christian Sudanese Liberation Army, fighting for the freedom of Sudan. Soon, Jal was conscripted into that army, one of 10,000 child soldiers, and fought through two separate civil wars over nearly a decade. subjects: Child Soldiers, Rap Musicians, Political Activists, Sudan |
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Need Depressed after the death of her stepfather, high school junior Zara goes to live with her grandmother in a small Maine town, where new friends tell Zara the strange man she keeps seeing may be a pixie king, and that only "were" creatures can stop him from taking souls. subjects: Grief, Supernatural, Pixies, Metamorphosis, High Schools, Maine |
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Hot Girl Kate, a fourteen-year-old Brooklyn girl and former gang member, risks losing her first good foster family when she adopts the risqué ways of her flirtatious new friend, Naleejah. subjects: Friendship, Conduct of Life, African Americans, Foster Home Care, Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) |
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The Bite of the Mango Describes the life of Mariatu Kamara, focusing on her experiences as a child during the civil war in Sierra Leone where she was raped, tortured, and had her hands cut off by juvenile rebel soldiers; and discusses her experiences after the war. subjects: war |
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Feathered While on Spring Break in Cancun, Mexico, high-school seniors and best friends Anne and Michelle accept the wrong ride and Michelle is lost--seemingly forever. subjects: Spring Break, Best Friends, Friendship, Missing Persons, Coming of Age, Cancun (Mexico) |
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House of Dance During one of her daily visits across town to visit her dying grandfather, fifteen-year-old Rosie discovers a dance studio that helps her find a way to bring her family members together. subjects: Grandfathers, Cancer, Ballroom Dancing, Mothers and Daughters |
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Lady Macbeth's Daughter In alternating chapters, ambitious Lady Macbeth tries to bear a son and win the throne of Scotland for her husband, and Albia, their daughter who was banished at birth and raised by three weird sisters, falls in love, learns of her parentage, and seeks to free Scotland from tyranny in this tale based on Shakespeare's Macbeth. subjects: Shakespeare |
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Two Girls of Gettysburg When the Civil War breaks out, two cousins, Lizzie and Rosanna, find themselves on opposite sides of the conflict until the war reunites them in the town of Gettysburg. subjects: Battle of Gettysburg, Friendship, Cousins, United States |
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Deadville While visiting an injured classmate in the hospital, sixteen-year-old Ryan, who is trying to come to terms with his sister's death from cancer, meets a young patient who claims to be able to see into the world where the dead live. subjects: Death, Grief, Dead |
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The Juvie Three Gecko, Arjay, and Terence, all in trouble with the law, must find a way to keep their halfway house open in order to stay out of juvenile detention. subjects: Group Homes, Juvenile Delinquents, Cooperativeness, Friendship |
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How to Ditch Your Fairy In a world in which everyone has a personal fairy who tends to one aspect of daily life, fourteen-year-old Charlie decides she does not want hers--a parking fairy--and embarks on a series of misadventures designed to rid herself of the invisible sprite and replace it with a better one, like her friend Rochelle's shopping fairy. subjects: Fairies, Magic, Interpersonal Relations |
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Devil on Trial: Witches, Anarchists, Atheists, Communists, and Terrorists in America's Courtrooms subjects: United States |
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Sophomore Switch Take an administrative snafu, a bad breakup, and what shall heretofore be known as "The Hot-Tub Incident," and you have got two unprepared sophomores on a semester abroad. For American party girl Tasha, an escape to Oxford may be a chance to ditch her fame as a tabloid temptress, but wading deep in feminist theory is not her idea of a break. Meanwhile, the British half of the exchange, studious Emily, nurses an aching heart amid the bikinis and beer pong of U.C. Santa Barbara. Soon desperation has the girls texting each other tips on fitting in, finding love, and figuring out who they really are. subjects: Student Exchange Program, Foreign Study, Teenagers, Friendships, Man-Woman Relationships, Romance Fiction, California, London (England) |
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Wake Ever since she was eight years old, high school student Janie Hannagan has been uncontrollably drawn into other people's dreams, but it is not until she befriends an elderly nursing home patient and becomes involved with an enigmatic fellow-student that she discovers her true power. subjects: Dreams, Lucid Dreams, Undercover Operations, High Schools, Emotional Problems, Interpersonal Relations |
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Bonechiller Four high school students face off against a soul-stealing beast that has been making young people disappear their small Ontario, Canada, town for centuries. subjects: Monsters, Supernatural, Grief, Lake Simcoe, Canada |
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All We Know of Heaven When Maureen and Bridget, two sixteen-year-old best friends who look like sisters, are in a terrible car accident and one of them dies, they are at first incorrectly identified at the hospital, and then, as Maureen achieves a remarkable recovery, she must deal with the repercussions of the accident, the mix-up, and some choices she made while she was getting better. subjects: Traffic Accidents, Death, Grief, Rehabilitation, High Schools |
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Gentlemen When three teenaged boys suspect that their English teacher is responsible for their friend's disappearance, they must navigate a maze of assorted clues, fraying friendships, violence, and Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" before learning the truth. subjects: Friendship |
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Why I Fight After his house burns down, twelve-year-old Wyatt Reaves takes off with his uncle, and the two of them drive from town to town for six years, earning money mostly by fighting, until Wyatt finally confronts his parents one last time. subjects: Family |
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Streams of Babel Six teens face a bioterrorist attack on American soil as four are infected with a mysterious disease affecting their small New Jersey neighborhood and two others, both brilliant computer hackers, assist the United States Intelligence Coalition in tracking the perpetrators. subjects: Bioterrorism, Terrorism, Communicable Diseases, Computer Hackers, Spies, Interpersonal Relations, New Jersey |
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Silver Phoenix With her father long overdue from his journey and a lecherous merchant blackmailing her into marriage, seventeen-year-old Ai Ling becomes aware of a strange power within her as she goes in search of her parent. subjects: Supernatural, Voyages and Travels, Fathers and Daughters, Supernatural, China |
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Just One Wish Seventeen-year-old Annika tries to cheer up her little brother Jeremy before his surgery to remove a cancerous tumor by bringing home his favorite television actor, Steve Raleigh, the star of "Teen Robin Hood." subjects: Brothers and Sisters, Cancer, Actors, |
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Alis Raised within the strict religious confines of the Community of the Book, Alis flees from an arranged marriage to the much older Minister of her town and her life takes a series of unexpected twists before she returns to accept her fate. subjects: Arranged Marriage, Missing Persons, Religion, Assertiveness (Psychology), Runaways, Religion |
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Surface Tension During the summer vacations of his thirteenth through his sixteenth year at the family's lake cottage, Luke realizes that although some things stay the same over the years that many more change. subjects: Vacations, Family, Change, New York (State) |
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The Forest of Hands and Teeth Through twists and turns of fate, orphaned Mary seeks knowledge of life, love, and especially what lies beyond her walled village and the surrounding forest, where dwell the Unconsecrated, aggressive flesh-eating people who were once dead. subjects: Horror Tales, Fantasy, Orphans, Horror Stories |
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Last Night I Sang to the Monster Eighteen-year-old Zach does not remember how he came to be in a treatment center for alcoholics, but through therapy and caring friends, his amnesia fades and he learns to face his past while working toward a better future. subjects: Alcoholism |
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The Hanging Woods In rural Alabama during the summer of 1975, three teenaged boys build a treehouse, try to keep a headless turkey alive, and become involved in a murder mystery. subjects: Friendship, Murder, Country Life, Alabama |
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Far From You A novel-in-verse about sixteen-year-old Ali's reluctant road trip with her stepmother and new baby sister, and the terror that ensues after they end up lost in the snow-covered woods. subjects: Family |
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Black Box When her sixteen-year-old sister is hospitalized for depression and her parents want to keep it a secret, fourteen-year-old Elena tries to cope with her own anxiety and feelings of guilt that she is determined to conceal from outsiders. subjects: Depression, Sisters, Family Problems, Interpersonal Relations, High Schools |
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Flygirl During World War II, a light-skinned African American girl "passes" for white in order to join the Women Air Force Service Pilots. subjects: Women Air Force Service, World War 1939-1945, African Americans, Air Pilots |
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I Heard God Talking to Me: William Edmondson and his Stone Carvings Collects twenty-three poems by Elizabeth Spires, in which she examines and describes the stone carvings sculpted by William Edmondson; and includes black-and-white photographs and four additional poems by Edmondson. subjects: Poetry, Sculpture |
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Deadly Little Secret When someone starts stalking high school junior Camelia, everyone at school assumes that it is Ben, who is new at school and rumored to have killed his previous girlfriend, but Camelia is nevertheless inexplicably drawn to him. subjects: Stalking, Psychic Ability, Dating (Social Customs), High Schools |
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Marcelo in the Real World Marcelo Sandoval, a seventeen-year-old boy on the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum, faces new challenges, including romance and injustice, when he goes to work for his father in the mail room of a corporate law firm. subjects: Autism, Asperger's Syndrome, Interpersonal Relations |
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The Good Thief Twelve year-old Ren is missing his left hand. How it was lost is a mystery that Ren has been trying to solve for his entire life, as well as who his parents are, and why he was abandoned as an infant at Saint Anthony’s Orphanage for boys. subjects: Orphans, New England, United States |
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Broken Soup A photographic negative and two surprising new friends become the catalyst for healing as fifteen-year-old Rowan struggles to keep her family and her life together after her brother's death. subjects: Grief, Problem Families, Family Problems, London (England) |
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Exposed Chan Shealy, a sixteen-year-old baton-twirler and straight-A student, becomes involved with an internet predator, despite strict parental rules and her own beliefs that she knows how to keep herself safe online. subjects: Online Sexual Predators, Sexual Abuse Victims, Sisters, Family Life |
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The Hand You're Dealt When seventeen-year-old Huck's vindictive math teacher wins the town poker tournament and takes the winner's watch away from Huck's father while he's in a coma, Huck vows to get even with him no matter what it takes. subjects: Poker, Revenge, Teachers, High Schools |
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Response When an African American high school student is beaten with a baseball bat in a white neighborhood, three boys are charged with a hate crime. subjects: Hate Crimes, Prejudices, Race Relations, African Americans |
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Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland This book reports on the work of forensic scientists who are excavating grave sites in James Fort, in Jamestown, Virginia, to understand the people who lived in the Chesapeake Bay area in the 1600s and 1700s. subjects: Forensic Anthropology, Human Remains, Jamestown (Va.), Chesapeake Bay Region |
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Breathless At boarding school, Katie tries to focus on swimming and becoming popular instead of the painful memories of her institutionalized schizophrenic older brother. subjects: Boarding Schools, Swimming |
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Becoming Billie Holiday Jazz vocalist Billie Holiday looks back on her early years in this fictional memoir written in verse. subjects: Billie Holiday, Novels in Verse, Jazz Singers |
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The Fetch After 350 years as a Fetch, or death escort, Calder breaks his vows and enters the body of Rasputin, whose spirit causes rebellion in the Land of Lost Souls while Calder struggles to convey Ana and Alexis, orphaned in the Russian Revolution, to Heaven. subjects: Future Life, Death, Forgiveness, Russia (Federation), Rasputin |
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The Chosen One In a polygamous cult in the desert, Kyra, not yet fourteen, sees being chosen to be the seventh wife of her uncle as just punishment for having read books and kissed a boy, in violation of Prophet Childs' teachings, and is torn between facing her fate and running away from all that she knows and loves. subjects: Cults, Polygamy, Family Life, Coming of Age, Families |
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Bull Rider When his older brother, a bull-riding champion, returns from the Iraq War partially paralyzed, fourteen-year-old Cam takes a break from skateboarding to enter a bull-riding contest, in hopes of winning the $15,000 prize and motivating his depressed brother to continue with his rehabilitation. subjects: Bull Riding, Brothers |
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I'm Down: A Memoir Mishna Wolff grew up in a poor black neighborhood with her single father, a white man who truly believed he was black. “He strutted around with a short perm, a Cosby-esqe sweater, gold chains and a Kangol—telling jokes like Redd Fox, and giving advice like Jesse Jackson. You couldn’t tell my father he was white. Believe me, I tried,” writes Wolff. And so from early childhood on, her father began his crusade to make his white daughter Down. subjects: African Americans, Comedians, Models (persons) |
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The Uninvited Mimi Shapiro had a disturbing freshman year at NYU, thanks to a foolish affair with a professor who still haunts her caller ID. So when her artist father, Marc, offers the use of his remote Canadian cottage, she’s glad to hop in her Mini Cooper and drive up north. The house is fairy-tale quaint, and the key is hidden right where her dad said it would be, so she’s shocked to fi nd someone already living there — Jay, a young musician, who is equally startled to meet Mimi and immediately accuses her of leaving strange and threatening tokens inside: a dead bird, a snakeskin, a cricket sound track embedded in his latest composition. But Mimi has just arrived, so who is responsible? And more alarmingly, what does the intruder want? Part gripping thriller, part family drama, this fast-paced novel plays out in alternating viewpoints, in a pastoral setting that is evocative and eerie — a mysterious character in its own right. subjects: Horror Tales |
List updated month November 2009—Patti Cook
